"Steven Sullivan" wrote in message
...
In rec.audio.pro Jon J. Yeager wrote:
"Jeff Richardson" wrote in message
oups.com...

Nero should work. Add the files one by one though, in the order that
you want them, then burn. I think it's when you select all at once
they
go alphabetical. I like 128 kbps anything under has a low bit sound
and
everything over sounds compressed to me (lack of treble registers)...
to me anyway.

You noticed that too?

So I'm *not* crazy, then? 128k sounds clearer than anything above it that
I've tried, which makes no sense to me.

Depends on that encoder you used, and what music you're encoding. Theres'
no
way 128 should sound *intrinsically* more 'compressed' or attenuated in
the treble bands than =128.

Try the free LAME 3.9x encoder , using --alt preset standard (that's VRB,
~192 kpbs
avg) setting

see
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...howtopic=28124


I was unable to ABX a variety of such MP3s (rock, jazz, classical) from
their
source .wavs.

One of the few advantages of being old and having poor high frequency
hearing is that you can get along with a thoroughly compressed sound file.
I used to use mp3 at 128kb/s. As my hearing got worse, I could get by with
64kb/s, which occupies half the space of 128kb/s. Lately, I've been
experimenting with wma VBR with quality setting 10. I don't know what the
10 means, but the compression ratio gets as high as 53:1 when coding certain
piano recordings, and gets to about 35:1 with more complex sounds.

I just encoded Iberia, from the new Hamelin CD. The original CDDA file was
840MB. The compressed version is only 16MB, a reduction of 53:1 from the
original, and I can't tell the difference by listening alone! Admittedly,
this is an extreme case. Orchestral recordings with a lot of percussion
compress to about 26:1.