[John Reeves]

Hi Mr Radar,

Thanks for the explanation. Now I'll just have to play around and give it a try.Damn, and I was so happy, contented and ignorant before.LOL

Thanks
John

 

[Patchmaster]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wolfen68 At risk of being flamed...I have to admit I still use Musicmatch. I've compared EAC/Lame to Musicmatch and with my equipment I feel they compare very favorably. One of the main reasons people go to EAC is to avoid skips/pops and other anomalies. However, I've never had this issue on ANY cd in musicmatch. I have one theory that my Pioneer 105s slot load dvd that I use for ripping is a fairly reliable unit that excels at reading potentially damaged cds accurately.....

No flames or disrespect intended, but are you sure you know what a rip error sounds like? I tried MusicMatch eons ago and it was junk as far as ripping went. Fast, sure, but the result was garbage. I think I'd ripped most of my CD collection before I realized what rip errors sounded like. Then I started re-ripping the whole thing all over again. Also, given the very large number of terrible rips floating around in the ether, I have to wonder if people don't know what rip errors sound like or if they simply don't care. I'm willing to accept that you've found the one magic combination that makes MusicMatch work great, but I just had to ask the question.

 

[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patchmaster No flames or disrespect intended, but are you sure you know what a rip error sounds like? I tried MusicMatch eons ago and it was junk as far as ripping went. Fast, sure, but the result was garbage. I think I'd ripped most of my CD collection before I realized what rip errors sounded like. Then I started re-ripping the whole thing all over again. Also, given the very large number of terrible rips floating around in the ether, I have to wonder if people don't know what rip errors sound like or if they simply don't care. I'm willing to accept that you've found the one magic combination that makes MusicMatch work great, but I just had to ask the question.

I used to use MusicMatch 7.x and I got tons of errors, the error protection was terrible and nearly useless. If you're happy with it though, that's cool, it certainly was a very convenient app.

 

[Patchmaster]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sweet Spot I stopped using EAC right quick when I got J.River's Media Center. I know that some people are against all in one proggies, but the J.River crew have really got this one right. It's a relatively small app considering what it does, and is NOT a resource hog AT ALL. I use it to playback media, rip, encode and even burn ! It works VERY well. As far as ripping goes, it is as secure, if not more than EAC or Cdex and as fast or faster. I've been using it for more than a few months now, and never one problem..always clean, glitch free rips. Hoorah J. River Media Center !

Based on the description of "Digital Secure" mode on the J. River web site, I would give them credit for going beyond what most rippers do, but I would also question the statement that J. River Media Center is as secure or more secure than EAC. (And probably CDex too, but I'm not as familiar with CDex as I am with EAC.) J.River seems to think things will be okay as long as two reads in a row are the same; EAC insists on 8 out of 16 being the same. One could perhaps argue EAC is going too far, but it seems to me that 8 of 16 is a more rigorous standard than two-in-a-row. Again, though, kudos to J.River for going beyond the usual commercial crud.

 

[wolfen68]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patchmaster No flames or disrespect intended, but are you sure you know what a rip error sounds like? I tried MusicMatch eons ago and it was junk as far as ripping went. Fast, sure, but the result was garbage. I think I'd ripped most of my CD collection before I realized what rip errors sounded like. Then I started re-ripping the whole thing all over again. Also, given the very large number of terrible rips floating around in the ether, I have to wonder if people don't know what rip errors sound like or if they simply don't care. I'm willing to accept that you've found the one magic combination that makes MusicMatch work great, but I just had to ask the question.

No disrespect taken.....

I have had no issues with anomalies of any kind...and there are several that could occur. The important thing to me is that the copy sounds equal to the original upon critical comparison.

The only difference I have ever noted is that the mp3's have slightly less "punch" and a slight flatness that I find undesireable when compared to the original source cd's. With that being said, my EAC/Lame rips sound comparable, with the same apparent loss from the original. Therefore, this is more a statement on mp3/lossy in general than it is of Musicmatch specifically. When doing blind tests, I cannot discern between the two (though I can tell between lossy and redbook cd).

I have also found that the quality of the original recording going from album to album varies tremendously and has more of an effect (IMO) on the ultimate sound in many situations. I have mp3's from some great original recordings that sound much better than the original cd of other worse recordings. Ironically, we have no control over this factor...but it's huge.

 

[jmb]

The best part about EAC is its ability to extract great sounding tracks from older CDs that will not play very well in a CD player. In essence, you can take some of those CDs that skip, etc. and extract an error free copy. I have had only one CD that EAC couldn't "repair" and it was heavily damaged. EAC simply didn't extract the tracks it couldn't get clean copies of. I was at least able to save about 60% of the tracks.

When using consumer extracters in the past, I always had to check every track to be sure there were no errors. It was a frustrating task. With EAC, I can just sit back and remain confident that the software is performing the quality control for me.

If someone is interested in using an audio extracter for the first time, I would highly recommend EAC over any other software. Period.

If you are happy with what you got, then it doesn't really matter.

