I know that this kind of topic is pretty dull around here, but I need some advice, because I can't make my mind. I own collection of rare and old original CDs (currently, about 70). I want to convert them with MP3 or WMA codec for use on my cheap portable (SAMSUNG MCD-HM200), so I can put my CDs where they belong - on the shelf behind the glass. Could you please recomend me the best software and encoding parameters for my case? Note that all of my albums are the same as the day they were printed - I am extra carefull with them, and I don't lend them to anyone.

P.S.

I'm also curious what kind of mp3 decoding scheme most mainstream CD players use? I suposse the one from FhG.

Lame -aps, or lossless if you have the space.

Exact Audio Copy (ripper) and Lame (MP3 encoder) is what you want to use. EAC settings should be secure mode. The encoder settings depends on your ears and how much music you want to fit on a CD. See the FAQ about EAC, and recommended settings & compile threads in MP3 forum.

I've expected such answer - I heard that all on this forum are EAC-fanatics. But my point is basicaly: is there a point of using EAC, when CDs are in perfect state. I understand that EAC is numero uno when using bad discs, but if that's not the case, why should I bother with it?

Secondly, my ears are fine (thanks for question), but the subject is cheap discman (in my case Samsung MCD-HM200). Isn't LAME APS an overkill? I'm looking for practical solution: the best quality/best compression ratio (considering I'm going to use it on mid-low class discman). I will use MP3 only for casual listening. When I want full music enjoyment, I listen an original CD (on serious equipment).

P.S.

I'm asking all this, because at the moment, I cant buy Ipod or something like.

Using a brand new CD doesn't necessarily mean it's in perfect condition. I've come across numrous badly pressed CDs. Also, even if a CD seems visually OK, doesn't necessarily mean it's in perfect condition - the datasurface might still be damaged or the layer index might be bad.
Another point is the drive itself that might hadle even a seemingly perfect disc errouneously.

Bottom line is how picky you want to be yourself. Using EAC for extraction doesn't need to equal slow extraction, merely a safe approach if set up correctly and logs to show you eventual occuring problems.

Regarding choice of bitrate and profile for your MP3player is - needless to say - up to you and your personal preference.

I'd use --alt-preset fast standard -Y to try to narrow the bitrate down slightly, possibly with a higher -V level to narrow it down further. Try and see, perhaps ABR is something for you?

i think the quality of the heardphones/earbuds you're planning to use is more important of the quality of the player. (isnt it? )

It's true that things could change to better using quality headphones, but there is no point spending on that. MP3 CD players are IMHO cheap consumer electronics and should be treated as such - they are no HI-FI systems.

I've been happy with LAME -preset 128 (ABR) for my portable. I do use a cheap $20 set of Koss headphones, though. I would really have to strain to hear a difference when compared to APS. It is not my intention to create an archive on my computer. APS creates files that are 1.5x bigger than 128 kbps, and I can't fit enough music on a CD to keep me happy.


- Scott

I want to second that....THE HEADPHONES will make all the difference. Since the portable is as you called it "cheap" chances are the stock earbuds are one step above worthless.

Buy a pair of $25-$50 earbuds and use LAME preset STANDARD.

Also, you may want to consider purchasing a real player...look at the likes of iRiver. One of the tops in that market for playback quality. Not $$$

jmho

rs

For portable use with my iRiver iMP-150, here is my choice:

- I bought a pair of cheap Sennheiser MX-400 ear buds, and they certainly improve the bass in my feeling. Besides, they are more comfortable in my ears than what came with the iRiver.

- --alt-preset 140 is my taste, just for the heck of more warm fuzzy feeling than 128, and still enough to keep me happy in number of albums per cd.

- Use EAC. Why not? It's free! And it's the best there is. You can also configure it to be fast if you want, but mp3 encoding takes longer in my experience anyway, so not much of a difference. If you absolutely need to be "alternative", go for CDex. But choose "secure" over "lightning fast" settings anyway, because maybe you will not hear MP3 artifacts, but you will certainly hear pops and skips. (which CAN happen even with cds that look all nice and shiny)

Just my 0.015c

Thanks everyone

rickshaw, your response is briliant, I had the same on my mind. Unfortunatly, I live in Croatia, and our standards are bit different than one in developed western countries. Gadgets like Ipod, Iriver are bit exotic around here and VERY hard to find, not to mention VERY EXPENSIVE. So, at the time being, I must stick to my Samsung. However, as an musician and audiophile, i would like to draw the max from this player. But don't forget that this is not HI-FI. I think I have enough information for now.

