Mp3 - 128kbps... I'm confused!?!


AJ_23

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The other day I saw someone mention that you can only play mp3's on the GP32 if they are 128kbps.

I thought nothing of it - until I sat on the bus and started listening to the White Stripes new album (which I had transfered to my GP32 that morning), it struck me - my ripping software is set to 160kbps... but my GP is playing these file without a hitch...

Then I went home and checked the bitrate of other mp3's I've played on it and not one of them was below 160kbps, including the very first one (and thing) I put on my SMC to test it out - which was 192Kbps, and again - played perfectly.

So - have I missed something (and doomed my GP32 to premature death somehow), or is the 128kbps a myth?
 
Doesn't go lower than 128 I believe, if you listen to audio books they tend to be encoded at a low bitrate as they are spoken and mono.
 
Don't worry, you're not going to break the GP32 by playing higher bitrate MP3s.

My guess is that they just didn't fully test MP3s at other bitrates, so they just made a remark in the manual that you can only play 128kb/s mp3s.

I play high-bitrate files all the time, they work well.

I have yet to try playing any low-bitrate files yet, but I have heard that they play at funny speeds.

I don't think I've gotten any variable-rate mp3s to play on the GP32. Has anyone else had any luck with this?
 
Is there something like a "up-coder" which makes the file have more birate (I know it won't have any better quality) so I can get any MP3 and encode it >128 so it works on GP32?
 
You can always reencode MP3 files. In fact, most of those programs (like AudioCatalyst, for example) allow you to encode from one MP3 to another -- that way, you don't have to dump the original to a WAV file first.

Flack
 
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