dolphinboy

I finally upgraded my computer and got a laptop with a 20GB Harddrive. I know VERY little about computers and recording music. I don't even know what an MP3 really is. Please don't judge me.

Anyway, I want to put a few hundred songs into my computer from mostly the CDs that I have with only one or two good tunes on them. Then I can put the CDs in the closet and have the music to listen to and make mix CDs with.

I've played around a bit and recorded a few cds. My setting are for 64kbps which takes about 28 MB per cd. I've read here that that really isn't good quality, but it sure sounded fine to me on the CDs that I recorded. Should I fool with that to make it better and, if so, isn't that going to take up much needed space?

Also, I've NEVER downloaded music before. I wanted to give it a try although i only have a 56 k hookup. Do you think the music will download well? And where do people find music now? I know there are still places out there to get free/shared music but could someone direct me to a couple of them and give me any tips that might be helpful?

Thanks a lot!

Goat3001

I'll try to answer your questions as best as I can


First off, 64kbs isn't that good in quality. I prefer 196, but 128 works well too. Yes it does take up more space if the bitrate is higher, but if you have 20gigs (about 70 megs per cd at 196) you shouldn't have a problem. I recommend trying upgrading a song or two too a higher bitrate to see how you like it.

56.k modem would work fine, a little slow yes, but fine. Try programs like Morpehus and Audiogalaxy. Both work well for me. Sometimes Audiogalaxy's site is down but when they're up Audiogalaxy is pretty fast. But I also think that Morpheus is easier for a beginner IMO.

Hope I was some help

dolphinboy

thank you, you were a lot of help. but could you just clear up a few things. i have no idea what 70 megs per cd at 196 even means. i will try it at a higher rate, but is this really only something for very serious audiophiles? i mean, as i said, i've made a couple of cds at 64 and i thought they sounded just great. how much better do you need or can you REALLY even tell unless you have a super ear or plan on playing things on super, incredible equipment?

also, could you give me an idea of what kind of space I'll have with 128 or 196. I mean, assuming I don't use that much space for other things, what will recording at 128 and 196 do to my space? how many songs (not cds) do you think i'd be able to put in the computer using 128 or 196 without taking up way too much space for comfort? I've heard people have thousands, are they doing that with only 20 GB and using the higher bitrates like you do?

i plan on trying both of the sites to get music you recommended. thanks. do you just go there and download the songs kind of the same way that you copy a song from a cd?

thanks so much!

palebluedot

At 128kbps it is right around 1 meg per minute of music so a 5 minute song is roughly 5 meg. So that means 200 5 minute songs will take up around 1GB of space. 128kbps is considered CD quality but I disagree. I find that 192kbps and higher is better and that is what I always use.

Also what are you using to copy your CDs and encode them to MP3?(please don't tell me you are using music match or something similar). If you are interested I can point you to the best software for making MP3s and the programs are totally free.

In answer to your other questions I can definitely tell the difference between 64kbps and 128kbps.

Also morpheus and audiogalaxy are not web sites they are programs that you download that are part of a peer-to-peer network of computers with MP3(and other stuff) on them. You will have to download the programs, install them and register with the network. Then you can simply search for songs you want and download them.

dolphinboy

I'm doing this on my laptop and the harddrive is not expandable, so I have to consider how much space I'm using. It sure seems that at 196 I'd be using a lot and, therefore, would have room for even less songs. What should I do? I want this to be simple. I just want music on my laptop so I can get a lot of music copied and out of the way from cds with only a few good songs and also to put lots of my favorite songs on as well to make mix cds.

I mentioned above that I don't know much and I don't really have time to do a lot of learning right now. Work and family and dvds are enough. I was hoping this would be easier. I'm putting my songs in the media library of windows media player. Is that bad? Why? I don't even know what MP3 is. I just want to copy lots of music and make mixes and I'm considering trying to download songs. But you said they were programs and that would probably be hard and take up even more space when I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of songs that I'd like to get copied as it is.