The real question is how much space you are willing to use, either on your portable device and on your computer's hard drive.

If you are willing to use a lot of hard drive space, I would do the following:

Considering you want to rip your priceless CD collection once, I'd suggest ripping with EAC, like all the others have said. Even though your CD's may be perfect, I'd still suggest using EAC. Other rippers just aren't as accurate. Plain and simple. Considering you want to only rip once, then I believe this is your only option. As I've said before, ripping may be slow with EAC, but the time you take to rip with EAC the first time is the time you end up saving in the long run if your rips need to be re-ripped because of errors. I would use a lossless codec, FLAC or APE. These codecs are the easiest to use (based upon personal experience) and they have the most support available for them. If your collection is stored as lossless, you only have to rip once. You can then transcode into any lossless format of you choosing, and if you're considering a portable device with a small memory capacity, I'd suggest using LAME 3.96. I'm not going to suggest a superior bitrate, but I will suggest you do some of your own listening tests to see what you want to sacrifice for file size/sound quality. In the end you should take advice with a grain of salt. My best advice is to find the best bitrate/file size/transparency for YOU, not others.

In that case you must change headphones to something like Koss Portapro -difference will be huge. Some of these stock earbuds are worth $0.00. I am speaking from personal experience.

To save space but still keep quality, encode with lame 3.96 --preset medium

Then why bother asking... Anyway, the question has already been answered. You asked for the best software, well that is EAC...


What question? Who suggested they weren't fine? The point is that there is no one-setting-fits-all-purposes to recommend. It depends on how good ears you have, even for cheap equipment. And also of course if you have specfic needs of how much music you need on one CD. For me, --preset 128 is just fine for portable use, but that can't be recommended to everyone, since you may have better ears than me. Other people with better ears than me recommend preset standard -Y, you will probably find your "sweet-spot" somewhere in between those two...

That's it. I quit.

I should have known what fuss I was going to cause by posting here. I admire you all, but that all bussines with HQ MP3 is starting to piss me off. MP3 is NOT designed to be some flawlessly way to archive music, and most of you HQ MP3 heads admit it ("use losless compression). I was talking about the most practical and efficient way to create MP3 CDs for background listening on cheap portable player. MP3 CANNOT substitute sound from original CD ever (not to me). If the situation is so great, why do people still buying original CDs. This whole thing has gotten out of control - it should end on it's roots and purpose - FhG CBR 128 kbps.

You asked about the best program and the best parameters that you can use and then you were get frustated beacuse eveybody suggest you EAC?



Have you try it? I can't distinguish a 128 kbps mp3 from a wav.



For the covers and in order to be legal.

After taking all your arguments in consideration, i decided to use EAC, LAME 3.90.3 with --alt-preset standard setting. It probably won't make big difference on cheap hardware, but i hope I'll be in position to get something better in the future.

Regarding my last post, I realize that everyone on this forum hate FhG, but it still stays as the fact that FhG is standard in MP3. Most official music sites, mainstream games, divx movies etc. use FhG, 128 kbps, Joint Stereo. Not to mention p2p. Therefore, I supose most portable digital players are designed with that in mind. I must admit that I was curious if someone from this forum would agree with that.

I hope I didn't start official/unofficial flame-war with such basic thread.

Hi Tomo!



Exactly the reason why Hydrogen Audio exists I suppose as an educational resource. In the last MP3 128 k/bits test FhG is not as good as LAME or as the Audioactive codec either.

I am glad you have settled on the way forward.

Just to clarify on this point...

MP3 is an official recommention by MPEG, and even though Fhg owns the patent, LAME is just as (if not moreso) complaint with the specification. In fact, LAME was originally built off the reference encoder. Certainly no reason to worry that your MP3s will be less compatible, as players are designed for MP3, not Fhg in particular. Frankly most MP3s out there are probably XING anyhow, not Fhg.

