I care alot about quality, but use lossy formats for my portable like alot of people.  So what I do is convert EVERYTHING to flac format (non lossy compressed) for my computer.  These can play in winamp with a plugin.  If you don't have the space for lossless files, my lossy codec of choise is Vorbis aoTuV b2 (A special type of ogg) at 160 kbps.  It sounds much better than standard ogg, better than musepack or aac too most of the time.  It also takes like 8x less space than flac.  Here is the link for the aoTuV encoder: link

Also here is what I use to convert everything to flac and ogg:link

And I would like to disagree with the poster above about how encoding at high bitrates is pointless.  Many people, myself included can differentiate between different codecs at high bitrates in blind tests.  I could tell you if it's a 320 kb vorbis, musepack, or mp3 compared to a raw flac.  Seriously, alot of people find 320 kbps mp3 unlistenable. (very picky audiophiles)  You can hear the noise reduction with aoTuV oggs at that bitrate - the poor frequency conversion with the mpc's and the high frequency rolloff with mp3's.
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8. Any statement about sound quality must be supported by the author responsible for such statements by a double blind listening test demonstrating that he can hear a difference, together with a test sample.
Graphs, non-blind listening tests, subtracting two files and so on are definetely not considered as valid evidences of sound quality.

Hydrogenaudio is supposed to be an objectively minded community that relies on double-blind testing and relevant methods of comparison in discussion about sound quality. The usual "audiophile" speak of non-audio related terms which are completely subjective and open to redefinition on a whim, are useless for any sort of progression in discussion.

This rule is the very core of Hydrogenaudio, so it is very important that you follow it.

Here is a discussion explaining why
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=11442

You can read how to easily perform double blind listening tests here :
http://doc.hydrogenaudio.org/wikis/hydrogenaudio/ABX

Seriously, a lot of people find 320 kbps mp3 unlistenable. (very picky audiophiles)
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Seriously, a lot of people find 320 kbps mp3 unlistenable. (very picky audiophiles)
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I find it hard to take this kind of statement seriously. First it is suggested that there are a lot of people with such hearing capabilities, only to say, right after, that they are actually a (presumably) small group of very picky audiophiles (and it isn't necessary any more to digress about the behavior of such people).

It is this kind of ambiguous thinking that leads people to say non-sense about audio coding, and to disrupt the serious work by codec developers.
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