General Questions regarding MPC

[samtaylor]

First of all, I just want to say that I have spent the better part of this afternoon and evening researching my predicament here. I'm an audiophile, but by saying that I just mean that I can't stand mp3's at 128kbits/sec. I'm not real technical about these things.

I'm running Xubuntu 8.10, which may be part of my problem 'cause I'm primarily a Windows user. My main PC is at college and I'm at home on this Linux laptop.

To try out MPC, I ripped two CDs (The Legendary Bobby Darin and Moby's Everything Is Wrong) with abcde via this guide. In regards to mppenc, I just used the "--standard" option.

Everything ripped and encoded fine - I was impressed by the short encoding time on this aging Thinkpad - but when I played the files, from both CDs, in both Exaile and Banshee there were noticeable clipping issues - especially with the vocals in the Bobby Darin album.

How can I solve this? I understand that SV8 should not have "internal clipping" issues, but I am trepidacious towards using the SV8 encoder. Will players like Banshee or Exaile be able to play the files produced by SV8?

Thank you very much.