Bitrate, Format and Stereo

Hi there

as all my music comes from CD's from which I ripped the songs I'd like to know what you say is the best format and bitrate or quality settings for optimal music-quality. Are there differences which program I use or what encoder?

Another more subjective question: I'm lookin for songs that use the stereo functionality to such an extend that even people like me hear it. I know it's done in quite a lot of rock songs. One song that has the criteria I'm looking for is "ready or not" by Fugees.

(n)ever heard of google?

I already googled both questions nd didn't get quite usefull answers.
The quality questions seems to be so subjectivly answered that everyone gives another opinion nd I don't get anything out of it.

But then I came to think and searched in the forum and TADAA:

.flac? What is this?

That kinda gave me the answer I wanted.

For the second question I just get non related answers. German google is too small to provide anything usefull and my searchwords for english didnt seem to be the right ones.

Yeah use EAC+FLAC for lossless and then convert it "on the fly" with dbpoweramp...using the simple right click option.

If I had more CD's+750GB Hard Drive then thats how I would do it.

Hi, check this site with listening tests. (left column under 'ratings')
http://www.soundexpert.info/index.htm

Overall, the best quality is aac+ (aacPlus, aac v2, aac HE, all the same).
The problem is that not many players (hardware and software) can play this format (yet?).

Because mp3 is still the most common and I am not an audio die-hard I use mp3. Also see this site: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index....commended_LAME

I rip my cd's to mp3 (LAME), 172 to 192 kbps, VBR. (vbr 3 - new)
To do so I use this freeware program; http://www.audiograbber.de/ with these settings;