[krmathis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by iriverdude /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think it's time you bought a product that's more open.

Or encode straight to ALAC using iTunesEncode, from within EAC.

 

[scompton]

Quote:

Originally Posted by krmathis /img/forum/go_quote.gif Or encode straight to ALAC using iTunesEncode, from within EAC.

The problem with that is that it uses iTunes to convert from WAV to ALAC. If the OP is having problems with the iTunes encoder, this won't work.

This also made me remember problems I was having similar to the OP. I was using EAC and iTunesEncode and if I was doing anything else on the PC, I'd get crappy rips. This was with iTunes 8 on an old 6 or 7 year old PC.

 

[nwkid178]

Quote:

Originally Posted by krmathis /img/forum/go_quote.gif Or encode straight to ALAC using iTunesEncode, from within EAC.

I had never even heard of this.. shows how junior I am I guess. That seems like it could solve any error iTunes has. As I stated earlier, when I rip using any other program and then use iTunes to convert to ALAC I have no problems, only notice when I am ripping directly from source to ALAC in iTunes that there is a slight skipping periodically throughout songs.. I wish I had posted about this earlier.. I am not too thrilled about re-ripping over 1000 cd's. Oh well live and learn. Then I would still get to use EAC which I love for ripping... I mostly only use dbPoweramp for batch conversions.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nwkid178 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hmm I noticed that there are a lot of J River Media Center fanboys here at head fi who actually prefer it over foobar. Maybe II will look into this, encoding on the fly sounds nice, does Foobar even do that? I will read into it more, I also am not crazy about "buying" any software.

J River Media Center has better song/album management and organization than Foobar. J River is based on a database. Foobar is more based on file and directory structure. If you're managing a library of over 1000 CDs you'll find J River to be well worth the money. Being able to type in a few keywords and find what you're looking for is well worth it. Changing views and displaying everything by genre or any other field or combination of fields is just a different database query. Very flexible.

A big feature for me in J River, besides the organization, is how it does gapless playback. It does gapless well and is flexible about it. That is critical for me since I like classical music and other types of music that need proper gapless playback. Foobar also does proper gapless playback. Both do proper gapless playback for both LAME encoded MP3 and FLAC and other formats.

MediaMonkey is also worth looking at. It has better iPod support. It is also based on the database idea for organizing and managing. MediaMonkey is based on the WinAmp playback engine. Last time I tried it (about 1.5 years ago) it didn't do gapless playback to my satisfaction. Its gapless playback may be better now. Otherwise it's a worthy player and media manager to consider.

 

[Duperman]

Hehe Ispent the last few days converting couple hundreds worth of flac albums to alac. Perhaps it's counter-intuitive to go from a free format to apple's proprietary, but whatever, I got a new ipod classic and its kinda nice carrying it around. I also really like itunes. I suppose I could always reconvert back to flac in the future if I have to, i don't really know where apple's going with its toy.

 

[nwkid178]

so I got J River and am currently in the process of learnin the ropes My initial take aways:
* J River is as visually appealing as iTunes, a plus over foobar imo...

*currently re assigning cover art- this is a huge PITA!!! I have read about how itunes doesn't properly tag files rather indexes them within it's own file structure for use of referencing and keeping the library fast, but this was ridiculous I have spent 6 hours so far and am not even half way through my library!

* I dunno if J River rips to ALAC, I'm guessing no, so I will still be using EAC--->dbPoweramp

*I have yet to see how fluid it is with my ipod classic, still messin with settings etc, my goal: uninstall foobar and iTunes!

But.. back to the op: after doing extensive reading here on head fi and testing on several of my friends/co-workers rigs, I have determined that iTunes is only an acceptable means for ripping cd's if:

1.You have sufficient memory/cpu (older computer/laptops had skips in songs)

2.You check the option for itunes to use error correction

3. You're cd is in good shape, if there are excessive scratches iTunes will not handle it very well, AFAIK there is now way to slow down your drive while ripping in iTunes like EAC, so overall I have decided to stay clear of iTunes as a ripper.

iTunes seems to convert any lossless file format to ALAC perfectly however, but in comparison to all the other programs mentioned by others here, that is not enough!

