compressing audio files for storage on USB flash drive

I've recently begun the construction of my Grateful Dead Concert Library. Thanks to AuggieDoggie's help, I'm able to get the top-quality soundboards I want downloaded and into Itunes and burnt to disk. Here's where I'm searching for what to do next. You see, I'm all about the hard copy - the cd for my ride or the boombox on the job. I DON'T IPOD ! I think it's disrespectful to the Artist how society cuts to the chase - only picking out the shiny singles with total disregard to Album construction, story, feel, message etc... But more about that somewhere else. MY REAL QUERY(S) are about compressing the audio files I don't really need in my library once I got the disk. What exactly is compression ? Should I do this for storing files on a flash drive ? Is the quality of the file changed in any way by the compression and future expansion ? Does it allow for significantly more files to be stored on a flash drive ? And what's the best or easiest way to accomplish this task ?

 

Those audio files on your CDs are compressed only slightly. When you encode to .MP3 for use on an iPod, or other players, the files are encoded about 10x more, and the quality is 99% as good. For example, 70 minutes of audio on an AUDIO CD takes up about 700 MB of space. The same audio, when encoded by iTunes, to the .MP3 format, will take up, maybe 70 MB, on the average, depending on the compression ration you specify in the bitrate settings.

 

Generally speaking, the higher the bit rate, the higher quality the sound. I'm more of a video guy vs. an audio guy, but from what I know, 128kbps is standard CD quality sound. MP3 compression can use the same bit rate, but the file will be much smaller than an audio file straight from a CD. People say OGG and/or FLAC compression formats are better audio quality, and they have higher bit rates. I'm not sure if of this will help, but here's some links to some audio 'how to' guides:
http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/rip_cds_with_exact_audio_copy.cfm
http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/normalize_mp3_audio_volume.cfm
http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/exact_audio_copy_installation_and_configuration.cfm
http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/how_to_convert_flac_files_to_mp3.cfm
http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/convert_shn_to_mp3.cfm
http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/convert_ogg_to_mp3.cfm
http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/convert_aac_m4a_to_mp3.cfm
In case you didn't notice, all the links are to afterdawn, a web site devoted to all things multimedia from CD recording and ripping, to Ipod/iPhone stuff, to PSP and PS3 stuff, DVD authoring and ripping, and MUCH more. They also have a VERY helpful glossary (link) that you can use for definitions of terms you might not understand. GOOD LUCK! I hope I helped, at least a little bit!

(BTW- as a DeadHead myself -having attended over 150 shows- I'd be interested in a possible list of any shows you might have recordings of)