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Ripping CD collection onto computer

T

TampaSupremo

Hellbent for Glory-land
Joined
Feb 20, 2007
Messages
234
Location
Atlanta
For Christmas I received a Zune 4GB (it was confused with the Sansa Fuze 4GB that I wanted, but no matter). Overall I have been pleased with it. It is easy to use and, other than not being able to completely uninstall it and then do a clean install, it has given me no problems. Up to this point I have ripped CD's using Zune's software.

The other day I learned (quite by accident) that all rips are not created equal. Since then I've been doing more research into bitrates, MP3 and lossy codecs vs lossless, and generally learning things which I have taken for granted. Anyway, my point is this: I have deleted all my ripped CD's and intend to rip them again using WMA lossless or FLAC (ok well I know you can't rip them with FLAC). WMA lossless is easy and there shouldn't be any issues putting them on the Zune. I've heard great things about FLAC and I know that the Fuze (which I plan to own someday soon) will read FLAC files as well as WMA. It just seems like kind of a pain to download a ripper and configure that, and then in order to use FLAC files on the Zune in the meantime I have to convert all the files, blah blah blah.

Am I making too much of this? Should I just use WMA lossless and be done with it or is it worth the extra effort to use FLAC? I'm also doing this as a somewhat permanent storage solution (When I'm done I'm boxing up all my music and sticking it in the attic). I'm not an audiophile by any means and I know that a lossless source doesn't count when you're actually using the MP3 player since it will downconvert the files anyway.

Thanks in advance,
TampaSupremo
 
I love my music, and I might be silly in saying this but anything beyond 192 bits is overkill. Lossles is good if you have albums that the time between songs is not even a second. (like Queensryche Operation Mindcrime, or The Wall.) All my albums are recorded at 192. To me that's the best sound you can get. Hope it helps
 
Yeah, anything over 192 is difficult to distinguish unless you have some pretty swanky and expensive equipment. I helped out in a recording studio for a summer and the higher bit rates were identifiable side by side on the studio sound system but once it was put on CD and played in the car it the difference was gone (at least in my car). We used WAV for all the audio tracks though in the studio.
 
I use tunebite to transfer all my cds to mp3 192. To me it's the best sound you can get. I have a creative zen 30 gig, and I have 4000 songs on it. Whole albums, not single songs. With all those songs I still have so much room I'll never fill it up.

Tunebite
 
TampaSupremo said:
Am I making too much of this? Should I just use WMA lossless and be done with it or is it worth the extra effort to use FLAC? I'm also doing this as a somewhat permanent storage solution (When I'm done I'm boxing up all my music and sticking it in the attic). I'm not an audiophile by any means and I know that a lossless source doesn't count when you're actually using the MP3 player since it will downconvert the files anyway.

Thanks in advance,
TampaSupremo
Click to expand...

Yes, you're making too much of it. Unless you have very high quality headphones in a very noise-free environment, you won't notice the difference between a lossless rip from a CD and a high quality MP3 (say, 192kbs or more).

Yes, audiophiles will insist on FLAC... but the files are also larger, and honestly, I don't think you'll notice the difference at all, especially in a portable player with marginal quality headphones.

That said, there is something to be said for ripping your music to FLAC because then you have a lossless original, so that you can use it to reconvert to mp3 or other formats for a better compression ratio.
 
A lot of people back up their collection using FLAC or other lossless, then rip to MP3 for portable audio devices. Its a bit more time consuming but you get the best of both worlds.

If you only have 4 gigs for storage on your portable device i would want to make the most of it and go with MP3 for that for sure.

You can always test it out yourself, rip a song into FLAC or WAV and the same song into MP3, see if you can tell the difference. On my house stereo i can, but on my portable i really don't think i can, even if I would like to think so.

Oh ya and i will also have to say that EAC and LAME work very, very well. Both are free and both are highly recommended.
 
What Moki said.

A friend of mine who is a musician and also a programmer put together a program for himself where he ripped several songs at different bit rates and using different codecs and then played them back unidentified. He listened and rated them. He listened to each version 10 times. In the end, he discovered he basically couldn't tell the difference with anything above 256. Sometimes, he couldn't tell above 192. He ripped his whole library into a lossless format, but uses VBR encoding for his portable music player. Most of VBR's rips come out in the 220 range, so he is satisfied that whatever quality is lost is beyond is ability to discern.

As explained above, it's a double-rip, but he has lots of free time (he doesn't sleep much).

I took all of his information and just ripped my music at 256. I don't have the gumption to re-rip everything lossless at this point, but I did save the CD's for a future re-ripping project.

A lot of my stuff was ripped at 128 and it sounds way better at the higher bit rate. I have a combination of MP3 and AAC. I can't tell the difference. MP3 requires a license and that can sometimes be a pain.
 
First off, thanks to all of you for your help.

When I first started doing all this learnin' I went ahead and downloaded FLAC and EAC although I haven't installed EAC yet. I think I'm going to try to keep the CD's as FLAC files and then convert them to MP3 to use in the Zune for now. Depending on personal settings it will transfer/play them at a user-set bitrate and will convert anything higher than 320 down to whatever you set it to (I think the levels are 128, 192, 256, and 320).

There's more to all this than I realized and it's pretty interesting. While we're on the subject, what is WAVE 24/96? I'm having trouble figuring it out.

Thanks again for all your input...

TampaSupremo
 
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