Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Digital Media Player preferences

Okay, I'm weakening.

I had heretofore steadfastly refused the urge to spend every waking hour ripping my CD collection to some other format.

Two developments have me thinking more. And you know, that can't be good. I mean seriously, when your spouse walks into the room and you say "honey, I was thinking..." what good ever comes from it?

Anyway, my daughter got an iPod nano for her 12th birthday, so I am having to become conversant with iTunes and AAC and all that other stuff I never had to care about before. I WILL have to get competent at iTunes.

Secondly, I got a slimserver and softsqueeze clients up and running. Cool.

So, I've got maybe 100 (of 700) CD's ripped at 128-192k bitrates. Not good enough for hifi. I was young and foolish. It happened over time. My dog ate my homework. I was drunk (during part of the time, certainly).

In the context of trying to figure out a ripping and flexible distribution strategy, I became confused. Alcohol was not involved.

I want Quality in exchange for my time. I have about 200GB at my disposal at the moment. I will certainly not rip the entire collection. I need to rip to a format that can be consumed by the iPod and by Slimserver, and am also considering the notion of other clients. Let's assume I'd like to get SOME compression, because my parents were children of the depression and it seems wasteful to not do so.

Now, I KNOW we've discussed MP3 bitrates before and that there is some debate over 320 v. VBR etc. Let's just assume for the moment that if MP3 ends up being my format, I will use either 320 or VBR and that it will be optimal either way. Can we do that? Can we all just get along?

1. iTunes v. Windows Media player v. EAC as a ripper?

2. FLAC v. MP3 v. something else as a format?

3. iTunes v. Windows Media player v. something else as a client?

I don't use Media player except when it presents itself now.

I may want to gravitate towards using "something" as a DVD player, too (currently I use a standalone box). I don't - at this time - care whether it is MP or something else.

So, what do you say to somebody starting from scratch with these criteria?

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So, what do you say to somebody starting from scratch with these criteria?

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The simple solution?
Do what sounds good to you Tom. Everyone else can kiss yo

Tom, for the ripper, I've heard nothing but good things about EAC. A lot has been said about it at the 6moons.com site, they consider it the best. I think it is listed in their "Blue Moon Award" section. You are way ahead of me on the options of format, I'm just looking into bitrates.

I am trying to learn about this from my 16 year old grand daughter who just flies through this high tech stuff like it was childs play. Go figure...

Thanks, guys. I appreciate you at least chiming in on the topic.

I'm thinking that I will rip to FLAC rather than MP3. Slimserver will play FLAC format files, and there seem to be utilities to convert FLAC to MP3 when/if I need that for iPod purposes. It will certainly suck up disk space, so I'll have to develop a better data backup/administration procedure and possibly buy more hardware eventually.

I second the EAC with LAME MP3 encoder. I have not encoded anything to FLAC so could not make any recommendations.
However, if you want to convert FLAC to MP3 I would recommend using Foobar2000 with the LAME encoder (whichever is the most current stable release) to convert them. It's easy and FREE!

-james

I've also used EAC with LAME for many years. I've tried to tell the difference between the org CD and an alt-present-standard (switch setting for VBR on LAME) encoded mp3 and I can't tell the difference.

My other experience is with wma and it's been a good one as well. I think wma is superior to mp3 when you want small files, but at 320 or good VBR it would be hard to find any differences, for me it came to compatability and mp3 > all.

I recently picked up a Sandisk Sansa e250 and I can see why a lot of ppl like it better than ipod nano. This thing is awesome.

BTW once Windows Media Player hit version 10 it actually got good. I think a lot of folks were turned off to WMP because 8 and 9 pretty much sucked. WMP11 so far seems overall pretty good but being beta software I've found a few anoyances in it.