I rip music from my CD's to listen to them on my PSP and I wonder if it should matter what Bit Rate I rip them. I use Windows Media Player and there are 48 Kbps (lowest size), 128 Kbps (default), and 192 Kbps (Best Quality). Here is where my question comes in, I've listen to the song "Somnia Memorias (Platinum Edition)" and I could hear the lyrics perfectly but when I hear it some where else like YouTube I could barely hear them. The thing is I don't know what the Bit Rate is because it's a m4a file and it doesn't tell me the Bit Rate no matter what I do. What is the bit rate of m4a files? What is the bit rate to match CD quality?
The lower the bit-rate, the more compressed the song is. This adds distortion, and means that there's a smaller difference between the highest and lowest volume in the track. The reason you can't hear the lyrics on youtube is probably because the upload was bad. In my opinion, 128 Kbps is fine, but if you're ripping directly from a CD, I would suggest going as high as you can because CD quality is normally .wav quality, which is uncompressed, and which is why it sounds so well. 192kpbs is a good bitrate, while 320kbps would be near-CD quality. Use this program: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
