[M0T0XGUY]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fr. John /img/forum/go_quote.gif OK you guys! Sometimes you have to assume that in a teaching position (which is what you are in this instance) the students don't know all the lingo of the subject. I'm in that crowd (I'm still using Musicmatch to do all my ripping at a fixed 192 ) Obviously I could do searches for each definition but it would be helpful to have them in one response. That said, I'm hoping someone will provide some definintion here for me and others to get up to speed: LAME: Foobar: ALAC: FLAC: EAC:

LAME: Freeware conversion software for MP3's

Foobar: A basic media player that can be found free on the internet

ALAC: Apple Lossless Audio Codec; found in iTunes and other Apple products, its just another audio format such as MP3, AAC etc., only its the exact same quality as the original CD (no information is lost when converting).

FLAC: Free Lossless Audio Codec; Another popular lossless audio format

EAC: Freeware program used to import CD's that has more protection against audio "mishaps" such as pops, crackles, distortion etc.

Hope this helps!

 

[Febs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fr. John /img/forum/go_quote.gif That said, I'm hoping someone will provide some definintion here for me and others to get up to speed:

The Hydrogen Audio Knowledgebase

 

[Abouna]

Quote:

Originally Posted by M0T0XGUY /img/forum/go_quote.gif LAME: Freeware conversion software for MP3's Foobar: A basic media player that can be found free on the internet ALAC: Apple Lossless Audio Codec; found in iTunes and other Apple products, its just another audio format such as MP3, AAC etc., only its the exact same quality as the original CD (no information is lost when converting). FLAC: Free Lossless Audio Codec; Another popular lossless audio format EAC: Freeware program used to import CD's that has more protection against audio "mishaps" such as pops, crackles, distortion etc. Hope this helps!

Fantastic, thanks!

 

[EFN]

If you use iPod, Rip all your CDs in ALAC for PC library. And then use AAC VBR 192kbps for your iPod.

If you use other DAPs, LAME encoded MP3 gives the best compromise with VBR V2 Q0. And use FLAC for PC library

 

[cooperpwc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by M0T0XGUY /img/forum/go_quote.gif Maybe you should consider upgrading your disk drive / not leaving as many programs open when importing a CD? I find that by dedicating my computing to importing a CD I never have pops, crackles, distortion, skipping etc. Its not so much that I demand convenience over quality, its just that I've never had problems with my CD's as such that would make me switch to a dedicated importer.

I want to agree with you. It would make my life so much easier. But they kept telling me that on here that I should use EAC (I started a thread on this very topic). I ignored them. And now I'm biting the bullet and reripping my CDs because they were right. Do it once, have a perfect copy for a lifetime.

Fr. John, add AutoFLAC to your list. It's a script (with good set-up instructions) that runs EAC for producing FLAC files. Once you set it up it's very slick, almost as easy as iTunes, albeit a heck of a lot slower.

Don't be intimidated by all of this. Search on Google for the programs and on here for more advice. (The Hydrogen Audio Knowledgebase was another excellent suggestion.) Two months ago I knew nothing. Now I'm wasting my Christmas vacation reripping all my CDs in archive quality. That's progress!

 

[werdwerdus]

cooper: if you are truly ripping for "archiving" make sure you do the F4 gap detection and write out a .cue file before you rip the files. And always use Test and Copy. If you get 100% no errors you can be sure that you will be able to make a 100% copy if you need to. Also for archiving you should make sure your read offset is being corrected for.

Maybe you already knew all of that though.

 

[TKO]

Head-Fiers,

for a good quality/size ratio I find the following LAME 3.97 settings for VBR MP3 very nice for my iPod Nano:

-V0 --vbr-new -b128 --lowpass 21 -q0

which works out to 200-256 kbps. When compared with iTunes 256VBR AAC format here is an example of size difference:

Song: Alison Krauss - That Kind Of Love

LAME: 5.6MB, 207kbps
iTunes AAC: 6.9MB, 256kbps

Not quite sure what the iTunes problem is with VBR but it doesn't seem to work in the free iTunes/QuickTime encoder. E.g. all songs imported with VBR/AAC never show a variation in encoding bitrate.

Hope this helps. Cheers.