I really appreciate the help and if you don't mind schooling me on what to do, then I'd be very grateful but you'd have to really explain things and go slowly and clearly because I simply know VERY little about this process.

At this time I probably have about 40 songs in the windows media player, 75% at 64 and the rest at 128.

Please let me know what you think I should do taking into consideration my computer and my needs and the fact I couldn't even tell that the 64kps copies weren't top notch.

Thanks again!

Ps- According to your numbers, if I copied at 128kps, I'd use about 5GBs for 1,000 songs. That is 1/4 of my total space and about another 5 are just taken up with my programs and documents now. So I'd be half way to the max and that's just with 128. The 196 would make it even worse. How would you suggest I do this and have it make sense space and quality wise?

einTier

I can very easily tell the difference between 64kbps and 128kpbs, even on crummy equipment. I can really tell on complex pieces, like classical music, or anything with a lot of highs or lows.

I would recommend that you at least encode them at 128kpbs. I think above that, you can tell a difference, but it is hard to tell without a back-to-back comparison. It is certainly good enough for casual listening. The reason I tell you do this now, is that you can always downgrade the sound (go from 128 to 64), but you cannot go the other way. That information is gone, and you will never ever be able to get it back. If you decide a year from now that 64 isn't as good as you thought it was, you'll have to go back and do it all again -- and if you lose, misplace, sell or
damage the CDs in the meantime, you'll be really upset. I encoded all mine in 256 -- though I honestly can't tell it from 192, simply for archival purposes. I was very happy when I was able to replace a few lost CDs because I had recorded them to mp3 at a high enough bitrate that it was (for me) indistinguishable from the CD itself.

Also, 128 seems to be the standard. If you want to get into trading, most people won't want 64kpbs files, I'll only take them if they are something rare I haven't seen and not likely to see again.

But, here's the kicker. You're wanting to make mixed audio cds, right? Audio CDs don't care about the original size or quality of the medium it's recording from, it's going to give you 74 or 80 minutes to a CD -- period. So, when you're making a mix audio CD, you'll want the highest quality files you can get.

If you have a CD mp3 player, or you're using CDs for backup, it might make sense to try to cram as many as you can to a CD, but at less than a nickel a CD, I have a hard time making that case. Personally, I'd just record the CDs to at least 128, but probably 160 or 192 and burn them onto CD as data files when I had 650 megs worth (about ten CDs). Then, I'd use those files to make mix audio CDs, that are 15-20 songs and 74-80 minutes in length.

I recommend the following software:

Musicmatch Jukebox for encoding to mp3.
Nero for making audio and data files.

dolphinboy

eintier, thank you, and i know it must be hard for you to believe but the majority of that is over my head and seems like too much trouble. burn them onto cds as data files? huh? then use those files to mix audio cds. huh? first of all, most of what i'll be doing is trying to put as much music as possible in front of me from many, many different cds...not very much copying of entire cds. i want the music already in the computer so i can choose the mixes i want to make, not take the files off of burned cds with data (if i even knew what that meant) because i might not have all the songs i want to choose from on that disc.

do you see palebluedot? i'm a moron. everyone is trying to help but coming from a level of experience i'm nowhere near. and, as well, i'm looking for easy...easy...easy. can you possible help me with that? i'm not trading, selling or doing anything else with my music. i just want an easy way to gather lots of my great songs in one place and makes mixes. that's it. 128 or 196?

palebluedot

Well if you are happy with the sound at 64kbps and you are going to be listening to the MP3s on just your laptop then go with that. At 64kbps you can fit your entire collection of CDs on your hard drive and barely make a dent in it.

Morpheus and Audiogalaxy are very small programs just a few meg each. Most of the files on these networks are 128kbps or higher and downloading these files via dial-up is excruciatingly slow, especially if the network is overloaded.


