What settings do you use for Audiograbber?

- Dual Stereo
- Stereo
- Joint Stereo

Why?

Rip to as much RAM as possible? If so, what do you set it at?

Basically, what settings do you have configured that you feel are the best for Audiograbber?

Thanks for the feedback in advance?

use lame.exe as external encoder and set the commandline to --alt-preset standard %s %d

I'm already using Lame...but how do I set the command line to that? Where do I do that? Also, what exactly does that do?

take a look here (its german sorry for that)
[img]bc4060415f[/img]

For the presets, take a look here:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/showth...s=&threadid=260

I've gotta ask... Why aren't you using EAC? www.exactaudiocopy.de It's pretty much the defacto standard around this board and many others.

For a great tutorial on EAC, go to here

Another is CDex. I've found it to get some tracks that EAC couldn't rip due to damage on the cd. Search the board and you'll find where to download CDex.

Take it easy...

yeah EAC is the best! But i tried to help him anyway

Benjamin,
Well, at least he's here. So that's a great start in and of itself.

Seriously though jmw1137, if you want the highest quality rips, go with EAC or CDex.

For compression, I've recently been using NABE (Not Another Batch Encoder). While it's got a few minor things that could be improved upon, I've found it very simple and convenient. God awful simple interface for a newbie. And when the compressor has been updated, you just download and unzip into NABE's "external" directory. Very easy stuff here.

Why is EAC better? Are there any versions of it out that are not Beta?

To give you guys an idea of what I'm doing, I'm a mobile DJ and am ripping about 600 CDs to my computer to begin the process of digital DJing. From other people in our industry, many recommend Audiograbber, and I've heard very little about EAC, so I'm trying to learn as much as I can.

Any info would be great...I've read a lot on their site, but any personal experience would be great...

Thanks!

Jim

EAC even thoug it says Beta is is VERY stable and complete, safe for normal user. It is more stable then most non-beta programs.

EAC is free, and it is very powerful. It can use any command line encoder. It has secure ripping (can get scrached CDs better then just about any other ripper). Among other things.

jmw1137: I really can't blame for this false statement the "people of your industry", cause as it usually happens they just follow the directions of several music magazines which always have the tendency to cover only the surface of such technological issues. I'm glad that at the moment you are around here, cause you'll have the chance to benefit from the opinions and suggestions of many members of the forum (not including necessarily me), and that way your industry will also acquire better information about musical issues.

Even today the words Audiograbber, Audiocatalyst and Musicmatch Jukebox play a lot among many unaware people that try to enter the world of ripping and encoding, unfortunately. Even though these programs are quite user friendly and easy to use they all share an important problem: they don't offer any security that your ripped cd is identical to the original and doesn't have any skips/pops and clips...something possible especially if the surface of the cd is dusty, scratched etc. The good thing about Exact Audio Copy is that it uses a secure ripping method, which allows for perfect copies and also informs you if something goes wrong and in which specific point. So you can be sure that the ripping procedure have produced a faultless result or not...the advantages of this are very obvious...just imagine taking a song full of skips in the club that you work for, because Audiograbber never warned you.

Exact Audio Copy is probably the most complete program for its kind, full of features that you won't find in Audiograbber and other similar commercial rippers that have been praised and advertised by "inexperienced" press or by those magazines that have some gainings from such "promotion". If you need to have Audiograbber for your own reasons, Exact Audio Copy can be as good as well, if you don't use the secure ripping methind but the burst one, because it's the same one that the former uses. Personally speaking I can't find a reason for not choosing EAC for your rippings, especially if you want to use the rips for your professional needs, where mistakes are not easily forgiven and should be avoided at all costs (EAC is free btw )

It's great chance to use it yourself and spread the word to your colleagues and fellow members of the music industry. But I'm sure you'll when you use for the first time EAC and realize that you were losing your precious time with Audiograbber.

Also, if you want to get Exact Audio Copy set up perfectly once and for all, check out Chris Myden's article on the subject.

Now, let's talk about compression: First, you need to find out what formats your DJ software will support. The most likely scenario is that it will just handle MP3, but there's a chance you can use another format, or even a lossless compression (just think of exactly the same audio as from the CD, but at bitrates of around 800kbps).

When you're DJ-mixing, you tend to do equalizing and cutting of frequency bands; these operations can make an otherwise perfectly-good MP3 sound strange. The MP3 encoder assumes you will listen to the unaltered sound, but when you remove certain frequencies, some of the hidden defects in the MP3 file will show up.

Equalizers might make the sound imperfect, but advanced processing, such as voice removal, is almost guaranteed to make an MP3 sound like crap. If you intend to use this kind of effect, you really should either do it before encoding to MP3 or not encode in the first place, and play the original file (either as .wav format or as a losslessly-compressed file).

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Okay, so let's say you're set on using only MP3 files for your DJ software. The next challenge is picking what settings to use for your MP3 encoder. Picking the encoder isn't hard; pick Lame

Your DJ software may be able to support VBR (variable bitrate) MP3's properly, or it may not. Some DJ software can't accurately seek within a VBR file. If your software can hand VBR, though, then encoding all your songs with the command --alt-preset standard or --alt-preset extreme should give you excellent-quality MP3's to work with.

However, if you're restricted to CBR (constant bitrate) MP3's (128kbps, 160kbps, 192kbps, etc), then you'll want to use something like --alt-preset cbr 192.

If you can handle the high bitrate, I recommend --alt-preset insane. It gives 320kbps CBR MP3's, which may be too large for you to store on your DJ system, but they're guaranteed to work in your MP3-based DJ software since they aren't VBR, and the resulting MP3's should have enough extra information to still sound great after you've run the sound through some equalizers or filters.

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Okay, I've given you way too much information here, and the chances are some of it went over your head because you haven't wasted years of your precious life studying MP3 codecs If you scan through the site, though, you'll find all the information you need to get your recordings sounding their very best.

Thanks for all the replies...yes, my software (either PCDJ or DJ Power) can use MP3s. I think I'm going to stick with what I've been ripping at which is CBR--128 kbps.

I'm going to DL EAC and give it a shot...I will let everyone know how it goes...I'm sure it will be as good as everyone says!

Jim

This has been a hotly debated topic for a long, long time, and many people have eventually fessed up to one fact: secure ripping is overrated. It has it's uses, but basically, if you have CDs that are in generally good shape, with few scratches, and a good CD-ROM (one that supports accurate data stream, like a TDK, Plextor, or Lite-ON), then there are only two benefits you get from EAC's secure ripping. One is it's extra effort to get through the scratched portion. However, if your CD-ROM can't read it, your CD-ROM can't read it, period. All that extra trying just slows down the process. The other benefit, the truely useful one in my opinion, is that is will tell you not only that there were completely unrecoverable errors on the CD, but it will tell you where they were, so you can listen to the MP3, and see if you can notice any problems. Very handy, that. In general, however, Audiograbber reaches identical quality of EAC and CDex in almost all cases. I've used Audiograbber to rip more than 400 CDs, with not a problem in one rip. That's a lot of CDs to get perfect results on, and I've checked them against EAC rips for bit-for-bit accuracy, just to check and see. But then, few of my CDs show significant scratches, and my CD-RW from TDK is very good at ripping audio, as well as reading through scratched portions of a CD. In the end, it's a matter of taste, and my taste goes with the faster, easier to use ripper, Audiograbber.