Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler OT: Best way to convert CD's to mp3?

Good point w/ the bit rate. Most of my MP3's are from the old Napster days. The ID3 tags are not really correct, so w/ iTunes it doesn't sort well. I've spent the last 2 days (and going) updating the tags so everything will be kosher. Most of those files are 192 kbps or less. I've been using Musicmatch (free one) and don't think I can do 256 kbps.

But w/ iTunes, looks like I can do a higher rate. But then I'll need a bigger hard drive...

Eh, hard drives are cheap! I picked up a 160 gigger on Black Friday for $40! (after rebate yadda yadda yadda).

oldskool....don't use iTunes to rip....use something that utilizes the "LAME" enocoder. I use CDex.

What advantage does LAME provide?

All the different encoders out there don't use the same compression algorithms. The reason to choose LAME is that most people agree that it produces higher-quality MP3s than other encoders.

Plus you get to sound like a 1337 geek and an audiophile all at the same time!

Cool enough, I'll give it a try. OK, what does 1337 mean?

1337 is sort of a self referential term. It pretty much grew out of the AOL, uh, culture of chatting, etc, as far as I know. 1337 translates to "leet" which translates to elite. In some circles (12 year old wanna be hackers), it is a term of praise. In others (real geeks) it is a term of ridicule. Leet-speak is typing using funny characters, 43nc3. I obviously don't know much of it. You often see it used in online first person shooter games, as in "1 0wn2orD y3r @$$ 1u23R!"

I'm sure someone else could speak to this in a more educated fashion.

Curtis (and anyone else!)

Wondering why CDex and not EAC? Any particular reasons? I'm new to this as well, and it looks like CDex development hasn't continued. So other programs are incorporating updates to LAME, but not CDex.

Thanks!

Rich

Oh...it is only because that is what I started using first....no other reason.

I am contemplating the move to EAC.