I've been using LAME 3.90.3 which after reading many in depth articles on hydrogen audio, this seemed to be the preferred version. I also have been using the preferred command line options that were posted (I think EAC automatically grabs these as well).

In anycase, one of my complaints has been that it takes a long time for EAC+LAME to rip mp3's and thus I decided to try out the latest version of Creative's MediaSource 1.01.85 . I was very surprised at how fast it is able to rip mp3's and/or wma's. This is very nice feature, however since I don't have the proper audio equipment to compare LAME to MediaSource, I thought I'd ask others here if they have used MediaSource and what they think of it's quality.

I know, I know, whatever sounds best to you, but it's difficult for me to really ascertain which sounds best. However, later down the road, like many I'm sure, I tend to catch some faint sound, instrument, etc.. in my music and I love noticing those subtle things.

So if you have played with Creative MediaSource 1.01.85, please let me know what you thought of the quality of the utility and what formats you recorded in. Also, if you have any idea, please let me know how you think it compares to using LAME.


P.S. Has the later releases of LAME been able to outperform version 3.90.3? I haven't stumbled across any articles that outright states this is why I'm asking.

1) LAME has nothing to do with ripping. It is an mp3 encoder (actually, LAME aint an mp3 encoder...)

2) EAC is the ripper. Ripping is the process of getting the audio data off of the cd to the hard drive (generally in the form of .wav).

3) EAC takes longer to rip becuase it is a secure ripper: www.exactaudiocopy.org

4) LAME 3.90.3 is the recommended version here because it is the most tested. Newer versions may be faster and/or of better/lesser quality, but they have not been nearly (barely) as well tested. Read threads from the last week or so, there has been discussion about starting a test for a newer LAME version.

For comparisions, I'm gonna have to say that MediaSource is not secure (I've never used it, but I'm sure if it was secure, everyone at HA would be talking about it). If you want confidence that your rips don't have errors have 2 (maybe 3) options: EAC, CDex and PlexTools. As far as comparing the resultant mp3 file, 1) you should first find out what coded MediaSource uses, and 2) you MUST do an abx test.

Hope this cleared things up.

Also, Let me add that you may want to check out MPC for high quality lossy storage.

Thank you for replying dreamliner77,

As far as breaking down the terminology regarding EAC and LAME, I wanted to keep it simple to cause less confusion for those (like me) who don't understand and/or don't care about the differences in terminology, they just want something good to get the job done (i.e. most people call any malicious code product a virus when in reality there are RATS, trojans, worms, etc..) .

As far as MediaSource, I have not had any problems as of yet ripping cd's with it. It's fast and reliable. However, I believe LAME still has much better sound quality and, of course, many more options for ripping. In most cases I don't want to worry and/or care about settings, I just want to rip the audio cd to the best quality possible in mp3 format without being unrealistic (i.e. I usually use 192k with variable bitrate turned on).

In regards to my post, I wanted to see if anyone else has experiemented with Creative Labs 'MediaSource' and what they thought of the quality as compared to LAME 3.90.3 .

Don't get me wrong, your post did help me a lot. I, for one, was not aware of there being a 'secure' feature in regards to mp3 ripping. I just thought that EAC grabbed the music information, stored it in a .wav file, and then instructed LAME to encode that file into a .mp3 file. I'll do some browsing to see about finding more information in regards to 'secure' features and rippers. Maybe there's something there I should keep in mind.

Basically, CD audio does not contain error correction in the same way that a CD-data disc would. For example, copying a program off a data CD would give a bit-identical copy regardless of disc condition (unless it is so badly scratched that the data is unreadable).

Audio tracks, when played back on a CD player, aren't corrected perfectly, but rather interpolation is used. This means if some blocks are unreadable, the player "guesses" what was there rather than just erroring out. Really unreadable sections will result in "pops" or "clicks".

EAC tries to make up for this in secure mode by reading everything twice and comparing values. If the values don't match, it slows down the drive and reads over and over until it finds the correct value. This should always result in a bit-identical copy of the original pressing.

You probably won't be able to hear the odd interpolation on a scratch-free (and well pressed) CD, but on scratched ones EAC is indespensible.

Thanks a bunch Jebus; that's a great tip I did not realize EAC did =) . Keep up the good work!