2009 ripping/encoding general poll Options

[guruboolez]

Happy new year to everyone

As last year and the year before, I invite every HA.org members to answer a few questions. 920 persons take part to the same poll in 2007. And in 2008, a new record was broken with more than 1200 participants. I would thank the HA.org team who makes this score possible by giving to this poll a lot of visibility (it was pinned and appeared on HA portal during several weeks). I invite of course everyone to break it in the next months.

With all datas we gathered in the last year we now have nice and interesting curves:


(click to enlarge)

I let you comment this

____
NB: To keep this first post short, I will post the links to previous polls and all exact datas a bit later.

This post has been edited by guruboolez: Jan 1 2009, 17:07

[vpa]

WavPack for back up and serious listening. Also for listening on my Cowon A3.

iTunes AAC for background listening with my iMac and filling my iPod.

Lame 3.98 only for uploading my selfmade songs on Last.FM, MySpace & Ning.

[user]

Ripper: EAC v 0.9b4
Mode: Secure , test & copy , no c2 usage, to single song/track files

Advantage of single songs:
Easier search and find in your collection, eg. by program Mpeg Audio collection MAC 2.93.1, or comparison of different editions of same/similar albums.
Because EAC appends the gaps to previous track, you don't miss anything in the songs or "gaps", also perfect gapless playing is standard since ages.



EAC + mareo.exe ripping/encoding/tagging in 1 step to 3 formats:



1. Lossless FLAC -8 -V
target: Listening in HiFi , living room, archive

2. lossy MPC 1.16 (iic, thats the current version) --quality 8 --ms 15 --xlevel
target: archive backup solution, small size ! nearly perfect quality, great encoding and decoding speeds.

3. lossy MP3 Lame 3.98 (iirc) , -V5 (vbr-new doesn't need to be specified anymore with 3.98 iirc)
target: listening on portable , usb-mp3-stick, or now SD-card-mp3 device with Koss KSC 75 headphones for running outdoors or listening in car.




Why ?

1. FLAC -8 (bitrates around 700 - 1000 kbit/s) HiFi listening purpose, no compromise, the Exact Original CD !
It offers hardware support, think of devices for streaming in the house, from PC/HD to HiFi stereo in living-room. EG. EVA 8000 Netgear hardware and many many others.
FLAC will be built into more and more hardware.
Also: great decoding speed, independent on the encoding compression level.
Still good encoding speed at -8 (8=best compression level), even at P3 @ 800 MHz.

2. MPC -q8 --ms 15: bitrates around 260 - 270 kbit/s small-sized archive backup quality, if you have FLAC Lossless already, but good compromise
A long time reliable fine-tuned lossy format. Good encoding and great decoding speed.

3. MP3 Lame V5 bitrates around 120 - 150 kbit/s for portable listening on running outdoors or in car driving
small size, hardware support in priceworthy supermarket devices !



What matters ?

Clearly commercial priceworthy ubiquitious hardware device support.
So a lot of votes to FLAC and mp3.

Today: 1000 GB HD at 90 - 100 Euro prices, so no question of storage space/place or costs.
Also DVD+R storage is a possibilty and even cheaper.

See www.High-Quality.ch.vu for High Quality Audio Archiving Tutorials/guides , I hope to update it soon, if I find time. But those guides already offer now a lot of pictures and you will get the idea of configuring EAC to FLAC , or foobar 2000 etc.






edit, answer to Martin F:

http://www.damrotech.com/product_info.php?...products_id=315

100 DVD+R Verbatim at 23,30 Euro , not at 40 like Martin F calculates in his example.
So, there is still a small price advantage for DVD+R than to HD.
Of course, like I wrote, at these times, HD is together with DVD+R a good alternative for storage space.

Martin F's arguments about replaygaining or tagging on DVD+R is a non-argument imo.

Those are done before burning to DVD+R.
Afterwards I simply listen to music and don't think about replaygain or tags.

Replaygain of Lossless Flac is nice to have made and to get an impression, if the music was mastered too loud/compressed or not, but not necessary, as there is no danger of clipping introduced by lossy encoder.

In fact, you can replaygain Flacced HDCD or DTS-CD , but applying it during playback would destroy the original music, in case of DTS even to annoying noise.





So, again my procedure:


1. 1 CD: 1 step ripping/encoding/tagging by EAC + mareo.exe to 3 formats:
1.1. FLAC
1.2. mpc
1.3. mp3 lame

2. step: multiple album replaygain by foobar 2000:
2.1 After having ripped several CDs, I drop those album directories of FLAC to Foobar2000 and carry out album replaygain for multiple albums.
2.2 After having ripped several CDs, I drop those album directories of mpc to Foobar2000 and carry out album replaygain for multiple albums.

3. Scanning album art
3.1 Album art is scanned by Irfanview in 300 dpi jpg compression 90% (minimum 80% , 95% or even 100% jpg seems like waste of space, so 90% is a good practical high quality thing. Also more than 300 dpi (eg. 600 dpi take 4 x space than 300 dpi scans) seems like waste of space or time, because already at 300 dpi you win bigger album art than included into the original CD ! , a magnification of the texts or pictures !)
The directory of the scans is the FLAC album folder.
3.2 Copying the extra files like EAC logs and album art jpegs from FLAC folder to the mpc album folder.
As mp3 is only for fast food listening during sports running outdoors or in car on SD-card, no album art or small files are copied to mp3 albums, also no replaygain or mp3gain.


4. step: Independent Storage of those albums in 3 formats:
4.1 Burning / Copying several FLAC and/or mpc albums to DVD+R/HD, taking care, NOT to have same album in FLAC AND mpc on SAME DVD+R or other media/HD.
4.2 Burning / Copying mp3 albums on DVD+R / other HD

Result:

1 album is stored on 3 different media, be it 3 different DVD+R or HD.
Of course, due to good long-time stability of optical quality media ! (Tayo Yuden or Verbatim, eg. both priceworthy to buy from Damrotech), I got a safe storage or backup of the album and can forget about the original CD.
Interesting is the bitrate/quality strategy:
1. FLAC 700 - 1000 kbit/s as Exact Original CD
2. mpc q8 --ms 15 at 260 - 270 kbit/s vbr as small sized cheap backup for the original Flacs
3. mp3 lame at V5 at 120 - 150 kbit/s vbr for fast food listening, outdoors, portable 2 GB sd-card, sports or cars.

The addition of space / bitrates is per album smaller than the original waves at 1411 kbit/s !

This post has been edited by user: Jan 3 2009, 18:33