[CyberGhost]

like the topic says, I want to rip my cds into my hd!

but I can't decide on which codec to rip with?

I want good quality! size does matter but is secondary!

can you guys please suggest me which one to use? WMA, MP3 or OGG?

Thanks!

 

[CyberGhost]

yea also, which bitrate(yes, I know about EAC and VBR) should I go with?

at which point is it hard to tell the difference?

I have read somewhere that 356 is an overkill, so is it 256kb/s or 192kb/s?

 

[Mr.Radar]

Each codec is different, and there is no one codec (or bitrate) that is right all the time. Spend some time doing some ABX testing and do some reading over at www.hydrogenaudio.org if you really want to do everything right. IMHO, if you have the disk space, lossless is the best solution because you don't need to worry about any artifacting and you have a perfect backup in case you ever loose the CD.

Also, in some situations (especially with hi-fi gear) 320+ kbps may not be overkill.

 

[CyberGhost]

Thanks Radar! will go the listening tests!

how big are lossless files? like how big is 4min track?

 

[Mr.Radar]

They achieve about 50% to 70% compression on average (some music compresses better (like classical) than others (like rock and pop)). I just randomly picked Depeche Mode - A Question of Time (exactly 4 min.) and it's 29 megs (at about 70% compression).

 

[CyberGhost]

wow that's really big!

Plus I love classical rock!

I think I'm gonna stick to mp3 and ogg

 

[pikawel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CyberGhost wow that's really big! Plus I love classical rock! I think I'm gonna stick to mp3 and ogg

I rip everything I have using CDex which uses LAME.

Here are my settings though they're rather arbitrary as I've not tested anything and don't have the best source (though I don't know what's really better in the portable realm):

MPEG I - 128kbps -> 320kbps
J-Stereo
Very High Quality ( q=0 )
VBR Method: VBR-MTRH
VBR Quality: VBR 0
44100

I'm not going to claim to be the MP3 ripping don so if you see something that I could be doing better, let me know! If you want to hear what they sound like, send me a PM or reach me on soulseek... [w]eL

-Ash

 

[CyberGhost]

oh man! I'm so confused and arroused!

can you guys please answer this questions!

in mp3 which is the best option?(highest quality at the same bit rates)

ABR(up to 320) vs CBR(up to 320) vs VBR(alt-preset-standard,extreme,insane)

and in ogg which is the recommended option going with bitrates 128,160,192 or with the quality like 1,2,3,4,5,......10?

and finally which one do I go with? OGG or MP3? which is better at higher bitrates(192 and up)

I really don't care about compatibility(going to use it on my pc anyway!) battery life, or size(as long as it's not over 15megs), quality of sound, is what i'm interested in!

 

[Alu]

I personally rip everything with eac (www.exactaudiocopy.de) into lossless flac and ape files. Mostly flac at that. It's true that it does take away some space, but the quality is incomparable with the highest encoded mp3 as those sound very flat. This shows especially on audiophile setups where a good source is needed to get a good sound indeed.

Anyways, I'd suggest you to do it lossless

. If you can't however, then I'd take the highest lossy compression you can achieve, namely mpc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPC_(audio_compression_format)). You should really consult hydrogenaudio as someone mentioned before, because they are the encoding specialists...as they claim.

 

[juneamour]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alu I personally rip everything with eac (www.exactaudiocopy.de) into lossless flac and ape files. Mostly flac at that. It's true that it does take away some space, but the quality is incomparable with the highest encoded mp3 as those sound very flat. This shows especially on audiophile setups where a good source is needed to get a good sound indeed. Anyways, I'd suggest you to do it lossless . If you can't however, then I'd take the highest lossy compression you can achieve, namely mpc (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPC_(audio_compression_format)). You should really consult hydrogenaudio as someone mentioned before, because they are the encoding specialists...as they claim.

I definitely agree you. I always rip everything into APE or FLAC. The only problem with APE/FLAC is the huge file size. But it is still ok if you only rip several-say 100-CDs into your HD.

 

[breez]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CyberGhost oh man! I'm so confused and arroused! can you guys please answer this questions! in mp3 which is the best option?(highest quality at the same bit rates) ABR(up to 320) vs CBR(up to 320) vs VBR(alt-preset-standard,extreme,insane)

Always the VBR presets with no selfmade adjustments.

Quote:

and in ogg which is the recommended option going with bitrates 128,160,192 or with the quality like 1,2,3,4,5,......10?

Quality settings.
Quote:

and finally which one do I go with? OGG or MP3? which is better at higher bitrates(192 and up)

Out of those two I'd go Ogg Vorbis. It is newer and generally performs better because of less restrictions in the format's standard. You may want to consider Musepack too. Musepack has a very solid performance at higher bitrates (175+ kbps) and has been regarded as the best lossy codec for transparency until the recent development of Ogg Vorbis which has raised it's quality to the ~same heights as Musepack. Musepack is also fast to encode and decode (LAME 3.90.3 is a real slouch at encoding

)

Quote:

I really don't care about compatibility(going to use it on my pc anyway!) battery life, or size(as long as it's not over 15megs), quality of sound, is what i'm interested in!

With those requirements some obscure format like Musepack is just right for you

With Musepack, the "quality" settings are recommended. Feel free to experiment different quality settings and find the right bitrate/sound quality combo.

 

[MichaelFranks]

lame --alt-preset-extreme

best quality, smallest size, and the most supported format available

 

[averydonovan]

If you don't mind the fact that you will have to transcode (convert them into another format) them for portable use, MPC is a really good format. I recommend it at q8 quality level. Reasonable file sizes and much sound than an MP3 of similar file size. MP3 destroys transients and collapses the soundstage significantly, MPC even at q5 preserves transients and at higher quality levels only minimally affects the soundstage.

 

[Kikkoman]

If you're sure you don't want to use lossless then somthing you might want to consider is the possibility of you ever buying a dap. If you're sure you're never going to buy one or it's going to be so long before you do that whatever codec you use now is going to be outdated anyway I say go with musepack. On the other hand if you're thinking about buying one you should encode in the the highest quality format the dap you choose supports. Ogg is the best codec with a fairly large amount of players supporting it (iriver, rio, iaudio, etc), but if you buy an ipod then you're out of luck. If you plan on going the ipod route you should use aac, and if you have absolutly no idea what model or company you want to buy from, but still know you want one, mp3 will give you support on almost every single model I can think of besides those sony ones that use atrac.

Edit: Of course picking a format for use on your computer and then transcoding for a dap is always an option, but that will result in a drop in quality.

 

[CyberGhost]

ok guys! Thank you very very much for the replies! they are very helpful!

I just encoded a CD into alt-preset-extreme mp3, ogg 8 and into mpc "braindead" and ogg came out the smallest of the 3! and yes! I absolutelly couldn't tell the difference between the 3!

although at times, it seemed like ogg was brighter with better treble and a little cleaner sound(and louder) but maybe i'm already hallucinating!

also, the way you describe it, it looks like ogg is the middle ground between mpc and mp3! better than mp3(btw, is it very noticably better at higher bitrates? I don't know I'm still in mp3's club with one leg! the other one already stepped towards ogg fan club

) and is somewhat supported! plus I just decided I will get Iriver Ihp-140 so.... ogg -q8 for me