Oh yeah you also said you didn't even know what MP3 is. Well the simple explanation is it's audio encoded to MPEG-1 using Layer 3(MP3). MPEG is the standard for digital video and audio. What happens is when an MP3 is encoded, the encoder removes redundant frequencies and does what is called "auditory masking". Auditory masking is a process where the encoded MP3 is no near the quality of the original soucre but the masking creates a perception that it is(also call the psychoacoustic effect). This is what makes the file so much smaller than it's .wav counterpart.

Layer 3 refers to the encoding layer used of which there are 3 (Layer 1, 2, and 3). Layer three is the most complex of the coding as it removes the most "redundant" material.

More info:

Video CDs(VCD) uses MPEG-1 encoding for video and audio which is a very low quality encoding method. DVD uses MPEG-2 at a high resolution for it's encoding which (as you know) is very high quality. MPEG-2 audio is what is used for the surround sound tracks on DVD.


Again, if you are happy with the sound of your 64kbps MP3 then just stick with that but if you want to get deeper into it I will be more than happy to help with that.

dolphinboy

you see, the whole mp3 explanation. whoosh, right over my head. i didn't say i was happy with 64kps, i said i couldn't tell it was not as good as the cd it was recorded from. but i had never used a higher bitrate to compare which is why i asked for your help.

again, i have no problem going higher but i don't know what that means to the space i'll have and i'm using windows media player and have no idea if that is good or not.

i just want to store my music, copy it when i want to, and have it sound great...but to do so as easily as possible. if you can help me do that it would be very much appreciated.

thanks!

Eplicon

I would say 128 kbps should be at least the minimum -- you get what's referred to as "near CD quality," which should satisfy most people.

However, me being a little more nitpicky, I use the 160 kbps sampling rate. To my ears, it's better than 128, but I really don't need the absolute best quality, so 160 it is or me. I like MP3s a lot. I don't download them -- I make my own and have over 500 files on my hard drive. It's so much more convenient to listen to whatever I want at my whim rather than getting up and switching CDs every few minutes. Pretty soon I will need to add on another hard drive dedicated for media files.

Musicmatch isn't too difficult to use.

palebluedot

Damn, and I tried to make that explanation as simple as possible.


Anyway give me some more information on exactly what you want to do. Answer these questions....



Roughly how many songs are you looking to transfer from your CD collection to your computer(at this point)?

Are you transfering the songs to your laptop so that you have them with you when your laptop is with you, or are you also going to hook up your laptop to a stereo system and play your MP3s?

Are you going to be using a CD burner to burn compliations of music or are the MP3s just going to be used on the laptop.

Now when you say "I want to copy my music when I want to" what exactly do you mean by that. What or where are you wanting to copy it to?

dolphinboy

palebluedot

Okay now that those questions are answered answer these questions and then we can get to what exactly what you want you should do.


When you make these compliation CDs and burn them to CDr do you want the CDs to play in a regular CD player? Or are you wanting to burn the MP3 files themselves to CD, and play them as MP3s?

How are you going to burn them? Do you have a CD burner in your laptop? What kind of burning software do you have?

dolphinboy

palebluedot

You didn't answer my question about a CD burner.

Does your laptop have a CD burner drive? (also called a CD-R or CD-RW drive).

You need to have a CD-R(burner) drive in order to burn your CDs from the MP3 files.

From what I gather I am guessing that you do not have a CD-R burner drive in your laptop. Do you have access to a computer with a burner in it?

Also to my knowledge musicmatch and media player do not have burning capabilities. In addition to your CD-R burner drive you will need burning software like Nero or EZ CD Creator(both these programs will make CDs from your MP3s).


So for now lets just worry about getting your MP3s to your laptop.

You need to make a decision as to what you want to put on you computer. Do you want to eventually put your entire collection on the computer or do you just want to put your favorite songs on it. The reason I ask this is because the bit rate(kbps) that you encode them at, will determine the space it takes up.

