[denisavu]

What is the absolute best converter for lossless audio? LAME? I'm still very new to all of this so I would appreciate any direction you all can give me.

Thanks.

 

[Veniogenesis]

FLAC uses its own encoder (there is only one). Different programs that are used to encode FLAC just call the flac.exe encoder program.

LAME is only a MP3 encoder.

 

[denisavu]

So how do I rip music from my CD's to preserve all of its integrity (i.e. with no loss of quality)? Please share your routine.

 

[Hanafuda]

go find a program called EAC - Exact Audio Copy. Set it up according to the tutorial I'm linking to below. Rip your CD's to .wav files, then convert them to lossless (flac is probably most popular now, but ape and shn are also lossless). If you want compression for a portable player with mp3, AAC, etc., that's a whole other ball game. But convert your CD's to flac if you don't want to lose anything.

http://www.teqnilogik.com/tutorials/eac.htm

other people may have other suggestions for how to go about the process, but this works well for me. I'm confident I'm getting as good a rip from my cd's as possible on a vanilla home PC.

 

[poo]

Agree with Hanafuda, but there are many ways to go about it. If you are after an easy option (still offers high quality) use EAC with AutoFLAC.

http://legroom.net/software/autoflac

Google will help you with the rest - loads of info...

 

[denisavu]

Wow, insane loads of information. Thanks guys, you're the best! Now for some serious reading!

 

[mofonyx]

Autoflac is probably the easiest way to go about configuring EAC to work with FLAC.

EAC has an easier integration with *.ape, but *.ape support is limited on DAPs, so... FLAC is the way to go.

Best of luck.

 

[duff138]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mofonyx /img/forum/go_quote.gif Autoflac is probably the easiest way to go about configuring EAC to work with FLAC. EAC has an easier integration with *.ape, but *.ape support is limited on DAPs, so... FLAC is the way to go. Best of luck.

that's what I do. I have EAC rip it to FLAC

 

[D_4_Dog]

Autoflac huh.... one learns something each day on this forum.... but how much easier does it makes things when one has EAC already configured properly to rip in flac?

 

[Packgrog]

Use the latest version of FLAC (1.1.4, last I checked), as it provides better compression. There's guides online about configuring EAC and FLAC together.

 

[exec_]

Well, to make the information overkill complete...

An excellent source for info regarding digital audio/compression (lossy or lossless) is Hydrogenaudio.
Very useful is their knowlegde base (click me), where you can find hints and tips how to install/configure EAC (with LAME, FLAC, or whatever you're up to use). That really helps a lot, because EAC isn't a software which is very easy to use - well, usage itself is a no-brainer when it's configured properly once, but this might be a long way (just look at all the options to configure).

So here you have another two links which should also help with configuring EAC:
http://users.pandora.be/satcp/
http://users.fulladsl.be/spb2267/

If you really want to have accurate rips from CDs, take a look here (plugin for EAC).


Hope that helps...

 

[KenW]

JMO but use EAC to FLAC. From FLAC, you can then use dbpowerAMP to convert to vitually any format you could want. EAC, FLAC, and dbpowerAMP....awesome threesome.

 

[Packgrog]

Interesting, KenW. I rather like this idea. If only I had the drive space to rip all my files to FLAC!

 

[milamber]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Veniogenesis /img/forum/go_quote.gif LAME is only a MP3 encoder.

LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder...

sorry had to say it.

 

[poo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Packgrog /img/forum/go_quote.gif Use the latest version of FLAC

Yeah good point...