Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater MP3 vs Lossless Compression - the proof

One mans junk is another................ah you know the rest! lol

In reply to:

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Conclusions
If you care about audio quality and listen to a lot of electronic music, avoid MPEG-4 AAC, particularly if you use bit rates below 160kbps. iTunes MP3 at 160kbps is better than AAC at 128kbps if you can afford the extra file size. If you really want CD quality, you'll need to use Ogg Vorbis or LAME MP3 encoding.

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http://www.xciv.org/~meta/audio-shootout/

This is what is fun about this stuff. For every 10 people that say AAC sounds better, 10 more will say it doesn't.

This is another good one to read (Although it's tough to figure out what the hell he actualy likes!):

http://www.recordstorereview.com/misc/aacmp3.shtml

Guys, I'm fascinated by this discussion. And I continue to be grateful for the generous sharing of knowledge and experience that takes place here.

And you've got to either speak slower, or send me to the "Ripping all those CD's to a Hard Disk for Dummies" page.

Seriously, I admire the scienctific and experienced way you approach this question. Problem is, I'm looking for a consumer-based recommendation. Right now, I'm still loading CD's into a carousel player that won't die. Sounds pretty good.

But, like most, I am seduced by the power of an uber-jukebox. If I were to invest the requisite time, money and energy into ripping my entire collection to a HTPC-type-device, I'd need real-world help. And I'm more confused that ever at the moment.

Here are my criteria:
1. Sound quality virtually indistinguishable from the CD
2. File sizes small enough to get 400-500 CD's on readily available, competitively-priced hardware
3. Ripping speeds appreciably faster than real time.
4. Ripping and Music library management software that is easy to use and compliant with listener-area-controllers
5. No super geeky or extremely obscure software/hardware solutions. I am not the alpha geek that most of you are.

I somehow get the impression that the LAME solution is slow and/or obscure. Is that correct?

Is just using something like Musicmatch Jukebox and cranking the bitrate up to 320 going to get me the same kind of results?

Be gentle.

Thanks for your guidance.

Tom,

I use CDex to rip CDs...take a few minutes per CD. It uses the LAME engine. It can also rip to other formats as well.

I have a 250gb drive for storage in my PC that cost me $120. That size of drive, at a rip bitrate of 256, should hold close to 2500 CDs.

For library management, I like iTunes....but there are plenty of others.

I also use CDeX for straight audio rips... as discussed, I use the Fraunhofer engine separately to compress MP3s, but CDeX will rip (calling the LAME command line) directly to MP3.

Bren R.

I was just about to post a message EXACTLY like Tom...

I beginning to like this idea, but all this mumbo jumbo about ripping cd's a million different ways is making me light headed.

spiff....the process is extremely simple.

I'm sure it is. I just want to be sure to get the highest quality rips I can. I'd rather get two drives, then be listening to something of lesser quality than I could be with my cds.

Bren and Curtis, thank you both very much. I appreciate the clarification.

Craig, I was thinking of you, and hoping that I was not the only one who got a little lost.

Keep us posted on your project.

spiff...you really need to come over and listen. Bring one of your CDs, we will play it and rip it, then you can compare.

Why two drives?