I have succumbed.......to the gods of MP3 and AAC!
Until now I have resisted ripping my obscenely large CD collection into anything but .wav files for my iPods and burning CD-R's for my car stereos but I recently bought a new car that has a factory Navi/Head Unit with a USB port that accepts a direct iPod connection as well as USB flash drives. The problem is that the unit can only recognize MP3 or AAC files on flash drives. It will play anything on an iPod, but I liked the idea of keeping a 16GB thumb drive in the car with essential driving tunes should I not have my iPod with me. Shortly after I bought the new car, my wifes car stereo began having trouble. It was a factory AM/FM CD changer with no Auxillary input that I was never too fond of to begin with, so I decided to replace it with a Navi/Head unit similar to the one in my new car.After researching what was available, I soon realized that none of units I looked at was capable playing .wav files on an SD card or USB drive unless it was on an iPod. I finally settled on a JVC unit that had a USB and AUX inputs as well as an SD slot. Then I converted a bunch of .wav files to MP3 dropped them on an SD card and popped them in the new unit. Much to my surprise, the tunes I converted did not sound nearly as bad as I had imagined they would. In fact, on a car stereo, they sounded pretty darn good. That coupled with the fact that I don't do my critical listening on the road and the amount of music I could fit on a 32GB SDHC card got me to thinking about how often I actually get to sit down and just listen to music on my main A/V setup. It was then I realized that the majority of my listening was done at work, in the car, or as backround music as I plod through my day. I just don't get to sit down and really listen as often as I used to. I also realized that I have been cheating myself by limiting my ripping to full resolution .wav files which eat up tons of drive space and thus limit what I can actually carry around with me. So I decided that it was time to change. I will always buy my music on CD as long as they exist. I will always seek out the best versions and mastering. I will always buy a Hi Rez release if available. After all, like many of my fellow ICE'rs, I AM an OCD CD collector! But I will also build a database of all my music so that I may be able to enjoy it anywhere I may be. I would have loved to use lossless FLAC, but it gets ZERO support on iPods and Car Audio.
So I ask my fellow ICE'rs, what Lossy format do you use for portability? What in your opinions is the most transparent? AAC (.m4a)? MP3? LAME encoders? Bit Rate? What do you use as a database? iTunes? Media Monkey?

Please share!

320kbps (constant bitrate) MP3 is damn near universal... it should play on every device you throw at it, and under the listening circumstances you describe above it should be virtually indistinguishable from CD.

I use Mediamonkey to both rip and maintain my mp3 library. 320 bitrate is ideal with no noticeable loss of quality without very high-end speakers.

I rip my CDs to iTunes into AAC. Sounds pretty good to me on the go. Hopefully my next car will be like yours and have inputs so I can listen to my IPOD or downloads via a USB stick.
I'm tired of being forced to listen to the same 6 CDs every week.

I do all of my file conversions on Easy CD-DA Extractor 12 and have been very happy with it. I also use the same program for tagging work and various cleanup. Easy CD-DA is not a free program like some others, but it was fairly reasonable as I recall.

My car stereo is an older one, factory installed in 2007, but it does play MP3 CDs well and it's a 6-CD changer. My problem is that I often forget what I have in the changer and with MP3s (always at 320 kbps) there are so many songs that I have a hard time keeping track of what's in the player. I long for the day that I'll be loading things into a car hard drive, preferable via USB flash drives and playing things from a small onboard computer system. I'd also be happy just playing things directly off of a flash drive.

To echo what's been said, in a car, I don't believe you're going to be losing anything at 320 kbps. If I'm using a file for home PC use, I usually rip to flac, but as some have suggested, not everything handles flac. I use MediaMonkey as my flac player.

I'm sticking with CD-Rs, either straight copies or self-made comps, for the car and work, at least for now. I love making comps when I have the time.

I have to admit, though, that the few things I've downloaded from the iTunes store (albums that aren't available on CD and a few random songs) don't sound so bad.

You've convinced me to change my iTunes importing from 192 to 320.

Mr Fuse,

I prefer BonkEnc as a ripper. It's freeware and simple to use, but customisable to your heart's content if you like to fuss with settings:

http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Bo ... 31921845/1

FLAC, or any lossless format, is overkill for portability unless you have superhuman ears. You really won't hear the difference on a portable or in a car. Use LAME V0 (aka the "extreme" setting) to get variable bitrate (VBR) files that are audibly the same as 320, but a little smaller in size and don't drain battery life quite as fast as CBR rips do.

