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

[AJ_23]

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?

 

[thebluenewt]

I've been playing 192kbs perfectly, good album!

 

[Avigrace]

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.

 

[Vanguard]

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?

 

[rcx21000]

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?

 

[Flack]

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