I was about throw myself into Mixmeister Studio 7.2 & have untold fun (that’s the idea) with this fantastic product. However I have dilemma which file format to use?

Over the last year I have been painstakingly converting my 850 vinyl record collection to 1300 wav files in raw form (i.e not using clean, enhance etc on Easy Media Creator). I’ve also all spent a quite a bit of time ripping CD tracks from my collection (over 5000 tracks) to my hardrive in preparation to have everything in ‘one place’.

The snag is my hardrive on my laptop is only 60 gig (51 gig in reality). Due my hardrive size restraints I have ripped everything to mp3 at 128kbps (spent ages tagging lots of info) & backed up the vinyl wav files to DVD.

It has only hit home to me how disappointing the sound quality is using 128kbps when playing back general tracks (even worse on a couple of trial MM7 mixes) in the car using my SD memory card or playing back through my home audio equipment.

The million dollar question is… Would I be best to A) Purchase an external hardrive with colossal storage (1Tb) & rip my saved vinyl wav files from DVD & re-rip all my CD’s as well to wav format? B) Purchase a smaller external drive & convert everything to mp3 at 320kbps? Also, should I try to ‘clean’ the vinyl wav files?

At the end of the day, I think I’ll have to spend a bit (a lot) more time getting it right on the vinyl/CD collection front. However your thoughts would be greatly appreciated on your experience of using wav or mp3 320kbps to mix with on MM7 or mixmeister products in general.

Apologies for such an epic post for my first one!

Recently, I would've said get the 1T external HD and go with wav files, but someone on the forum noted recently that, of course, wav files can't be tagged ... though it is a small thing, mmRadio is our own and we love it, and encourage new mixers to submit sets they have created using MM ... however, all tracks in a set must be properly tagged for the upload to the radio station to work properly ... so if showing off your skills on mmRadio is part of your future plans, then I can't recommend wav files. In that event, I'd say rip to the highest bitrate mp3 (e.g., 320).

Even though you might end up ripping to mp3, I would still get the 1T storage, if it suits your budget ... it is in the nature of things that you would eventually fill it up....

As for whether you should declick or otherwise clean up the vinyl conversions, you are the best one to decide ... you know how good or bad condition your vinyl is in and, ultimately, you have to satisfy yourself.

HTH

And welcome to the MixMeister Community!

Thanks for your thoughts on this MadameFLY. As long as the quality is there (Did somebody shout flac ) I will be leaning towards the 320 mp3 bitrate, as all my recent additions (& any future additions) of new music have been digital downloads - Trips to the specialist record store do seem a lifetime away now!

Tagging is important to me, and uploading a few mixes in the future to this great site is very appealing.

My recommendation would be a little different. I use an external hard drive, but solely as a backup for use with my Cortex controller. What I would recommend would be to get a new internal hard drive for the laptop, which you can get here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136114
This way you have less to worry about. The drive is only 160GB, but that's where the next part comes in.

From my experience, the encoder that's used is just as important as the bitrate that you encode at. I have ripped MP3's at 128kbps using the LAME encoder at the highest quality, slowest encode possible. It sounded just as good as a fast encode on a 256kbps bitrate. My 192kbps, slow encodes sound as good as average 320kbps encodes. I use the LAME encoder with Nero, but any frontend to LAME is my personal favorite. Fraunhofer works very well too.

Try doing an encode or two with a LAME encoder like this one:
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/lamefe.html
...at 192kbps with the highest quality encode and see how you like the sound. You may be surprised.

Joey

Thanks for the tip Joey. I've just downloaded the Lame encoder & will try this later.

I'm a bit reluctant to invest under the cover of my near 3 yr old Toshiba Qosmio laptop, as I could really do with upgrading not just my hardrive but my memory (512k), operating system to Vista...