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nwkid178 /img/forum/go_quote.gif so I got J River and am currently in the process of learnin the ropes My initial take aways: * J River is as visually appealing as iTunes, a plus over foobar imo... *currently re assigning cover art- this is a huge PITA!!! I have read about how itunes doesn't properly tag files rather indexes them within it's own file structure for use of referencing and keeping the library fast, but this was ridiculous I have spent 6 hours so far and am not even half way through my library! * I dunno if J River rips to ALAC, I'm guessing no, so I will still be using EAC--->dbPoweramp *I have yet to see how fluid it is with my ipod classic, still messin with settings etc, my goal: uninstall foobar and iTunes!

J River has several ways it can link cover art to files.
You can have the images saved to a specified folder or as a folder.jpg file and have J River link to those images
You can have the images embedded in the tags for the file
Or a combination of both

If you save the images in the file's taging info the music files will need to be read, made larger to fit the new image data, and then rewritten to the disc. That's a lot of reading and writing and filer operations. It'll take some time. If you just have the image files saved to a directory or as a folder.jpg it will go faster. I personally prefer to have the images saved in the tags.

J River is a bit limited in its ALAC and AAC support. It doesn't convert to ALAC so you'll need to use dBpoweramp or something else to do conversions. It can read ALAC tags but not write to ALAC tags. It will store info (tag info) in its database, but that info won't (can't) get written to tag fields in the ALAC files themselves. So it's a bit limited compared to FLAC and other formats.

By default J River will play ALAC files using the QuickTime engine. It works, but isn't optimal. It limits J River's ability to do things like cross fades and other things. A better way to do ALAC playback is to configure DirectShow to play them. The J River wiki explains how: MP4 and M4A File Support

It would be nice if J River had better support for ALAC and AAC, but it doesn't.

I haven't experimented much with ALAC and AAC in J River Media Center. You should play with it and make sure that its ALAC support is going to work well enough for you before you invest too much time entering tag info. For example, make sure it will write proper tag info to FLAC files when you have it convert from ALAC to FLAC. Same with MP3.

 

[nwkid178]

Not that it has anything to do with my op but I am sold on J River Media Center!!! Has an awesome interface and very easy to use. I have uninstalled iTunes and quick time and hope to never return. 1 question though what is the diff between mc14 and jukebox12? I only plan on using JRiver for music so would it matter which one I use?

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nwkid178 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Not that it has anything to do with my op but I am sold on J River Media Center!!! Has an awesome interface and very easy to use. I have uninstalled iTunes and quick time and hope to never return. 1 question though what is the diff between mc14 and jukebox12? I only plan on using JRiver for music so would it matter which one I use?

J River Media Jukebox is their free version. It does audio only. It's based on Media Center version 12 with some features stripped out or limited. If you want to encode MP3 they charge about $10 for the MP3 encoder license (MP3 is still covered by patents and needs to be licensed to be legal). Jukebox was last updated October 2008. It supports iPods that were current at that time (excepting the Touch and iPhone). I don't believe your 2009 iPod Classic will be detected.

Jukebox supports ASIO for its bitperfect playback. It does not support WASAPI. It is hard-coded to start on the web page. Media Center gives you the option to change the start page.

J River Media Jukebox 14 features and benefits:
Supports both ASIO and WASAPI for bitperfect playback
Supports VST plugins. There are commercial and freeware VST plugins that do things like parametric EQ
Has a built-in headphone crossfeed effect that can be enabled
Includes the MP3 encoding licensing fee
Supports the recent models of iPods (excepting the Touch and iPhone)
Can be set up as a server to serve music to other computers
Does video
Can manage photos and images and other files the same way it manages audio

I'm forgetting or missing some other improvements. Those are the biggies off the top of my head.

The licensing for Media Center allows you to install more than one copy at home and work. If you're doing the server thing you'll have to have multiple copies installed, one acting as the server and the others as clients.

 

[nwkid178]

Thanks to all for your inputs. Extra thanks to Ham Sandwich for convincing me to try out J River..... I LOVE IT!!! Went with MC14 and I have not regretted it thus far. It supports all 3 of my ipods nicely and I love the configuration available, also using the media server feature as well, which is awesome.