If you are concerned that --preset standard is too big, try it with a -Y. This will drop about 40kbps used for high-frequency stuff (16khz and up) which you probably can't hear (or your headphones couldn't handle anyhow). Also try --preset medium and see how that sounds to you. --preset standard, even to trained listeners, sounds absolutely perfect 99% of the time, so your assertion that only the original CDs will sound perfect is infact not supported by double-blind listening tests. For most of us though, --preset standard isn't even necessary for transparency. The best advise is to either just use it and feel safe (like I do), or try lower settings to test your threshold.

The above suggestion to pick up some cheap sennheiser mx-400s or 500s is a good one, as well. Makes a big difference.

Yeah, I'm glad too.

One of the main reasons, I posted this thread, was curiosity. I haven't heard of Hydrogenaudio before, but some my friends and collegues have so they told me about it. I follow MP3 and stuff since the begining, but have always believed that those who search for perfection in MP3 are running in circles. I'm saying that being and audiophile is one thing, and being MP3 audiophile is something completely different. I really appriciate effort many of you investing in all of this, but I cannot accept your statement that any form of digital audio can substitute original media. Regarding your tech. knowlege in MP3 (which is much better than mine), I feel that sound of the MP3 is subjective thing. To me FhG "often" sounds better than other MP3 codecs, and I believe I'm not the only one.

Anyway, as I wrote, I have heard for Hydrogenaudio very recently, so I was wondering are people around here highcore at this rate No hard feelings, keep up with the good work!

P.S.

I was expecting an OBJECTIVE opinion - guess I was asked for all this

We here at hydrogen audio are very aware of the placebo effect, which is extremely unusual in "audiophile" circles. We base our opinions on double-blind tests carried out by trained listeners, who are often even audio engineers themselves. If you want to imply that we just don't "get" the difference between "true audiophile quality" and mp3-quality, then back that up with double-blind listening tests of your own.

I garantee you, if you are scientific about it, your results will not support your hypothesis.

The only thing I'm implying is that being an audiophile is something subjective, as is the taste in music. I don't want and don't have time or will to performe "scientific analysis" on such insignificant matter. To me, mp3 is just of practical value, and I think it should be treated as such. Say what you want about it, but no "scientific analysis" can be as deep as natural sense and taste for music.

I HOPE SOMEBODY WILL FINALLY CLOSE THIS THREAD! I'M GETTING OUT OF HERE (WHILE I STILL CAN).

You are just too much. You obviously already made up your mind that FhG 128 is what you want, and then you get upset when you don't get the answer you want to hear. People here were trying to help you by answering your questions in the best possible way they could, out of pure helpfulness. And to thank everyone for putting down time in trying to help you, you get rude.

And I can't see why you get upset. You have been given several advices on what settings to use to get the best results. No one has been trying to force you to go with HQ MP3 or whatever.

No I see that further down you decided to use -aps anyway. This contradicts pretty much everything else you claimed so far. I don't get it.

You also say you expect OBJECTIVE answers but say that being an audiophile is something SUBJECTIVE. Confusing.

You have been given objective answers (backed up with objectively performed listening tests).

Hey ToMo, we did the boring and insignificant scientific testing, so you don't have to!

You asked for appropriate ripping and encoding software, because you didn't want to launch a 6-month investigation with 8 hours of blind testing a day (and who in their right mind would?) EAC was suggested not just because it's the "popular" ripper, but because objective, scientific tests have shown it to be an excellent CD ripping program.

Likewise, scientific listening tests have shown Lame --alt-preset standard to be an excellent choice for MP3 encoding, bested only by the two higher-bitrate --alt-preset settings (in general... rare exceptions do occur, of course). It's entirely possible that some people really do prefer the FhG encodes, and would demonstrate this in a blind test, but by and large, blind testing has shown Lame to be superior to FhG.

I won't go on any more, because part of me thinks I'm wasting my breath. After all, you are a newcomer to this Hydrogenaudio community, and by saying the things you have said, I feel that you have disregarded the number one priority of HA, which is objectivity. It seems a bit disrespectful to ask a group of people for help, and then scoff at them for wasting their time on "insignificant" matters and testing... the same testing whose results you are asking for!

