atomix_nruskin
We all have experience ripping and encoding tracks off CD's (our own rightfully purchased CD's, never our friends' ;). What are people's experiences w/ various rippers/encoders?
What's the fastest and/or most accurate ripper?
What's the best sounding encoder? What bit rate is the best tradeoff of compression vs. sound quality? CBR vs. VBR?
What's the best all around ripper/encoder?
What's the fastest and/or most accurate ripper?
What's the best sounding encoder? What bit rate is the best tradeoff of compression vs. sound quality? CBR vs. VBR?
What's the best all around ripper/encoder?
geposted Fri 23 Nov 01 @ 6:05 pm
I'll tell you what I prefer.
I purchased SIREN JUKEBOX 2.0 fron SONIC FONDRY. This is a good program. I rip my CD's with a CBR (constant bit rate) at the highest setting 320K and the highest quality.
The advantage, on a good machine it only takes 30 seconds to rip an average 4 minute long song and the sound quality is superior.
The disadvantage is your files take up more space.
For years I ripped at 128, 160, 256 and one day I decided to rip at 320K and found that the ripping process was about 8 times faster than 128K!
www.sonicfondry.com
The program can usually be found at Best Buy for $29 and it often has a $20 rebate with it.
I use an 80GB FireWire (IEEE-1394) external drive with my laptop for DJ'ing certain events and at 320K I can hold around 10,000 songs. So far I've ripped around 5400.
Answering your other questions....The best sounding encoder is the one that you set to the highest bit rate settings (320K) I would never encode lower than (160K) and I always use CBR for maximum capatability.
Good Luck
I purchased SIREN JUKEBOX 2.0 fron SONIC FONDRY. This is a good program. I rip my CD's with a CBR (constant bit rate) at the highest setting 320K and the highest quality.
The advantage, on a good machine it only takes 30 seconds to rip an average 4 minute long song and the sound quality is superior.
The disadvantage is your files take up more space.
For years I ripped at 128, 160, 256 and one day I decided to rip at 320K and found that the ripping process was about 8 times faster than 128K!
www.sonicfondry.com
The program can usually be found at Best Buy for $29 and it often has a $20 rebate with it.
I use an 80GB FireWire (IEEE-1394) external drive with my laptop for DJ'ing certain events and at 320K I can hold around 10,000 songs. So far I've ripped around 5400.
Answering your other questions....The best sounding encoder is the one that you set to the highest bit rate settings (320K) I would never encode lower than (160K) and I always use CBR for maximum capatability.
Good Luck
geposted Sat 24 Nov 01 @ 1:59 pm
Damocles
The final sound quality of the mp3 does't only depend on the bitrate. It mostly depends on the algorithm behind the encoder. I recommend to use programs which implement the original mp3 decoder from Fraunhoffer Institute (which invented mp3).
geposted Sat 24 Nov 01 @ 2:37 pm
Grimm
EAC - Exact Audio Copy - is the most accurate ripper available. But it is not the fastest. If you absolutely must have the best rips you can get (for archival purposes) then EAC is a must.
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
Lame - freeware mp3 compressor - is actually the best mp3 compressor around, even beating out the Fraunhofer codec. Although its a command line program, you can use a front end shell like RazorLame to compress multiple files, and if I'm not mistaken, even EAC can use it, but you will have to setup the command line yourself.
http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/
If you really want to know more about mp3 and other up and coming codec (like Ogg), the try the forum at
http://66.96.216.160/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl
Cheers
Grimm
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
Lame - freeware mp3 compressor - is actually the best mp3 compressor around, even beating out the Fraunhofer codec. Although its a command line program, you can use a front end shell like RazorLame to compress multiple files, and if I'm not mistaken, even EAC can use it, but you will have to setup the command line yourself.
http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/
If you really want to know more about mp3 and other up and coming codec (like Ogg), the try the forum at
http://66.96.216.160/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl
Cheers
Grimm
geposted Sun 25 Nov 01 @ 6:06 am