Re-ripping my cd's?

obieone

I recently discovered the 192kps option on my WMP set-up, (almost all of my music on my htpc is ripped at 128) and was wondering, before re-ripping all my cd's, if there was a better route to take?
Any aftermarket software I could use, that might squeeze out just a bit more quality?
I've got an LG BDP drive, if that helps any?

TIA

bmbguy

Rip to .wav or .flac -- then you've got all the data the CD has to give. Can't get any more 'quality' than is there in the first place.

vstarkwell

bmbguy wrote: »

Rip to .wav or .flac -- then you've got all the data the CD has to give. Can't get any more 'quality' than is there in the first place.

ALAC if your using a Mac

coolsax

+1 to FLAC or ALAC depending on your source. I actually dual rip.. once to FLAC for my two channel system and once to 320kbps mp3 for my Ipod for portability and my apple TV for casual listening in the family room. dbpoweramp does this rip process simultaneously.

BlueFox

Moral of the story is ALWAYS use a lossless format for ripping. If you are drunk and not thinking then you can make a lossy copy from the lossless file, and you will not need to rerip the CD in the future.

Gatecrasher

My favorite software for ripping CDs is dbpoweramp and my favorite lossless audio format is flac level 8.

If you are going to go with lossy MP3, don't even waste your time with anything less than 320kbps.

Still even at 320kbps, no lossy format will hold a candle to any of the lossless formats.

As others have mentioned, when you rip a CD in flac or any other lossless format, you can always rip an MP3 in any quality from the lossless file and it will sound as good as-if you had ripped it from the actual CD.

Another nice thing about having lossless audio files on your HTPC is you can always burn an exact copy of the original CD onto a CDR.

steveinaz

Yep, may as well do it right. I use EAC and flac. Mediamonkey for "massaging" tags.

obieone

Sorry, I'm confused:redface: Right now, I don't have a portable device, so I don't care about that aspect.
All I want to do, is take as much of the quality from the cd, and place it in my music library on my pc.
At some point, I may want to burn the music to cdr's, or a portable device, but that's further down the road.

Thanks

BlueFox

Why are you confused? Always use lossless files.

mdaudioguy

obieone wrote: »

Sorry, I'm confused:redface: Right now, I don't have a portable device, so I don't care about that aspect.
All I want to do, is take as much of the quality from the cd, and place it in my music library on my pc.
At some point, I may want to burn the music to cdr's, or a portable device, but that's further down the road.

Thanks

You only get slightly less loss by increasing from 128 to 192. What you should be doing is eliminating loss altogether, as others above have mentioned. FLAC or ALAC. Just be prepared with additional storage space, because file sizes will be in the range of 10x larger.

steveinaz

Your "typical" flac file is about 30-40Mbytes.(16/44); Typical hi-res flac (24/96) about 100Mb per song.

bikerboy

I use Mediamonkey4 and flac files with my windows 7 pc. It has a secure rip feature now so you don't need other programs. MM works well for all my converting, ripping, tagging ect. 300gb of music is about 800 hours of listening. If you are into video I would check out J River.

Gatecrasher

obieone wrote: »

Sorry, I'm confused:redface: Right now, I don't have a portable device, so I don't care about that aspect.
All I want to do, is take as much of the quality from the cd, and place it in my music library on my pc.
At some point, I may want to burn the music to cdr's, or a portable device, but that's further down the road.

Thanks

It's not that complicated really. MP3 is what is called a "lossy" audio format. It's called lossy because in order to reduce the file size through compression, it requires that some of the sonic quality be stripped from the audio. MP3 attempts to focus on sonics that are inaudible to the human ear but there is also some loss to frequencies that are audible.

There are several levels of MP3 quality ranging from very low (128kbps CBR like you are using) to the highests quality (320kbps CBR). CBR stands for continuous bit rate meaning the quality is constant at that level and never changes as the music plays. There are also levels in between including VBR (which stands for variable bit rate). Variable Bit Rate increases the bit rate as sounds become more intricate in an attempt to give higher quality while still maintaining the smallest file size.

When MP3 was first introduced, it was designed primarily for portable devices that had limited storage capacity but as time has enabled larger hard drives and flash memory, file size is no longer the sole driving factor behind compressing audio files.

