ogg ripping without/limited variable bitrate?
 

I have a mp3 player (iRiver IFP-799) which can play 96 kbps as lowest quality in ogg vorbis. I would like to have my music in that quality so I can fit in as much music as possible, but winamp ripps the cd:s in variable bit rate (which generally is good), but it's quite annoying when the variable bitrate causes the bitrate to go under 96 kbps and then the mp3 player can't play that file. Is there a way to make it ripp cd:s at 96 kbps, but "forcing" winamp to not go under 96 kbps? I havn't found such a function yet. Currently I use winamp 5.1, would it change anything if I upgraded? If there is no ssuch function, anyone know whats the lowest bitrate I can use without taking the chance of going under 96 kbps?

You have to use a commandline Vorbis encoder and either rip with Winamp to wav then convert afterwards or use another ripper that can be use with CL encoders.

The command options you have to use are
-b (your target bitrate) --managed -m 96 (input filename) -o (output filename)

Afaik that player also has a maximum limit of 256kbps (or was it 224?) so to be safe you should probably add -M 256 before the filenames.

A full command line for use with EAC and a target bitrate of 128 would be
-b 128 --managed -m 96 -M 256 -a "%a" -t "%t" -l "%g" -d "%y" -N "%n" -G "%m" %s -o %d
(full EAC/Vorbis guide here)

Btw, that mode is about 4 times slower than normal encoding.

ok, thanks!