Quality Sounds & CD Ripping

We get asked questions, mainly about CD ripping as you'd expect, but also about music in general. Friday's question was about getting the best (or should I say better?) sound quality.

Background - some ripped music, iPod, many un-ripped CDs, getting a new Sonos system. Having tossed this around for a few minutes this was my take. My first step would be to upgrade the speakers. I think Sonos is great, but most of your "investment" is in the hardware that streams your music, with speakers tagged on (unless you have the later single body units). Upgrading to better speakers makes a difference to all your music, instantly. In his position that would be my first step.

Then I'd bite the bullet and be critical about current digital files. As an early adopter of digital home and portable music he has a lot of tracks ripped at 128 Kbps. I don't want to stray into techno-geek territory but with today's hard drives and PCs offering massive storage capacity there's no excuse for highly compressed music. So be critical about what you currently have, dig out the much loved tracks and re-rip at 320 Kbps MP3 or go to one of the lossless formats. Sonos plays Apple Lossless so that would be a solid choice.

New music, rip at higher rates into MP3 or go for Apple Lossless along with a decent set of speakers. Great result.