Tweaking the Deck/Sub?

You must encode your MP3's on a crap computer. I can hear a little difference sometimes in the quality between an mp3 file and a CD and mine are usually 128 bit. I think it depends on the encoder and what else might be running on your computer at the time and what CD you're listening to. And I'm picky about sound quality. I've downloaded some stuff off the internet that sounded crappy for some reason or the other even though it was at 128k.

Actually, 128 bit is considered to be below-cd quality if you do any lookups on Yahoo on mp3 encoding quality. Once you start going higher from there it gets harder and harder to discern the difference...of course unfortunately that means the file size is bigger.

Even still, if you encode songs yourself a 160 or 192 bit sample is going to give you excellent sound and then you get the options of making your a new mix every couple weeks if you want to with a cd-rw(or even with a cd-r for that matter because they are so cheap).

MP3 format only removes the portion of the audio track that is inaudible by humans. There is "room" on a standard CD for sounds too low and too high for any human to hear - MP3 gets rid of those portions of the track, thus compressing the data to only what people can hear. At 128 kBs, you are talking about damn near CD quality - MAYBE some of the nuances get lost. Go with a better bitrate (160, 192) and only your dog can truly hear the difference - especially at 70MPH on asphalt with a window cracked open.

Cars suck for really good sound anyway, so MP3s are perfect for the road.

You are exactly right hihoslva. The parts erased are inaudible by humans. So the only way it would'nt be as clear as a cd is if your encoder has any jitter error. If you have a good encoder, you shouldn't hear any difference. My favorite encoder is blade. And best of all, it's freeware.

Never heard of Blade - I'm actually very new to ripping my own MP3s from my CDs. I'm currently using Cronic Ripper (freeware- from ZDNet).

I also use Internet Renamer for getting the ID3 tag info easily (also ZDNet freeware).

I've burned about 10 MP3 discs already, and my MP3 deck isn't even installed yet!

So far, Cronic has been a very good ripper. No problems, other than it is not the most user-friendly setup. But the quality is great, as far as I can tell.

What are the benefits of "Blade"? I'm interested.