CD Quality

Hi,

I installed a new Pioneer DEH-2600. My burnt CDs sound worse than the radio. Is this normal? I mean the radio has deeper/longer bass and bassy/any songs on CDs just thump and sound like paper. The songs were burnt from 128kbps MP3s... any input? Thank you.

I like ubershare.com's encoding standard options:

• MP3s MUST be encoded with any of:
  • LAME 3.90.3 (preferred and recommended for new rips)
  • LAME 3.90.2 (OK) or
  • LAME 3.92 (fallback)
  Other MP3 encoders or other versions of LAME MUST NOT be used. The MP3s MUST be encoded with any of the following command lines:
  • "--alt-preset standard" (~200kbps, called APS),
  • "--alt-preset extreme" (~260kbps, called APX) or
  • "--alt-preset insane" (=320kbps, called API, not really worth it).
  These are much better than normal VBR modes, specially optimised in the program code and much higher quality than the ancient --r3mix settings, which MUST NOT be used.
• Alternatively, the free, technically superior (but less universally supported and less seasoned) Ogg Vorbis lossy audio codec MAY be used (Xiph.org libvorbis 1.0 20020717 or the later, recommended version, Xiph.org libvorbis 1.0.1 20030909, using quality (-q) 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10 (Q6, Q7, Q8, Q9, Q10 respectively). (Development and testing versions of Vorbis MUST NOT be used.)
• Alternatively, the FLAC lossless compression format using the "--best" option MAY be used (version 1.1.0 recommended, quality tag FLAC). FLAC gives absolutely perfect quality, but big files (think around 300-400MB per CD, 4 times the size of an APX rip). But it is ideal for those who want to transcode to other formats for their portable, say, those who want to burn CD-DA, or those who desire a perfect archive copy.