Last night, I received my package from Post-Parlo Records (since it was so cheap, I went ahead and bought Everything). The original impetus was that I was going through my MP3’s and came across some from Subset, a band that one of my former co-worker’s is in.
Since I’ll be resuming my archiving of my CD’s soon for my MP3 Jukebox for my home system (this USB->Coax converter is the only component I have left to get), I figured that I should probably get started seeing what’s out there nowadays. Two formats that I haven’t looke at quite yet, but may should are: Ogg Vorbis (waiting for v1.0), and Monkey’s Audio (Windows only? Grrr).
In any case, I grabbed and reset up the latest version of EAC (v0.9p11 still), checked out Dibrom’s latest recommended compile of LAME (v3.90.2-ICL) and fired away.
- 01 – Subset – Anchor.wav – The straight Secure Rip WAV file
- 01 – Subset – Anchor (alt-preset 128 cbr).mp3 – Dibrom’s tweaked 128kbps CBR. I’m using this as a baseline for 128kbps MP3s, although the majority of those floating on the net are much, much worse (more reviews for those who aren’t familiar with the issue but want to learn some more).
- 01 – Subset – Anchor (r3mix).mp3 – This is using the standard r3mix setting
- 01 – Subset – Anchor (alt-preset standard).mp3 – Dibrom’s baseline high quality suggested setting which seems to have by general consensus supereceded –r3mix.
Listening through my 4 year old pcworks speakers, you really can’t tell the difference between any of them. With a quick run through my Grado SR-60s that I have at home right now, both r3mix and alt-preset standard sound really good. My Sennheiser’s are at work, but I’ll probably hold off on comprehensive testing with PCABX and multiple tracks etc. until I get my sound system set up. Feel free to give these tracks a spind and send me an email w/ your thoughts.