For home listening, rip to FLAC.

The current builds of Winamp, which I'm still loyal to after all these years, do a beautiful job of organising and playing a media library.

Thanks for the replies. Right now I am leaning toward using iTunes as a database and ripping via Exact Audio Copy with the iTunesencode plug-in for AAC with the encoding set to 320 kbs VBR in iTunes. I have tried it and the results have been impressive. There is much debate as to which, AAC or MP3 using the LAME encoder at 320 kbs VBR, is more transparent. But with millions of iPods out there and just about every electronics manufacturer in mobile and home audio supporting them and AAC, which is the newer format of the two, I may have to go with it. iTunes seems to have the edge in embedding artwork and replaygain, as well as the ability to play live albums with out a pause between tracks. I have been getting great info on http://www.hydrogenaudio.org.

The iTunesencode plug-in can be found at http://www.jetshred.com/archive/perfect ... nd-itunes/ . It's freeware.

Not to beat a dead horse, but IMO Mediamonkey is as good as it gets for tagging, organizing, ripping, and playing your music. Rip a CD, tag directly from Amazon, including embedding the album art in the file. iTunes has always been frustrating to me and is too tied into Apples store. Plus I'm always afraid it's going to screw up my files somehow. But if you're already comfortable with iTunes, and familiar with all of it's inner workings, then that's probably the way to go for you.

Sure I HATE lossy downloads as the main way to listen to music, but I use AAC on my iPod for working out, car trips and our gameroom jukebox. It's fine for all that. You can't beat thousands of songs at your fingertips.

...But these go to eleven.

I am a HUGE fan of LAME .mp3 (as opposed to the Fraunhofer .mp3 encoder that's available in iTunes and pretty much everywhere else). It was created by audiophiles to be virtually transparent, and depending on your settings it can be. Takes a bit of tinkering and studying, but for me it's been worth it. My iTunes Library (6500 tracks and counting) are all ripped via LAME .mp3, -V2 setting, which yields an excellent sounding mp3 around ~192k.

In a pinch, though, I go with 320k .mp3 from any encoder.

So far I've done the same as Greg, burned cdr's when I need something different then an RIAA configured cd. I rarely am in the car for more then 6 hours AT MOST, so my 12 cd car case is more then sufficient. I also tend to go back & forth in the car between music, sports talk radio & liberal talk radio.

Liberal talk radio? I wasn't sure that still existed. I miss the old days when talk radio had a mix of opinions, not to mention that most of the hosts were actually local.

In the Seattle area, the local affiliate of the now defunct Air America network has managed to put together a line up of syndicated shows (Ed Shultz, Norman Goldman, Randi Rhodes etc).

I really miss the local host thing. There was a guy here in Pittsburgh who I thought was pretty brilliant. He wasn't shy about stating where he stood on some things, but he wouldn't just gloat if someone called in and agreed with him - he'd turn around and argue the other side with pretty much just as much passion as his position. Excellent interviewer, too - and he was particularly dismissive of Larry King's "I'm not going to read the book" attitude, although he admitted that he was envious of what King had accomplished. About the only local talk shows now are sports, and most of the hosts are brutal in my past experience. I haven't listened to most of the current shows - because, let's be honest, how many times can I listen to someone discuss whether the Steelers should have run on third and two instead of passed because someone saw Roethlisberger at a Denny's and he dropped a fork.

Although I used to love to listen to the shows after a Steelers loss, if only because it made the Monday morning commute seem surprisingly pleasant because the bridges weren't clogged with jumpers like most of the callers' tones suggested.

Alan

In the early 2000's we had 1 local liberal host at night on a local conservative talk station (that is now sports) KIRO-AM. His name was Mike Webb. he was brilliant, & gave many of us hope who were terrified of the "Patriot" act in 2001.

He was murdered under very shady circumstances, after an equally shady court case accusing him of insurance fraud.

I just realized this may be a record for drifting off topic, even for Ice!

Too bad you didn't back him up to a CD-R first.

There! Back on topic.

i recently lost my iPod and replaced it with a Sony Walkman.
i still maintain and rip to my iTunes library but use WinAmp to
transfer to the Walkman as it recognizes AAC.