320kbps is the highest MP3 lossy format available. It provides very good audio but it still isn't quite as good as playing the real CD (CD Audio aka CDA). With the size of memory available on today?s IPods and other portable MP3 players, most people have abandoned the lower crappy quality MP3 (like you are currently using) and don't settle for anything less than 320kbps CBR (the highest-quality MP3). While 320kbps CBR creates the largest file size of any MP3 format, the resulting file size is still only a fraction of the original CD. For instance, a CD that is approximately 700mb can be ripped to a 320kbps MP3 file that is about 1/7th the size or around 100mb. So if you have 16gb of memory in your MP3 player, it can hold about 160 CDs worth of 320kbps MP3.

During the mid 1990's new audio compression formats were starting to be developed that would still compress the audio file to some extent yet maintain all of the audio quality of the original CD. These are called ?lossless? audio formats. FLAC or "Free Lossless Audio Codec" is the most popular lossless format followed by WAV, APE, WavPack, LAC, and several others. All maintain the original quality of the CD in a somewhat smaller file size. All of these formats require codecs (drivers) in order to be played. Most newer devices include some or most of the codecs required to play lossless audio now days and you can also add codecs to Windows media player and NERO burner and other software if it doesn't already include the codecs you need. A FLAC lossless audio file is about half the size of the original CD. Bigger than an MP3 file but still provides a file size reduction without any loss in audio quality.

So there you have it. The world of audio compression formats. They range from pretty-crappy sounding (like 128kpbs) all the way to lossless (which is an exact copy with no loss in audio quality).

Comparing 128kbps audio to lossless is like comparing AM radio to a CD. It simply is no contest.

Comparing 128kbps to 196kbps is less of a difference. They are both pretty LAME (pardon the pun) and not much of an upgrade.

Upgrading from 128kbps MP3 to 320kbps MP3 is worthwhile though and you will notice a substantial improvement.

I have both MP3 and lossless audio. I use MP3 for my portable Sansa MP3 player but I don?t even waste my time with any MP3 file less than 320kbps because they are pretty-much garbage.

Once you rip a CD to FLAC or another lossless format, you can put it away and never have to play it again because you can rip MP3 from the lossless files, burn exact copy CDs, or anything you could have done with the original CD. All of my CDs are stored away because I don't need them anymore.

Hope this helped clear things up.

Gatecrasher

By the way guys, I also have MediaMonkey, EAC, AVS, and a few other audio ripping applications and until you use dbpoweramp, you don't know what you are missing.

Hands-down the best software package out there that can handle every format available with no additional BS required. It also has features that none of the others can match and is many times more versitile. It's not a free software though but is well-worth the price if you are a serious audio converter like I am.

My second-favorite is probably EAC but it has some limitations and bugs like the others do too that dbpoweramp doesn't.

Gatecrasher

obieone wrote: »

I recently discovered the 192kps option on my WMP set-up, (almost all of my music on my htpc is ripped at 128) and was wondering, before re-ripping all my cd's, if there was a better route to take?
TIA

One thing you should know is that Windows Media Player is capable of ripping CDs at 320kbps when set to the highest quality setting. If your version of Media Player only goes to 192kbps, you have an outdated version of media player.

You can go to the Windows update site and upgrade to the current version of Media Player for free.

thsmith

Why is no one mentioning AIFF?

bmbguy

Another variation on the 'lossless' theme.

vstarkwell

thsmith wrote: »

Why is no one mentioning AIFF?

I agree on AIFF, large files though and depending on how many CD's the OP is ripping they would need to have a pretty robust HD.

obieone

Gatecrasher wrote: »

One thing you should know is that Windows Media Player is capable of ripping CDs at 320kbps when set to the highest quality setting. If your version of Media Player only goes to 192kbps, you have an outdated version of media player.

You can go to the Windows update site and upgrade to the current version of Media Player for free.

I've got Win7, and WMP 11, and that's as high as it would offer? It was like 96, 128, 192, and that was it?

I also have approx. 390gb of free space on my hdd, so that shouldn't be an issue. I only have about 3 dozen cd's.

