[SirWolfy]

Cap makes an excellent point! Do it right the first time, because converting your music library (whether it's just a few hundred here and there or 10,000+), encoding your music at the proper level of quality is of utmost importance.

Here's the skinny on MP3s; the whole idea of going digital to begin with is so that you eventually replace the need for carrying a boat load of CDs. In order to do this properly, the MP3 must be approximately as good as the CD would be. With that in mind, encoding or downloading any MP3 file at less than 160Kbps is a waste of time. On the other hand, encoding MP3s at anything over 192Kbps is a waste of hard drive space. In other words, CDs are roughly the equivalent of 160 - 192Kbps.

The other thing that Cap hinted at and I would like to reiterate, is the fact that MP3s are only ever as good as the source from which you make them from. Simply put, if you download files at 128Kbps or below, you will eventually find out the hard way that these files do not sound nearly as good as 160 or even 192. On the down side, MP3s are indeed compressed file formats. What this means is that during the encoding process, the sub-harmonics are discarded to save space. So keep those MP3s at CD quality... anything less and they sound like crap!

Oh, and do plan on the process taking you a good amount of time to accomplish. Depending on the computer you are using, the software and the quality level; you have several hundred hours of work ahead of you for 15,000+ songs. This is by far the most time consuming part of going digital. But once you have it done, you never have to do it again as long as you back up your entire music library. The rest is a piece of cake! :tup