arstechnica
01-20-2005, 11:08 AM
As some of you old-school readers might remember, Ars did an MP3-encoding writeup back in the beginning of 2000. Audio technologies have progressed since then, and it's high time that the old guide was updated. Well, rather than update it, this one is more of a replacement: the old guide will probably be kept around; it's cool to look back and see where we've come from. Fraunhofer used to be king, but I wouldn't touch it now with a ten-foot pole. It would be a step back technologically. Alas, I am getting ahead of myself.
This article is meant to help both newbies and others. As with some of the other Ask Ars writeups, this one started off small and became a behemoth. Well, there's a good reason for this: there's simply so much information on ripping and encoding audio CDs, that to do the topic justice requires more than a quick one page tip of the hat. I have attempted, however, to cut through the BS for the newbies who don't care about alternative audio formats and bitrate charts and other such complexities. For them, there is the Quick and Dirty Guide. The instructions contained therein will satisfy the majority of casual music listeners, without boring them to tears with details.{br}{br}View the Entire Article (http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/encoding.ars){br}
This article is meant to help both newbies and others. As with some of the other Ask Ars writeups, this one started off small and became a behemoth. Well, there's a good reason for this: there's simply so much information on ripping and encoding audio CDs, that to do the topic justice requires more than a quick one page tip of the hat. I have attempted, however, to cut through the BS for the newbies who don't care about alternative audio formats and bitrate charts and other such complexities. For them, there is the Quick and Dirty Guide. The instructions contained therein will satisfy the majority of casual music listeners, without boring them to tears with details.{br}{br}View the Entire Article (http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/encoding.ars){br}