What software/format...newbie question

[npaisnel]

OK, so I know nothing about audio encoding/codecs/plugins etc.

I have just moved into a new flat, and have been wondering about the best way to store and put up shelves to make over 1000 CD's easily accessible.

At a friends the other day, and came across these great little devices, going to get myself one.

Have a PC with 500 gig plus of spare HDD storage, and want to rip all these CD's to the HDD. That'll solve the shelving problem, can put Cd's in attic.

BUT what format. and ripper program.

I did 50 CD's the other day using Windoze Media player to WMA format. Originally at 192k sample rate. On playback, was not happy with the quality. So tried WMA Lossless and VBR. Still not happy with the sound quality. It turned out that the problem with sound quality was the analogue sound card output/analogue input to the amp (Sony STR-LSA1). Plugging the PC to the amp with the firewire really made the difference.

But I have now started thinking about encoding/lossless compression etc.

From what I have read, I would probably go for FLAC, or ogg flac....any comments...what shall I use for a lossless archive format.

And what ripping/encoding/compression software. Ripping with windows media player is so easy, put CD in, it rips, names files, downloads data and ejects when done. under 4 minutes average time for most CD's in WMA VBR.

Did downlaod EAC this afternoon, and FLAC frontend. but seems that you would have to enter album details manually using this system, and not as convienent as the WMP, that does the whole lot as one.

Also tried Winamp Pro and Ogg vorbis plugin this afternoon, almsot as easy to use as Windoze MP. but could not find FLAC pluggin for winamp.

Any help out there? I want to rip this lot once to highest quality....maybe just store as wav files? .....If I ever get a portable player for the car/bike, I would then be able to transfer to mps or something to redusce file size for portable.

Neil

[pfarrell]

npaisnel wrote:
> Have a PC with 500 gig plus of spare HDD storage, and want to rip all
> these CD's to the HDD. That'll solve the shelving problem, can put
> Cd's in attic.
>
> BUT what format. and ripper program.

That, poor yorick, is the question.

The answer depends on your platform.

> I did 50 CD's the other day using Windoze Media player to WMA format.

So you are most likely on Windoze.
The only rational choice is to rip to FLAC. See many, many threads on why.

The program depends. The two to start with are EAC and CDex.
After that, YMMV.

> Did downlaod EAC this afternoon, and FLAC frontend. but seems that you
> would ahve to enter album details manually using this system, and not as
> convienent as the WMP, that does the whole lot as one.

EAC will do the lookup, there is a button to push.

CDex has the button, it often automatically presses it for you.

Both will automatically envoke FLAC to compress the PCM data.
There are lots of instructions, I can't remember them off the
top of my head.

Depending on your music, you may find most of, or almost all,
of your CDs artist/track/... info on the public databases.
Some genres are bad, mostly the ones I care about.

--
Pat
http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimse...msoftware.html

[npaisnel]

Thanks for the help.

Yes Windoze I am afraid, keep tinkering with other OS's, linux based/penguin? Red hat etc etc. But all my work software (flight planning stuff) is MS based and for compatibility really need to stay with it. Also done years of tinkering with command line stuff since the ZX80 days so am relatively happy with command line work, but to migrate all my stuff, to another OS, find new software, learn the whole lot again, the time involved....just gives me the shivers thinking about it, I spend enoguh time in front of the sceeen as it is.....so staying with Windoze for now.

Yes Pretty much decided on FLAC, been scanning forums, software reviewsetc for the last few days.

Tried EAC on the laptop yesterday briefly (before being dragged away by the long haired general to socialise with the neighbours). Will have to have a look at it again. Just Googling cdex now. Also looked at Easy CD-DA Extractor, ut not installed it yet.

If something like Winamp could be got to use FLAC, that would be the.

OH, BTW thanks for your site and the pearl stuff, may be looking there as well ...but lets walk first before running.

Neil

[ceejay]

Neil

Not sure if your browsing has taken you to http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cg...eToFileFormats

and its neighbours, you might want to have a look.

Use FLAC. EAC works well for many people, it does look up track details automatically if properly set up.

If you ever need MP3 versions its not hard to transcode the whole lot in one go.

And, yes, not having to have all the CDs on display is a great benefit, welost control of that monster some time ago. I've just ordered some of these http://ssl.adhost.com/jazzloft/baskets/sleeves.cfm to ease the archiving process...

Ceejay.

[npaisnel]

Umm like those gatefolds...

But for now plenty of storage space in our plastic cauliflower crates in attic of my fathers house!!

What is the general opinion ( if any ) of Easy CD-DA Extractor as opposed to EAS or CDex, just done a couple of tracks with it, very easy to use, but .....I know nothing.....OK , so not free/open source

[npaisnel]

Another minor question...file naming format

Which way to name files for later easier use...are track numbers necessary ...probably only if you want to keep original album file structure

But Artist or track name next? what works best. Would have thought for later use on a portable device track name first, maybe not even putting artist name....thoughts?

[funkstar]

For slimserver, as long as you have your tags set up correctly, the actual files names make no difference.

Personally i file everything <artist>\<album>\<artist> - <album> - <track no> - <track name>.flac

this makes it easy for me to find music and it i dump a bunch of files on a disk, they still stay in a reasonable order and you can easily tell what they are.

[npaisnel]

I was using:
<artist>\<album>\<track no> - <track name> - <artist>.flac


but as you say as long as tags are working, does not matter greatly.

Do portable players (iPOD, iRiver etc) use tags to display stored tracks or file names? or is this a user preference ...depending on machine

Thanks

[radish]

Do portable players (iPOD, iRiver etc) use tags to display stored tracks or file names? or is this a user preference ...depending on machine

It varies from machine to machine. iPod and my personal choice, the Rio Karma, use the tags and navigate much like Slimserver. Others use the directory and file structure and ignore tags.

[JSonnabend]

Thought I'd chime-in here on the Flac vs. other format issue. Pat's wrong that FLAC is the only rational choice. Flac certainly is a fine choice, but I chose WMAL because, at the time, Soundforge's Vegas program would not accept FLAC (and I was using Vegas to make mixes). That sounds rational to me.

As for ripping, I use Nero + wavegain + MS' encoding tools. Tagging is done through CATraxx.

Sound quality is equal to the original source (CD), as far as blind tests have indicated. I use the same external DAC for both sources, btw.

One of the best things about lossless is that one can losslessly transcode at any time.

- Jeff