[sleepkyng]

my college has a great music library with tons of cd's and lp's.

i intend on making full use of it.

i have a powerbook g4, should i rip into FLAC? or should i just exact cd copy onto cd-r?

which programs are best?

if i rip into flac, can i eventually take the flac file and make an audio cd?

thanks again!

 

[minya]

Yes. flac is a lossless format, so it can be endlessly transcoded between lossless formats (flac, ape, shn, etc) and wav.

- Chris

 

[Wodgy]

Yes, you should FLAC. CD-Rs only have about a five year lifespan before they start becoming unreadable, so FLAC is a better choice, assuming you have some system for backing up data in case your hard drive dies. Whether you want to rip your CDs as individual tracks, or as one big file with a cuesheet that points to where each track starts is up to you.

 

[sleepkyng]

reccomended programs for mac os x??

 

[Thump]

Quote:

Originally posted by Wodgy Yes, you should FLAC. CD-Rs only have about a five year lifespan before they start becoming unreadable, so FLAC is a better choice,

I have plenty of CDRs that are older than five years that are fine. This is an urban legend, at best.

FLAC (or SHN) is fine, if you have the time. Otherwise I would just burn audio copies onto good quality CDRs.

I suspect that whatever medium you use to backup the hard drive is going to have a shorter shelf life and be more unstable than CDRs.

 

[Wodgy]

Not to get off topic, but there was a recent thread in the music forum where people talked about their experience with older CD-Rs. It surprised me too, but several Head-Fiers reported problems with CD-Rs that were only five years old. It doesn't seem to be an urban legend. Not all CD-Rs deteriorate so quickly, obviously, but it doesn't seem to be safe to rely on them either. If you have other evidence to the contrary, you should revive that other thread. It was interesting.

 

[sleepkyng]

so, about those mac os X programs...

 

[Wodgy]

CDparanoia, the popular Linux alternative to EAC (many would say it beats EAC), is now available for MacOS X:
http://www.buserror.net/cdparanoia/

 

[DeadTrying]

Cd's are prone to scratching and being lent out to careless friends

I recommend

Buy the biggest, cheapest, fastest spinning Laptop HD (E.g. Toshiba 60gig MK6022GAX) you can land your hands on and purchase an external HD caddy for it (USB2/Firewire).

Rip all your audio digitally to flack. You will need.
EAC (or the above MAC alternative)
DB PowerAmp converts Wav-Flac. Or use the FLAC encoder directlyfrom the FLAC website (Google)
You might need other program better than EAC to rip some protected CD's.


As soon as you have 4.7 gigs back up your data to DVD Rom in the FLAC format, while keeping it on the portable HD for easy access. In th end you will have a massive flac archive all on your portable HD and DVD backup of all of your music in lossless format.

Sheer Bliss

 

[Edwood]

Half the CD's at my local Public Library are scratched so badly, they won't even play. I can only hope to listen to any of them by ripping them. Pops, gaps, ans clicks are inevitable, but it's better than not being able to play them. Go figure.

They look like someone tried to clean them with sandpaper. Yikes. The funny thing, is that the scratch patterns are very similar. So someone specifically must be doing it.

The library could really benefit from archiving in lossless compression. Boy would the RIAA have a field day with that one.

-Ed

 

[Edwood]

I'm still debating whether or not to convert all my APE files to FLAC.

Since FLAC is truly open source, it will be supported by future portable hard drive players first.
I'm still waiting for that hard drive based player that supports lossless and has digital output.
I won't hold my breath.

-Ed

 

[sleepkyng]

oooh kay... that whole cd paranoia thing... i had no idea what to do, i was completely lost...

anything a little more dummie friendly?

 

[Wodgy]

It's a command-line tool. You need to run it from a console (one of those windows where you can type Unix-style commands and have stuff happen). It's worth spending the time figuring out how to use it, because it will do a good job with scratched CDs and will always rip copy-protected CDs.

But if you're looking for an alternative, I think Toast is the only real choice. It doesn't do quite the same thing, as far as I know. There's a whole thread answering your question here:
http://www.macslash.org/AskMacSlash/.../0257246.shtml
That thread is from before cdparanoia was released for OS X. The consensus seems to be that nothing else does the same thing on OS X, but you could try Toast.

 

[blessingx]

When on OSX I rip using iTunes w/error correction to AIFF (there's debate is Toast has error correction and Roxio is very secretive). I then encode using MacFLAC or FLACer (mostly use the former). Playback can be done with VLC, XMMS (use Fink), or MacAmp Lite X. I think the latter is probably the best. It's defunct now, but you can get the free password from their website. Make sure to leave the compression set to the default. Quality is the same and compression only changes about 1%, but time can change dramatically. You can also find most of these progs at VersionTracker.com.

 

[BO(V)BZ]

Quote:

Originally posted by Edwood I'm still debating whether or not to convert all my APE files to FLAC. Since FLAC is truly open source, it will be supported by future portable hard drive players first. I'm still waiting for that hard drive based player that supports lossless and has digital output. I won't hold my breath. -Ed

If you have the space, you can use foobar2000 to do that without any trouble. Just set it up, and let it run all night while you sleep.

On the topic of scratched CD's, I've been ripping my brother's stuff, which he doesn't care for at all. Using EAC, I've seen a couple CD's take more than 9 hours!