Favorite iTunes settings for encoding?

[filmcutter]

As I am in the process of encoding my CD collection for storage on a nice, fat firewire drive, I was wondering what your favorite settings are for encoding MP3s.

Looking for the best quality vs. size compromise. Do you VBR??

Just a wonderin'

[Backtothemac]

To me quality is more important than size. If I had the room I would use 320KBS for everything, but I dont' so I go with 256. That is very good sound. I use VBR sometimes, but not very often.

[King Cobra]

This is kind of like my earlier thread on music.

Again, I like 192Kbps, since 128Kbps is crap and anything above 192Kbps is barely detectable for me in how much better the music sounds. Plus, the file size becomes too big.

No, I do not use VBR.

[Rower_CPU]

Anything from 160 to 192kbps + VBR will give you great sound and good file size.

[blackpeter]

192 seems good enough for my untrained ears.

[alex_ant]

If you care about quality, don't use iTunes' built-in encoder. It is a several-year-old relic inherited from SoundJam that is generally said to produce crap-sounding files. The only good things about are that it's convenient and it encodes quickly. I would recommend searching VersionTracker for the iTunes-LAME Encoder, an AppleScript iTunes plugin that replaces the functionality of the built-in iTunes encoder.

Alex

[filmcutter]

any thoughts on Audion as compared to iTunes (or any others)??