 

[axiom]

I aggree with the above.
Also, I have done some tests with about 30 CDs of various genres (I figure that's a reasonably sized sample group

) and used both iTunes -> ALAC and EAC High Security -> WAV. I converted the ALAC -> WAV using dBPowerAmp and used the WAV comparison tool in EAC to compare both WAV files (This took a long time and this is why I didn't do more than 30 CDs...I could only compare one pair of songs each time). They came out identically. This tells me that ALAC is really lossless and iTunes -> ALAC is just as HQ as EAC to WAV to ALAC. Also, using iTunes to encode straight to ALAC saves quite a bit of time (iTunes - 2 min 32 seconds, vs EAC rip + 4 min to ALAC). This is on my computer, which is a little old and slightly slow but with 1.5GB memory. Also, if you experience problems, you can use the error correction (all of these tests were done with EC off! The time for an itunes encode then becomes approx 5 mins with it on). Also, with EAC I cannot figure out how to preserve the tags when converting to WAV...so I would have to put these in manually (using more and more time).

 

[M0T0XGUY]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cooperpwc /img/forum/go_quote.gif I want to agree with you. It would make my life so much easier. But they kept telling me that on here that I should use EAC (I started a thread on this very topic). I ignored them. And now I'm biting the bullet and reripping my CDs because they were right. Do it once, have a perfect copy for a lifetime. Fr. John, add AutoFLAC to your list. It's a script (with good set-up instructions) that runs EAC for producing FLAC files. Once you set it up it's very slick, almost as easy as iTunes, albeit a heck of a lot slower. Don't be intimidated by all of this. Search on Google for the programs and on here for more advice. (The Hydrogen Audio Knowledgebase was another excellent suggestion.) Two months ago I knew nothing. Now I'm wasting my Christmas vacation reripping all my CDs in archive quality. That's progress!

I downloaded EAC, just in case

But for now iTunes will remain as my primary way to import songs. However, on the first sign of distortion or problems with my quality; I'll never use it again

 

[cooperpwc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by werdwerdus /img/forum/go_quote.gif cooper: if you are truly ripping for "archiving" make sure you do the F4 gap detection and write out a .cue file before you rip the files. And always use Test and Copy. If you get 100% no errors you can be sure that you will be able to make a 100% copy if you need to. Also for archiving you should make sure your read offset is being corrected for. Maybe you already knew all of that though.

Good suggestions. I believe that AutoFLAC is already doing all of this. It begins by detecting pretrack gaps. And it definitely writes a cue file. That's why I was so pleased with the AutoFLAC script. Someone had set it up to do the job properly.
Not sure about "Test and Copy" though?. I just know that I'm in high security mode.

 

[cooperpwc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by werdwerdus /img/forum/go_quote.gif And always use Test and Copy.

ah, found it. Thanks! I'm using it now. Boy this archiving thing is getting real slow... That's okay, I have my iTunes rips to keep me going. Now if I can only complete this archiving in 2007...

(Ah, it won't be that bad...

)

 

[Jammin72]

Easy CD-DA Extractor is an excellent choice for Tagging, Converting, and Burning all sorts of Codecs. You can get a lifetime license for $29 right now for the Hoildays and it is continually updated.

VBR 0, Highest Quality with a Minimum of 256, New VBR, and No Filtering. seems to be where I'm happiest. Only saves a little over CBR 320 but when dealing with a number of files it adds up for sure.

 

[jazzz]

To all that have an iPod:

If you want to play FLAC files on your iPod, just change the OS to the Rockbox OS. It's free, and it's better in pretty much every way except looks. It works on every kind of iPod except the new 80G video one. (I learned the hard way....

)

 

[pelayostyle]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jazzz /img/forum/go_quote.gif It works on every kind of iPod except the new 80G video one. (I learned the hard way.... )

And the new 2G nano

 

[cooperpwc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jazzz /img/forum/go_quote.gif To all that have an iPod: If you want to play FLAC files on your iPod, just change the OS to the Rockbox OS. It's free, and it's better in pretty much every way except looks. It works on every kind of iPod except the new 80G video one. (I learned the hard way.... )

Indeed. As coincidence would have it, I just installed it yesterday. Even for running my LAME v2 VBR MP3s, I'm blown away by how I can improve the sound with control of the the hardware equaliser for bass and with the crossover circuit. The coolest thing is that you can go back and forth between Rockbox and the Apple OS so you lose nothing.