Please don't think that, just because people here are interested in MP3's, they aren't interested in music as an art form. That is a misguided assumption. Many people here care very deeply about the music itself... why else would we work so hard to make sure the music is recreated in lossy format as faithfully as possible? Please don't blitely ignore all the hard work that people in the HA community have done, without first giving some blind testing results that prove lossy audio to be crap. Of course, if you can come up with some evidence that lossy audio really is fatally flawed, then you're encouraged to share it, and scoff freely at all those poor MP3 users!

I thought I made myself clear. I sad I was posting this just for curiosity. I heard of this forum few days ago, and I just could not believe someone is spending time perfecting something that's designed to be imperfect to begin with. You consider me rude (and maybe unsophisticated), but get real. You are obviusly taking all this to seriously, as you were expected to get Nobel. Some answers to my post show how childish most of you are. I was asking for simple advice, and stated my needs and case. But you all seem to find is as invitation to contest for finding new theory of relativity.

I said, I was through with this. I will never ask anything again on this forum. So please, do me a favor, and stop spending your valuable time answering on this thread. I heard everything I wanted to hear from you, but don't spit on me because I don't follow your religion and philosophy.

P.S.

Regarding your sense for being objective - how can testing which is performed by various individuals, each with his/her own music taste, hearing ability and philosophy be objective?

How rude, he didn't even bother to read the FAQ! Like a surly salesman who doesn't wipe his feet, and just steps through the door...

Well it's a bl**dy good job somebody did sunshine, otherwise your "mp3 player" wouldn't be much use! How do you think mp3 came into existence, and came to work as well as it does?


"I just could not believe someone is spending time perfecting something that's designed to be imperfect to begin with."

Lossy codecs are designed to represent audio signals at a much lower bitrate than linear PCM. Psychoacoustic based codecs do this by taking advantage of how the human ear works. The design aim is to get the bitrate down whilst delivering an audio signal which sounds the same as the original. There's no desire to be "imperfect" as far as the listener is concerned!

Whether the result can be "perfect" is almost a philosophical question!

However, you can measure how many people('s ears!) you can fool, for how much of the time, and see how close you are. The result is somewhere in the 99 point several nines percent for a well tuned codec these days. If it was really "designed to be imperfect", then it's failing this design goal a heck of a lot of the time!


Maybe you don't understand that a digital audio signal can be numerically altered, yet still sound identical to (even the best) human ears. If you're interested you could learn a lot here.

If you're not, that's OK. Thankfully people are allowed to be interested in different things, and we'll carry on being interested in this, if that's alright with you?

Cheers,
David.

PLEASE STOP ALLREADY

I'm truly sorry if i hurt your feelings, but i stated several times that I greatly appreciate your work. I was just hoping that somebody would agree with me (despite technology) that MP3 is designed to offer minimal filesize with still accepting quality. I agree with you on many things, but I don't understand your ideas for building music library on computer, and throwing discs and vinyl down the toilet. MP3 sould be for taking to the beach, for boring traffic jams, for motivation while studyng (like me - maritime law, at the moment). I'm just being practical. I wanted advice on MP3 in that sense - I'm not trying to throw traditional way of listening music away.

So please, accept my apologies and long live Hidrogenaudio.org!

Haha, just use Lame with --alt-preset standard. Its dead easy, and its not overkill

That's OK ToMo.

and I don't think many people here have thrown away their CDs! A lot of folks play their music from PC all the time though.


btw, having read your original post, I nearly replied early in this thread to say that you might as well use a fast burst mode ripper, and an FhG encoder at 128kbps - and ony ask your question here again if this isn't good enough!

Anyway, have fun with --alt-preset standard.

Cheers,
David.

No one has spitted on you. The reason people keep answering your posts is not because you disagree but because you are being rude against us when we only tried to answer your questions and to be helpful.

You are the one spitting on us by keep claiming that we spit on you...

Not wishing to fuel the argument ... but I notice noone has suggested WMA even though it was mentioned that this Samsung portable supports it. Would be worth your while doing some quick comparisons to see which format gives you the better quality / file size ratio. I did exactly that for use with my portable, and like it or not I concluded that WMA (9, STD) was far superior to LAME.

(edit) sorry, just read your other post and realised you've already tried this.