Converting Audio Collection....

[bob4432]

the last time i converted my collection i opted for mp3pro and, well, we all know how that turned out. with ~ 300+ cds i am going to do it again and was wondering if the preferred way is w/ the lame dll? also, variable or 192Kbs? i have software i use and have used for years and it works excellent, just wondering if something more universal was around as i have been out of this loop for some time.

thanks

 

[0roo0roo]

heh i don't think anyone on here was suggesting mp3 pro ever😉
it was dead man walking from the start.

mp3 is still universal and will be for quite some time unless the undustry suddenly starts selling flac files. not likely😛
best way? EAC + lame. vbr, the settings have been simplified, the sweet spot for me is about ~224kbps vbr. http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/...ended_encoder_settings
it really doesn't matter much these days with giant harddrives. you can go hogwild with 320kbps. course i guess it depends if you use a flash based mp3 player as well. the hd based ones are also huge capacity now and will only get bigger😛

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
heh i don't think anyone on here was suggesting mp3 pro ever😉
it was dead man walking from the start.

thanks for the info. nobody suggested mp3pro, rather i chose it and this was when it first came out an had support from philips, haha. i will look into the 224Kb/s vbr, thanks for the info 🙂

i just haven't found the time since then to re-rip the cd collection....

 

[0roo0roo]

well some people now rip their collection to flac which is lossless and then transcode that to a lossy format as needed. i guess this saves them from ever having to rerip a collection again. i've never done this myself so someone else will have to tell you how. but with todays drive capacity its no big thing to have that kind of double format thing going on

 

[Mojoed]

I would absolutely go with FLAC. Lossless just can't be beat, especially with the low cost of storage these days.

Once everything is FLAC'd, just create a copy in mp3 (or whatever format you want) for whatever portable device you happen to use.

 

[bob4432]

defintely looking into flac, any pointers for it?

 

[bob4432]

ok, what sound card do i need to hear the difference? my goal would be one that would have the ability to run all the audio through the digital out via optical cable (either dd, dts or 2ch audio) into my receiver. i have looked at some of the ddl type cards and it appears that they all convert even 2 channel audio to multi-channel - for the audio i would just like 2ch if possible but run it through the optical cable as i my machine is pretty far (~30') from my ht.

sadly, flac, 192Kb/s and 256Kb/s mp3 sound the same.....

 

[0roo0roo]

its more likely your speakers are limiting you than your soundcard. telling the difference between high bitrate mp3 and flac is generally something even audiophiles will fail at in blind testing anyways.

 

[Thump553]

Another vote for FLAC, unless you like re-ripping your collection every few years. Get it in lossless form, make a couple of backups, then convert it later if needed.

There are several different ways to convert to FLAC. Purists use EAC -its free and excellent, but something of a learning curve. Here's one tutorial:

Hydrogen Audio tutorial

Do a google search, there are many good tutorials out there.

An excellent commercial program for ripping to FLAC is Easy CD-DA Extractor, which I would highly reccommend. Excellent results, simple to use. Homepage:

Easy CD-DA Extractor

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
its more likely your speakers are limiting you than your soundcard. telling the difference between high bitrate mp3 and flac is generally something even audiophiles will fail at in blind testing anyways.

i should have been more specific, it is one computer's sound (onboard on a biostar skt 462 m/b) that is horrible. this machine is connected to a ~$2k ht setup that i will be listening on and for some reason these files don't sound good, maybe it is a codec issue?? using vlc as the player for the moment, but the same files sound ok on headphones on my main rig (i just barely hear a slight difference between the flac and mp3 files but not between the 192 and 256Kb/s mp3), the flac sounds brighter 🙂

thanks for all the assistance 🙂.

i am just messing around w/ the cdex setup and the flac conversion seems to be very fast, much faster than mp3, is this normal?

 

[videogames101]

Since i have a large hard drive, i just go all out with WAV files... I don't rly see the need for any sort of compression with such massive space at my disposal.

(Plz don't flame me for this, just an opinion 😀)