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recording Cd's onto hard drive as mp3's

E

eviltoon

Senior member
My daughter has got me into this, but I'm begining to think it's a pretty good idea. I have a large collection of CD's, and I like the idea of storing my favourite bunch of songs onto my hard drive. Can someone point me in the direction of a good software program that will do this?

Also, out of curiosity, what sort of file reduction size am I looking at when converting to mp3? Thanks.
 
You'll get excellent compression using 128kbs encryption. Right now I'm playing a 3:30 song in winamp I ripped at 128kbs. File size is just short of 3.5 mb.

My personal favorite ripper is CDEX. Do a search on yahoo for it, I don't have the site address handy. I pop in a CD, hit the CDDB button to grab all the track titles from CDDB, then hit the "To MP3" button after selecting which tracks I want to encode.

128bit is the minimum for decent sounding mp3's , when encoding, I ususally use 192kbs, as it's a nice balance between size/quality. Most self proclaimed audiophiles won't listen to anything over 192kbs, but in all honesty, I've ripped two copies of the same song, one at 192 and one at 320 and I couldn't tell the difference (other then the big increase in file size). Of course, since the average song runs about 30-60 mb, 320kbs is still a decent reduction in file size
 
and....of course I'll continue to pimp Workin's FAQs for ripping/encoding, cuz I get a cut on each pimp.<GRIN>

Ripping

Encoding

I haven't experimented alot, yet with bitrates, but, enough to know that at 128bit, I can tell a very noticeable difference from the cd. As I recall, on my audio system, I very much noticed a loss of highs, that seemed to result in a lifeless sound. eviltoon, I intend to encode my complete cd/LP/open reel collection to a hard drive, and probably just have a dedicated mp3 pc feeding my audio system. I expect to encode them all at 256. Hard drives are cheap.
--Randy
 
Correct. Read the FAQ at Anand's main page first. Then use EAC with the lame decoder engine for ripping cd's. If you HD space, use a setting higher than 128kbs and use a variable rate setting option. This info is all in the FAQ's nicely listed above.
 
Keep yo pimpin', Randy 😉

The FAQ's will walk you right through to some excellent results. DON'T USE 128kbps!!! Files made according to the FAQ's are not *too* much bigger in size and sound infinitely better.

<< Also, out of curiosity, what sort of file reduction size am I looking at when converting to mp3? Thanks. >>

Using 128kbps gets an approximately 12:1 reduction. The FAQ settings will get you about a 9:1 reduction with sound that is clearly superior to 128kbps and rarely distinguishable from the source CD. You'll be able to tell a 128kbps file from the original about 90% of the time.
 
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