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Ripping CDs

post #1 of 5
1/20/05 at 4:05pm
Thread Starter 
I seem to notice alot more artifacts on 128K MP3s over 128K AAC. In general, is AAC better per bit than MP3?

What's your format of choice for ripping digital music? At what bitrate? Also, please provide info on your source and headphone setup.
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post #2 of 5
1/20/05 at 5:09pm
Quote:
In general, is AAC better per bit than MP3?
Yes

Quote:
What's your format of choice for ripping digital music?
EAC/LAME -alt preset standard for sharing and everyday listening. FLAC for archiving.

Quote:
Also, please provide info on your source and headphone setup.
It's in my profile.

There is a great article about ripping and encoding here

My advice is to rip everything to a lossless format. Hard drive space is cheap and getting cheaper, you can transcode to any other format without loss of quality and you will have a perfect copy of the CD. Having said that, -alt preset standard is very, very good (I can't tell the difference between APS and lossless in a blind test).

Never use 128k MP3s, there are obvious artifacts and APS is only around 50% bigger. Other formats like AAC, Ogg and MPC are probably better than MP3 at lower bitrates, but are not as widely supported. For the average person, you are probably better just sticking with MP3 or lossless IMO.
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post #3 of 5
1/21/05 at 10:48am
AAC will indeed sound better than MP3 at the same bitrates. Most people here would recommend 192 AAC as a minimum and seem to prefer 224 or 256. If you're encoding to AAC just stick with iTunes. It's simple and very good at what it does. Just make sure to turn on error correction.

I encode using iTunes at 320 AAC. I'm using a Sik Din out to a Gilmore Lite + PSU, a Zu Interconnect and Grado 225s.

However, you should do your own listening test with your own equipment. Pick a few well recorded songs, rip them at different bit rates, rename them as "Song 192", "Song 256", etc. and synch to your iPod. You can check the file sizes in Windows Explorer and see what quality/size works best for you.
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post #4 of 5
1/21/05 at 6:39pm
"However, you should do your own listening test with your own equipment. Pick a few well recorded songs, rip them at different bit rates, rename them as "Song 192", "Song 256", etc. and synch to your iPod."

Or get a friend to do it and label them as Song A and Song B, and have only the friend know which is 192 and which is 256...*then* see what happens...
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post #5 of 5
1/21/05 at 6:51pm
EAC - period. Does wonders with older, less-than-well cared for cds, if you let it run its course (overnight and into the next day has happened, but be clear that's for damaged discs). I recommend if you use EAC, make sure you let the program calibrate and adjust for head offset.

Additionally, I second the comment that hard drive space is cheap. However, there still are limits to how much you can put on a couple drives, esp. if you have a collection of over 2,000 cds as well as "anonymously contributed source material".
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