 

[Intrigue]

well, i trid the three recommded here; eac is a pain in a butt to use, cdex is ok, but cannot burn a cd, j river media center installed without a hitch and burn cd quickly; my thumbs up to J. River!

 

[Stephonovich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Intrigue well, i trid the three recommded here; eac is a pain in a butt to use, cdex is ok, but cannot burn a cd, j river media center installed without a hitch and burn cd quickly; my thumbs up to J. River!

Why is having burning capabilities in your ripping program so important? Nero does a fine job. And, FYI, EAC can burn CDs. Once you get over the learning curve, it's an awesome proggie. I use it to rip and burn everything, secure mode, offsets corrected (that's why I burn with it... it can correct the offsets), CUE sheets with everything extra enabled... I love it, myself.

That being said, I used to be a diehard CDex fan. I still keep it around, as it's a very nice program. However, when combined with Burrrn, it's a very nice ripper.

(-:Stephonovich

 

[Intrigue]

Well, i'd like to listen to these new songs in my car, in my portable cd player (yes, i still have one, though i am thinking of getting the sony hi-md).
The Burrn program seems like a very easy to do program, but i just tried to burn couple cd with no success, it said there's some error in some tracks and says burning is completed, but the counter is 0%, i clicked ok and it's back to main screen, i tried clicking this and that, nothing happened and no music on cd

 

[DEMIW]

I use ASHAMPOO to rip CD´s

 

[Sweet Spot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patchmaster Based on the description of "Digital Secure" mode on the J. River web site, I would give them credit for going beyond what most rippers do, but I would also question the statement that J. River Media Center is as secure or more secure than EAC. (And probably CDex too, but I'm not as familiar with CDex as I am with EAC.) J.River seems to think things will be okay as long as two reads in a row are the same; EAC insists on 8 out of 16 being the same. One could perhaps argue EAC is going too far, but it seems to me that 8 of 16 is a more rigorous standard than two-in-a-row. Again, though, kudos to J.River for going beyond the usual commercial crud.

Actually, I've had Media Center re-read discs/tracks a lot more than 2 times in order to get a good extrapolation...I believe that one time it read a track like 8 times. If I'm not mistaken, there's a setting to change the secure priority value. In any case, I've not had one instance where I have had to ever go back to using EAC...even with my really scratched up CD's. MC is GOLD in my book. I tried using iTUnes before it, and for one, I found iTunes to be a sluggish resource hog, not to mention being pretty flakey.

 

[Zurg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr.Radar I use the ReplayGain scanner in Foobar2000 which just adds tags to the files while some versions of MP3Gain modify the audio data (which DOES reduce the quality).

I haven't quite wrapped my head around the differences between MP3Gain and ReplayGain, despite a limited amount of research. The version of MP3Gain that I have recently downloaded from SourceForge claims that it does not change actual sample values a that it stores it actions in tags, and so it is completely reversable. I find the Windows UI version is very useful for detecting clipping and setting gain adjustments. So far I have done all adjustments based on Album analysis rather than track analysis. Apparently there is some volume adjustment 8-bit value in every block of MP3 sound data. This allows MP3Gain to adjust the amplitude by 1.5 dB increments. So far it seems to easy to use.

I downloaded and played around a tiny bit with the Foobar2000 stuff in an effort to check out ReplayGain. Unfortunately, it seems like you have to get the whole freakin kitchen sink. Didn't seem at all obvious how to use. I lost interest. I also want my gain-adjusted MP3s to be playable in a wide range of devices.

Am I missing something? It seems like MP3Gain is doing what I want with a minimum of hassle.

BTW, I also got EAC working with my external USB CD drive, so I have switched back from Cdex. I was able to find and set the read offset. Unfortunately, it does not successfully write to my external drive. Perhaps it will with a bit more tinkering.

-Z

 

[Mr.Radar]

Foobar2000 for Replaygain couldn't be easier. As long as you have the Replaygain scanner component installed you can just add your files to the playlist, select them, right click, and select to scan them track by track (no album values calcuated), scan them all as one album, or use tags to differentiate between multiple albums (NOTE: the multiple album mode only looks at the Album tag so if you have two CDs with the same Album tag then it'll get thrown off, for example I have many CDs simply called "Greatest Hits").

 

[Patchmaster]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sweet Spot Actually, I've had Media Center re-read discs/tracks a lot more than 2 times in order to get a good extrapolation...

If you read carefully, you'll notice that I said Media Center will assume it has a good read when two reads IN A ROW are the same. It may well take 8 or 10 reads before two in a row come out identical. (Edit: The two-in-a-row thing comes from their web site. I have no personal experience with Media Center.)

Media Center goes for repeatability as the deciding factor. EAC goes for the law of averages, requiring 8 out of 16 reads to be identical. I'm not sure if one method is truly statistically more robust than the other, but the EAC method seems like it would be better. (And I'll be the first to admit that statistics and common logic often seem to conflict.)

 

[Intrigue]

most of the songs i downloaded are 128 kbps which i have no control, which program can i used to upload/encode it to 192 plus, and then burn to a cd or md. The highest quality is my goal, not quantity, i figure the higher kbps = higher mb in storage?