How good is AC3?

[DiablosuX102]

i've got a collections of mp3's that are all around 160kbps and would like to convert them all into ac3 and fit on one dvd. as they are if i made a data dvd with all the mp3's it would fill it to the rim with no room to spare, so since i have the space crunch could i convert them all to ac3, keep the same size of each, and maintain quality? if not, whats the ratio of quality with mp3/ac3?(just an estimate).

any suggestions will help

josh

[SaSi]

Putting songs in AC3 audio format on a DVD is not really a good idea. There are already several DVD players that can play MP3 out of a DVD and most PC media players will play MP3 bit not all will play AC3 (unless you have special codecs and splitters that once you install you may find they are messing with the rest of the codecs on your system).

The above is not to say AC3 is bad, just that s/w related to AC3 is rubbish most of the time.

Comparing AC3 to MP3, I've read assesments that 192kbps encoded MP3 files are almost equal to 128kbps encoded AC3 files.

AC3 is a more modern specification and is bound to be better.

However, encoding to Variable Bitrate MP3 with a setting that ranges bitrate between 96kbps and 192kbps with a modern MP3 encoder, will give you excellent results with an average bitrate close to 150kbps or less - depending on the material.

[Gazorgan]

Don't bother converting mp3's to AC3, you have already lost too much. That is to say you should work with the original Music CD and convert that to AC3 (192K is pretty good, unless you have all Bose speakers you won't be able to tell).

[DiablosuX102]

well, our dvd player is like 5 years old so it doesn't support mp3 =/. I have like 1000 mp3's so most the cd's they originated from are long gone =/ i'm not too much of a quality fanatic, but i guess i'll just wait till we get a new dvd player that supports mp3.

thanks for ur help, josh