I was wondering which is better. Loose balls or caged balls? If I have a bottom bracket (old-school) that uses a retainer to hold the ball bearings, should I ditch the retainer and just run loose balls?

And what about this n-1 business? What I mean by that is, let's say that after I take out the retainer, I can put more balls into the assembly. Should I fill up as many balls as will ride on the race and then take out 1 ball, hence n-1? Or should I just fit as many balls as possible that will sit evenly on the race?