Jim Willsher
2004-04-29, 00:33
(Sorry, long post...)
Daryle wrote:
> You should get a lot closer to 55% compression than the 67%
> you reported. Of course if your music is largely noise it
> will be worse ;-). My average is around 3 CD/GB.
Most of my stuff is regular albums, and I must admit I was surprised at the
(lack of) compression. I'm passing "-8" as the first argument to flac - I
wonder if it's not honouring it for some reason?
> Well if you are ripping you entire CD collection the time
> invested far outweighs the storage cost (~$.75/GB), which
> is also dropping all the time. I think it would be a waste
> of your time to rip in anything other than FLAC or WAV.
> Transcoding is also a big concern. With FLAC you can
> transcode to any size MP3 without generational loss. In
> other words FLAC -> 128 MP3 will give you a better sound
> than 320 MP3 -> 128 MP3. Basically I think lossy for
> anything other than transmission bandwidth or portable
> storage limitations is ill advised.
Okay, compromise. I've finshed ripping my entire collection to mp3 (320kbps)
- I finished this late last night (okay, early this morning!). I think what
I will do is trea tthese as my "playing matter", i.e. they live on the hard
drive and are scanned by slim. What I will now do is repeat the whole
exercise (another 10-12 hours), ripping as flac files, but this time I'll
store them onto DVD. If you're estimating 3 CD/GB, that should (in theory)
offer 14 CDs per DVD. Given that blank, branded DVDs can be bought for £2 or
less, I reckon it would only cost me £30 for the whole lot. That way I have
a permanent record (i.e. no need for RAID), which can be stored off-site
(yes, I'm paranoid), and I'll only have about 15 discs to process if I need
to re-rip (versus the 200-odd CDs).
Does this seem reasonable? A lot of effort I know, but it does solve my
storage problem, and it also future-proofs me.
When I did the trials with flac I used the "flac frontend" (version 1.7.1).
I found its tagging to be very random - for example, it couldn’t cope if
song titles contained the "-" symbol as it got confused - part of the song
title became the album name! Is there a better alternative around? The
quickest option for me is to rip everything to WAV file in a folder
structure (supported by AudioGrabber), e.g.
\Dire Straits\Money For Nothing\01 - So Far Away.wav
\Dire Straits\Money For Nothing\09 - blah blah blah.wav
And then batch-convert to flac, relying on the batch-converter to pick up
the band name from the folder, the album name from the subfolder, and the
track number and track name from the filename. I'm not bothered about genre.
Any ideas? I'll google today, but I've already googled and didn't find
anything suitable.
Many thanks - for taking the time to read this, and for putting up with all
my emails over the last week :-))
Jim
Daryle wrote:
> You should get a lot closer to 55% compression than the 67%
> you reported. Of course if your music is largely noise it
> will be worse ;-). My average is around 3 CD/GB.
Most of my stuff is regular albums, and I must admit I was surprised at the
(lack of) compression. I'm passing "-8" as the first argument to flac - I
wonder if it's not honouring it for some reason?
> Well if you are ripping you entire CD collection the time
> invested far outweighs the storage cost (~$.75/GB), which
> is also dropping all the time. I think it would be a waste
> of your time to rip in anything other than FLAC or WAV.
> Transcoding is also a big concern. With FLAC you can
> transcode to any size MP3 without generational loss. In
> other words FLAC -> 128 MP3 will give you a better sound
> than 320 MP3 -> 128 MP3. Basically I think lossy for
> anything other than transmission bandwidth or portable
> storage limitations is ill advised.
Okay, compromise. I've finshed ripping my entire collection to mp3 (320kbps)
- I finished this late last night (okay, early this morning!). I think what
I will do is trea tthese as my "playing matter", i.e. they live on the hard
drive and are scanned by slim. What I will now do is repeat the whole
exercise (another 10-12 hours), ripping as flac files, but this time I'll
store them onto DVD. If you're estimating 3 CD/GB, that should (in theory)
offer 14 CDs per DVD. Given that blank, branded DVDs can be bought for £2 or
less, I reckon it would only cost me £30 for the whole lot. That way I have
a permanent record (i.e. no need for RAID), which can be stored off-site
(yes, I'm paranoid), and I'll only have about 15 discs to process if I need
to re-rip (versus the 200-odd CDs).
Does this seem reasonable? A lot of effort I know, but it does solve my
storage problem, and it also future-proofs me.
When I did the trials with flac I used the "flac frontend" (version 1.7.1).
I found its tagging to be very random - for example, it couldn’t cope if
song titles contained the "-" symbol as it got confused - part of the song
title became the album name! Is there a better alternative around? The
quickest option for me is to rip everything to WAV file in a folder
structure (supported by AudioGrabber), e.g.
\Dire Straits\Money For Nothing\01 - So Far Away.wav
\Dire Straits\Money For Nothing\09 - blah blah blah.wav
And then batch-convert to flac, relying on the batch-converter to pick up
the band name from the folder, the album name from the subfolder, and the
track number and track name from the filename. I'm not bothered about genre.
Any ideas? I'll google today, but I've already googled and didn't find
anything suitable.
Many thanks - for taking the time to read this, and for putting up with all
my emails over the last week :-))
Jim