I was looking at dbpoweramp, and it's $38, which I don't have a problem with, just don't want it to "expire" after a year. Upgrades, I understand would be extra, again, fine with me.

bmbguy

EAC is free, works well, and can rip to flac. Costs ya nothing to give it a try.

vstarkwell

obieone wrote: »

I also have approx. 390gb of free space on my hdd, so that shouldn't be an issue. I only have about 3 dozen cd's.

If it's only 3 dozen CD's I would suggest AIFF (Mac) or Wav (PC) for storage and playing from your computer now if you plan on also storing & playing your music from an iPod, lets say, then you should consider FLAC (PC) or ALAC (Mac). ALAC should play on your iPod but I want to say FLAC won't. IIRC there are programs that would allow your FLAC file to play on an iPod.

If you just want one format for both options then I would say FLAC (PC) or ALAC (Mac), be done with it plus you'll have more room on HDD to add more CD's down the road.

Gatecrasher

obieone wrote: »

I've got Win7, and WMP 11, and that's as high as it would offer? It was like 96, 128, 192, and that was it?

I also have approx. 390gb of free space on my hdd, so that shouldn't be an issue. I only have about 3 dozen cd's.

I was looking at dbpoweramp, and it's $38, which I don't have a problem with, just don't want it to "expire" after a year. Upgrades, I understand would be extra, again, fine with me.

Here's a tutorial on how to set WMP to 320kbps

http://www.dkszone.net/how-to-rip-audio-cd-to-mp3-using

Dennis Gardner

obieone wrote: »

Sorry, I'm confused:redface: Right now, I don't have a portable device, so I don't care about that aspect.
All I want to do, is take as much of the quality from the cd, and place it in my music library on my pc.
At some point, I may want to burn the music to cdr's, or a portable device, but that's further down the road.

Thanks

You've discovered 192 kb/s, but the real info you should know is that the CD standard format has 1411.2 kb/s. Ripping lossless is the way to go, but it does take up alot of space.

obieone

Dennis Gardner wrote: »

You've discovered 192 kb/s, but the real info you should know is that the CD standard format has 1411.2 kb/s. Ripping lossless is the way to go, but it does take up alot of space.

10-4! I just re-ripped Cherryholmes 'Black and White' in .wav, and that's the bit rate I got- 1.41 Mps. This 1 cd just ate 2 gb off my hdd, but it sounds a LOT better:loneranger:. The acoustic bass is more noticable.
So, is FLAC better than wav, or just different?

pyrocyborg

Go FLAC. As HDD are cheaper now, it's not that bad to take that space. Some people may argue that FLAC isn't really lossless (even if it is like a .ZIP of a music file), but taking most psychoaccoustic factors in consideration, there is virtually no chance that someone could realistically hear any difference between a normal CD (in .wav) and a flac file. Well, there may be some differences, but it may due to your PC or DAC for example... and yet, differences are minimal, if any.

Flac does take a lot of space, but it's way better, quality-wise, than keeping everything in mp3, and almost half the space of a .wav file. If you want to be safe, rip your CD in .wav and sleep well...

I have around 300 CD ripped in Flac, and honestly, I can't hear any difference (at least, it isn't apparent from one listen in .wav to another in flac) and from many tests I did with y friends, we can consider my hearing above average, even amongst younger people. However, if you have SACD, it might be different, I don't know as those files might take more space or not be converted accurately.

However, as flac requires more CPU usage, you may hear differences if your PC isn't up to date, as he might struggle to uncompress.

bmbguy

Flac is lossless compression -- you get back exactly what you put in. So there isn't any difference.

EAC rips CDs to wav, then runs them through the flac compression. Resulting files are (in general) about 60% of the size of wav files. Any player that 'plays' flac files would/should sound exactly the same as the wav file.

obieone

Thanks to everyone for this tutorial!

I just re-ripped Clannads Anam cd, and it's a HUGE improvement over 192, which sounded pretty good to begin with!
Unfortunately, some of my cd's sound like flatulance, even on a BDP, so, those will prolly stay at 128. I'll re-screen them on the Oppo, but if they sound like arse, they'll stay put at 128. No sense in polishing a ****.:rolleyes: