MP3 questions

[Gomar]

MP3 newbie here. I've downloaded a few rippers. What I was looking for is one that
not only rips to WAV but does WAV->MP3 conversion from the hd. Thus, I can have a back-up copy of the original, and burn MP3s to CD-Rs, without having to rip to MP3 from the CD. Is it even worthit if MP3 is set to highest quality?

Am confused about a few things.

A) what is a VBR header? Why is 0 highest quality?
The VBR bitrate should be 0 as well or 320?

should I use ABR, MTRH instead?

B)Sample rate is set at 44100(CD quality), but isnt 48000 even better? If not, why is it there?
bitrate is set to 320kbit as I want highest quality; MP3 file size is small enough for me.

C)what is CRC-checksum?

 

[phide]

It seems like you're asking some program- or encoder-specific questions, and I'm not familiar with the program or encoder. To start backwards (sort of):

A) A VBR header is like any other header -- it defines what the audio is and where it is. You don't need to worry about the VBR header and what it is nor what it does, however. "0" quality is probably a VBR profile (LAME -V0?), meaning it yields a certain average bit rate, but I don't know what. If it's LAME we're talking about here, V0 is indeed the highest quality VBR profile, producing about 245kbps on average.

No, don't use CBR or ABR unless your hardware demands it. Use VBR wherever possible for greater efficiency (quality per kilobyte).

B) The sample rate should be set to 44,100 kHz if it's CD audio, since that's the sample rate that matches CD audio. This is a program-specific setting that may not really make a difference -- I don't know what program you're using; I don't know what it does or doesn't do specifically.

320kbps is the highest quality you can get with MP3, but that's CBR, not VBR. 320kbps is touted as "archive quality", but the efficiency is low, if that matters to you.

C) A CRC checksum is basically like any other checksum. If you have two matching checksums, you most likely have two identical files. If they don't match, the two files are different. Fairly simple.

Now, if you want the best rippers for Windows, you want EAC or dBPoweramp. The way EAC does MP3 encoding is by ripping to a temporary WAV file, running an external MP3 encoder (preferably LAME 3.97 or 3.98r2) and then deleting the original WAV. All you'd do is simply set the preference to not delete the WAV file and, voila, you have your WAVs and MP3s. dBpoweramp has a similar function, and it's also about ten times easier to use than EAC (which can take half a day to get configured right if you don't know what you're doing), but it's also not free.

Various info at Hydrogenaudio:
EAC and LAME
EAC, which you can use as a springboard to configuring EAC and other encoders.

 

[Nighted]

Rip your CD's using Exact Audio Copy in secure mode ONLY! Find a guide and take the time to properly set Exact Audio Copy up with your disc drive. NEVER, NEVER EVER USE BURST MODE OR OTHER FAST RIPPING METHODS.

Get EAC and learn how to set it up properly if you care about the quality of your rips. If you have 100's of CDs and do not want to end up ripping all of them again, please take the time to learn how to use it.