[Brent Hutto]

I've been doing some searching through the archives here and with Google and I think what I'm planning is practical. I'm hoping you folks will indulge me with an overall assessment of my ideas.

I use iTunes to sync to my iPod and I've been just ripping and encoding to AAC with it, too. I want to start using my computer for home listening so I've been looking into other "better" ripping and playback options. Here's what looks like a good, flexible set of tools.

Use Exact Audio Copy to to ripping with robust error-checking and logging. Within EAC call a command-line AAC encoder, most likely Nero's, aiming for something like 180-190kpbs VBR. I'll also need to settle on a lossless encoder (maybe FLAC) for storage on my hard drive. Then use Foobar 2000 as a player for listening on the computer (I'm getting a E-MU 0404 to drive my Portaphile and HD595). Questions:

1) So does all this sound practical?

2) An alternative would be LAME/MP3 instead of AAC but I like AAC.

3) I've found web links that claim that EAC can be configured to do a Nero encoding and then pass on tagged .m4a files that the iPod will be able to recognize, has anyone seen that work?

4) Is FLAC about as good as anything for lossless to be played back through Foobar 2000? I assume there's command-line FLAC encoders out there that configure well with EAC.

5) I assume there's no reason to keep the WAV rips around once an AAC (or MP3) and lossless compressed file is stored, right?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Brent Hutto]

D'oh. I hate it when that happens. This was meant to go over in the other forum.

 

[greenleaf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brent Hutto I've been doing some searching through the archives here and with Google and I think what I'm planning is practical. I'm hoping you folks will indulge me with an overall assessment of my ideas. I use iTunes to sync to my iPod and I've been just ripping and encoding to AAC with it, too. I want to start using my computer for home listening so I've been looking into other "better" ripping and playback options. Here's what looks like a good, flexible set of tools. Use Exact Audio Copy to to ripping with robust error-checking and logging. Within EAC call a command-line AAC encoder, most likely Nero's, aiming for something like 180-190kpbs VBR. I'll also need to settle on a lossless encoder (maybe FLAC) for storage on my hard drive. Then use Foobar 2000 as a player for listening on the computer (I'm getting a E-MU 0404 to drive my Portaphile and HD595). Questions: 1) So does all this sound practical? 2) An alternative would be LAME/MP3 instead of AAC but I like AAC. 3) I've found web links that claim that EAC can be configured to do a Nero encoding and then pass on tagged .m4a files that the iPod will be able to recognize, has anyone seen that work? 4) Is FLAC about as good as anything for lossless to be played back through Foobar 2000? I assume there's command-line FLAC encoders out there that configure well with EAC. 5) I assume there's no reason to keep the WAV rips around once an AAC (or MP3) and lossless compressed file is stored, right? Thanks in advance!

1) you could use flac files directly with a rockboxed ipod, but it takes more space.

4) lossless is lossless, whether you use flac or an other encoder is up to you, check this out: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index....ess_comparison
the command line I use in eac with flac: -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" -5 %s

5) indeed (lossless is lossless²).

 

[Red2Black]

1.) Yes, it's practical. Coincidentallly, it's what I use.

2.) If you like AAC, then use it.

3.) http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...hp/t44310.html
Use the settings from above. The tags are iPod recognizable.

4.) What greenleaf stated.

5.) Yes, your assumption is correct.

 

[Brent Hutto]

Quote:

Originally Posted by greenleaf 5) indeed (lossless is lossless²).

Yes way!

Thanks guys. I think I'll start setting stuff up on my computer this week.

 

[wax4213]

It would probably be easiest to rip directly into flac, or some other lossless codec, and then use Foobar or dbpoweramp (I think that's what that's called...) to transcode into AAC. That way you only have to rip your CD's once, which is more convenient, and faster. I use this system, and transcode into LAME V2 usually, and I have had excellent results.

 

[Brent Hutto]

wax4213,

So can I convince EAC to rip a CD directly into FLAC without creating a WAV intermediate? Or are you using something other than EAC to do it directly?

 

[greenleaf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brent Hutto wax4213, So can I convince EAC to rip a CD directly into FLAC without creating a WAV intermediate? Or are you using something other than EAC to do it directly?

no, eac (and all the other programs actually) always extract WAV from cd-da; but you can chose to compress it while extracting (ie: it doesn't extract the whole cd and then starts compressing but do both at the same time) and tell it to delete the .wav after compression so it's as if you extracted directly to .flac.

