Sync, Auto Convert Suggested Settings?

[Boy_Narf]

Hello Everyone!

My library is getting on the large side and to avoid having to buy a new phone I'm considering setting auto convert/compression during sync. I have nearly 100GB of music in 320kbps from Bandcamp. I know it's bad to convert from MP3 to MP3, so I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions on settings/quality to lower the file size during sync but not absolutely crush the quality.

I know the right answer is redownloading all of the music at a lower bitrate but that would probably take weeks.

Thanks,

[Ludek]

Probably depends on size of your phone/device ?
i.e. to make a compromise between how much to degrade the quality versus the available space.
Personally I suppose that something like 160 kbps with VBR could be still OK, though it is very subjective

Audiofill would tell you that even 320 kbps is no go to listen and you need to use loseless quality

[Boy_Narf]

Hey thanks for the reply. I think my concern is further compressing 320kbps mp3's. I tried to do a big sync and auto convert to 192kbps, but it crashed part way through so I just synced up my standard quality library again. I'll worry about it when I'm truly out of space. 30GB to go

Thanks for your time.

[Lowlander]

192kbps VBR MP3 is good enough for most people. It will depend on what you're using to listen to the music as well. Some cheap headphones can get away with lower quality files (as the headphones lower the audio quality), whereas with high end headphones you may need better quality files to not notice the loss of quality. It also depends on your ears.

So you can always create various copies at varying quality and compare them. This works best if you play them randomly without knowing which is playing (take out bias) and only look once you're well into playback to confirm what quality was playing.

You can also create Random AutoPlaylists to be Synced with a sub-set of your Library. This way you can get higher quality files and then occasionally re-sync to get a different set of files. If this works for you depends on how you select files to play.

[Boy_Narf]

Hey thanks,

I think my question was more around what compression should I select when starting with a 320kbps. I have no issue with 192kbps when compressing from CD, but I do know starting with a lower quality MP3 is much different.

Good idea on the random auto playlist I just spotted that yesterday (throw back to my ipod shuffle days). It would be cool if I could have scripts run every night and resync a subset of songs automatically while I was sleeping. Not sure if it's worth setting up a server for just syncing my music but still a cool option to have.

I think I'll keep the music high quality until I rip through the rest of my storage (50gb to go). Once I get there I'll look for a 512 phone, something with an SD card slot, or do the random syncing until it's time for the next phone upgrade. I have upgraded a very old iPod video to 250GB, but it's really starting to slow down. I'm love a filthy shuffle and I think the 20k tracks is hitting the ram limitations of the device.

I might try the auto convert on sync again in the future after MM5 has matured a bit more. Auto convert to 192 seems to save around 25% per song but crashed the few times I tested it out.

It's been a long time since I had my full library in my pocket and I forgot how much I missed it. So many great memories associated with my old albums.

Not sure if it's even possible but it would be cool to have an on device library compression option avaliable for MMA. I would have no issue waiting a few seconds for MM to unpack/decompress files while listening if it meant I could shrink my on device library.

[Lowlander]

Please capture the conversion crashing in a debug log (step 4b) and attach the log to a Support Ticket: viewtopic.php?f=30&t=86643

This will help a developer analyze why this happens in your setup.

[Boy_Narf]

Will do next time I attempt.