This is also predicated on the desire to make CDs from your MP3s. I can say from experience that a CD recorded from MP3s that are encoded at 64kbps do not sound very good.

With that said your entire collection recorded at 128kbps would take up roughly 30GB of space. At 64kbps it will take up about 12GB of space.

So what I would do, and I know this would be time consuming, would be to go through your collection and decide what songs you want to transfer to your hard drive and add up the total time of all the songs. That way we will know how much space it will take up.


If you are wanting to eventually put your entire collection onto your computer then you will have to encode them at the lower bit rate in order to fit them on the hard drive.


Also in addition I will put something together for you for the downloading part of this that will make it very simple for you.

dolphinboy

I haven't read the whole reply yet, but yes it has a burner. I mean, I've made a few cds already...so it must have a burner.

I have copied songs from cds at 64 and some at 128 and I've made a few mix cds already. I used Windows Media Player. It says copy from cd and then copy TO cd or device. That's burning a cd, right?

It even closes the CD-R after the recording like my stereo CD burner.

I'll get back to the rest of your thread now.

palebluedot

Okay great that answers my question then...excellent. Now have you compared the quality of CDs recorded from 64kbps MP3s and those recorded from 128kbps? Do you notice a difference between the two?

If you don't notice a difference then by all means use the 64kbps setting as it will take up entirely less space.

dolphinboy

i will never put 400+ CDS ONTO my laptop. I'm guessing about 500 songs at an average time of 4 minutes per song.

How much space is that? Because I know more will go on later. I doubt that it will get over 1,000. What do you think? Should I just go for 128 or the even better but bigger 196 bitrates?


But as I asked before, can I when it say gets over 500-750...take the songs I've already put onto new CD mixes and songs I'm not listening to anymore and transfer in another form where I can always get them later if I choose I want to?

dolphinboy

I really can't tell, but I've never been a good judge of that kind of thing. But I will surely make copies for friends and stuff and I don't want it to be bad. And with all that's been said about 64kps it might just stick in my head that it isn't good enough. That's why I wonder If you think I should split the difference and go to 128kps. But what would that do to my space? And about how many songs is that going to allow me to have safely?

AtlDVD

The minimum it should be is 128- for save measure do it at 160 to 196 so it oversample to ensure quality.

Anything below 128 and you are moving down to cassette tape quality. Even at 128 some things dont sound good.

dolphinboy

ps- i don't need Nero or EZ CD Creator, right? with a burner and with windows media player that makes cds why get something else?

palebluedot

Definitely use 128kbps.

At 128kbps, 500 songs at 5 minutes each song will be 2.5GB. Now on a 20GB drive, 2.5 GIG is not that big of a chunk.

Yes you can simply burn the MP3 files themselves to CDs strictly for backup purposes. However media player may not do this. Now I am sure that your laptop came with some sort of burning software like EZCD Creator or something. Look through your programs for burning software. Also if you are running windows XP there is built in burning capabilites.

What happens when you make CDs from MP3 files is the MP3 is actually converted into a file that CD players can use. So you need burning software other than media player becasue you want to back up your MP3 files as is to CD without converting them.

palebluedot

For making your music CDs from MP3 media player is just fine.

However to backup you MP3s you need another type of burning software that will make data discs.

dolphinboy

palebluedot, we have another vote for me using 196 kps. how many songs can i get with that? is it that much better than 128 kps?

tell me what you think i should do and i'll do it. i'll never have more than 20 GBs on this laptop, though.

how many 4 minute songs will i safely be able to copy to the harddrive and what do i do when i go past that number.

you've been very helpful.

palebluedot

Actually it's 192...not sure where people are getting 196 from. Every MP3 encoder I have ever used does 192. Media player does 192.

With that said a 4 minute song encoded at 192kbps will take up 5.7 Meg of space so 500 songs at 5.7 Meg takes up 2.9 GB of space which is plenty safe to put on your hard drive. In fact double that would be plenty safe to put on the hard drive.