Joint Stereo vs. Normal Stereo

[Ana]

I was going to rip cds to my computer but there is to many settings to choose from I need some help what I want is the best sound I can get without the file being to big.

The program I'm going to use is Winamp Pro 5

This is all the setting I can set

[cibomatto2002]

CDS are stereo so just stick with stereo.

These settings look good use them.

[Jale]

Joint stereo

The term joint stereo has become prominent as the Internet has allowed for the transfer of relatively low bit rate, acceptable-quality audio with modest Internet access speeds. Joint stereo refers to any number of encoding techniques used for this purpose. Two forms are described here, both of which are implemented in various ways with different codecs, such as MP3, AAC and Ogg Vorbis.[1]
[edit] Intensity stereo coding

This form of joint stereo uses a technique known as joint frequency encoding, which functions on the principle of sound localization. Human hearing is predominantly less acute at perceiving the direction of certain audio frequencies. By exploiting this 'limitation', intensity stereo coding can reduce the data rate of an audio stream with little or no perceived change in apparent quality.

More specifically, the dominance of inter-aural time differences (ITD) for sound localization by humans is only given for lower frequencies. That leaves inter-aural amplitude differences (IAD) as the dominant location indicator for higher frequencies. The idea of intensity stereo coding is to merge the upper spectrum into just one channel (thus reducing overall differences between channels) and to transmit a little side information about how to pan certain frequency regions to recover the IAD cues.

This type of coding does not perfectly reconstruct the original audio because of the loss of information which results in the simplification of the stereo image. It can produce unwanted artifacts that affect this image to a perceivable extent. However, for very low bitrates this tool usually provides a gain of perceived quality.

It is supported by many audio compression formats (including MP3, AAC and Vorbis) but not always by every encoder.

Basically, it let's you encode a stereo MP3 file more efficiently, meaning high quality at lower bitrate.

[Ana]

Ok I see now that would explain why I can make Ogg files at a small bit rate and still sound good.

Thanks !!!

[Zach]

Just make sure you don't choose MP3.

Use AAC-LC (unless you know it will always be played on a device that can support the HE profile)
or use OGG.

Personally I'm a big fan of just ripping to FLAC, and then managing your library with an application meant to do that. Most of them support options to convert on the fly when you sync with a portable. So my FLAC's just convert to VBR MP3 if I want to have something to play on my iPod

[gamesboy]

Mp3 is not lossless.
You should use flac, monkey audio or something like this if you want to be a pro.
On normal cheap desktop speakers - Joint Stereo is fine.
I you have something like Hi-fi - you must forget about the word mp3.