But I'm concerned that quality(or lack of quality) will be an issue when played in my new mp3 player. I'm considering re-encoding using EAC, but at a lower bitrate, possibly 192. Would I regret doing so when it comes to quality or could 192 using EAC actually be better than 320 using only WMP. I understand that I'm probably just gonna have to encode some and see with my own ears, but I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with my situation.

Thanks

"Garbage in, garbage out", meaning that the 192 cannot possibly sound any better than the 320. In fact it can only get worse.

But 192 and 320 are pretty high bitrates so the difference will probably not be noticeable. Personally, in this situation I would say "quality be damned!" and use 128 instead of 192 for convenience... or else I'd use the CD's to make the new MP3's.

What is the capacity of your new player? If it is 512M or 1G, then use the lower bit rates. If you are lucky enough to have an 8G or 30-80G player, then by all means use 224-320 VBR. You can hear the difference if you listen carefully, but it is all a trade off between quality and capacity - my son and I can easily hear a difference between 128 and 160. Also, if you have an IPOD: My son is showing me how the I-TUNES program works. I have seen that it is very efficient (fast) at importing CD data and doing the MP3 conversion. You might want to try it instead of EAC. regards, gamma1

iTunes is fast for a reason: Its not as reliable as EAC and its MP3 conversion is not as high-quality as LAME.

My player is the new IPOD shuffle. It's only 1gb so at the 320 rate, I can get about 7 cd's or so on it. The question I was asking was should I rip all of my cd's again to 192 with EAC and would it be better than the quality that windows media player puts out at 320. I have actually done the on the fly conversion within the I-tunes program that turns the mp3s into 128aac files. It's not too bad, just not as clear as the original.

Well if the input is from in a lossy format such as MP3, Ogg, WMA (not the lossless one) the output to AAC or whatever will be worse than the input. So I would recommend to rip your music direct from CD to AAC or whatever your Ipod can play back.

I think you should try as low as 160 vbr. Try different programs and bit rates, listen and compare, and trust your ears.

I personally just take less albums around on my 1Gb mp3 player, rather than sacrifice the quality. But I am quite picky about how my music sounds, so it's really down to each individual what they do.