What you could do if you want to have your whole collection in flac and aac is compress to flac while extracting but keep the .wav and compress (and delete) the wav to aac afterwards, it would be faster than transcoding the flac file to aac; only problem is the tagging as you don't have tags in .wav, but there i probably a way to recover/copy the tags from the flac files, sorry I can't help on that.

oh well...computer-as-source is great but you sort-of have to be a geek to "get" everything

 

[wax4213]

Greenleaf is correct, and like he said, my EAC is set up to delete the .wav's automatically, just leaving me with flac files. In my mind, I'd rather convert to AAC from flac, merely because, although it takes more time, there are many fewer steps. In foobar, you just select the flac files you want to convert, right click, convert, and go from there. Walk away, and in a couple of hours (for large amounts of music), you'll have your AAC's or mp3's or whatever. I would suggest www.hydrogenaudio.org for a lot of information pertaining to this process, they're generally nice folks, but I wouldn't trust them for recommendations on bitrates or formats. They don't have nearly the quality of listening gear as many of the people on these forums, so they probably won't hear the differences.

 

[KevC]

I've heard ~192k VBR LAME sounds better than AAC.... but no concrete evidence on my end

 

[blessingx]

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevC I've heard ~192k VBR LAME sounds better than AAC.... but no concrete evidence on my end

I've yet to see a single test indicate this (using LC Nero or iTunes). Also it's probably important since you indicated which MP3 encoder is one one side to indicate which AAC encoder is on the other. There are certainly a variety on both.

 

[Brent Hutto]

OK, here's the thing. When EAC is ripping and compressing, it can pass good tag information along to the compressed files in whatever format that might be. I've tried it with (LAME) MP3, (Nero) AAC, FLAC and WavPack. So in one pass from EAC I can get a WAV file plus one of the others, either lossless or ~200kbps lossy, and it will have nice tags for the iPod or Foobar to use.

But if I want a second compressed file I'm not sure of any easy way other than EAC to get it tagged. If I use Nero from the command line or from within Foobar to turn the WAV into a FLAC or WavPack then the lossless compressed file won't have tags and, even worse, the files will play back out of order. That's because there's no tag info in the WAV file. So I tried letting EAC create the lossless file, which has tags. But the Nero encoder can't transcode from anything lossless, it needs WAV as input which once again doesn't have tags. Icky.

What I think I'm going to end up with is letting EAC rip+compress to AAC (including the nice tagging) and keep the WAV file. Then with both the iPod and Foobar I'll play back the AAC (which is probably going to be transparent to my ears at -q .55 or so) with the WAV just being archival for future use. Of course to save space I can FLAC or WavPack the WAV files (no tagging) because that's reversable. BTW, I also had a problem that the latest version of FLAC breaks Foobar's FLAC playback by installing an incompatible DLL version.

 

[JWolf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by greenleaf 1) you could use flac files directly with a rockboxed ipod, but it takes more space. 4) lossless is lossless, whether you use flac or an other encoder is up to you, check this out: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index....ess_comparison the command line I use in eac with flac: -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" -5 %s 5) indeed (lossless is lossless²).

Your EAC string is wrong where it counts most...

-8 -V -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" %s

That's what it should be. You'll find that's what most people use. Yes it takes a little longer on compression, but you will save some disk space and have smaller files.

 

[greenleaf]

thanks, but I don't find there is a huge difference in size between lvl5 and 8, so I just use the "standard" one (there are speed and size comparisons on flac website). I'm usually multitasking, so encoding speed does matter.

[edit]

http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html here it is. 43min more to save 2MB (on that peculiar test) is definitely not worth it to me. also, if only size matters Monkey audio would be a better codec.

sorry, all that is probably useless for the OP.

 

[binkgle]

the way i've been doing it is using foobar 0.9.3.1 to play my music library an foobar 0.8.3 with teh foo_pod component to sync with my ipod. i've found that itunes screws up every time i've tried syncing with it, even with a newly formatted ipod; i end up with some artists listed multiple time, others not at all, same with albums, and lots of songs skip (they bring up the now playing screen, then it jumps to the next song, and this can happen to entire albums). foo_pod works perfectly for me

edit: and i know for a fact that all these itunes issues aren't the fault of tagging inconsistencies, as i've very careully tagged all my music files, and the artists being listed multiple times sometimes seems as if it has to do with the amount of that band's music i have. i have more pink floyd than anything else, and the floyd was listed 11 times on the ipod by itunes, each one of the submenus was identical.