HI all!

I am new to entire Audio stuff. 4 days ago I knew nothing, didn't know what Ripping was, encoding, etc. I have 4 teens who all "borrow" my CDs. So I want to legally preserve my originals, and let them listen to backed-up copies.

After searching with Google, I stumbled across "The Radical Guide to Rippping and Encoding . . " This seemed pretty comprehensible and staright-forward, with plenty of links. I have read it in-deoth about 10 times in 4 days, and following most links. Getting confused, learning, and finding out a little and that there is a lot more to learn. I know (nearly) nothing.

I have, based on this guide, sert up (and used) EAC to "Rip" one of my CDs. I set up EAC with LAME 3.90.3 (vs. newer version of LAME) using --alt preset standard. (All I can handle for now, forget about "offsets" - I'll try to understand that later.)

Now I have successfully (I THINK - it sound s good) created a WAV file and an MP3 file from one of my CDs. I used the CD burner that came with my system (ROXIO Easy CD v 5 basic) to burn an Audio CD from the WAV files. No problem. I guess that they are a high quality. The Cd seems to sound good.

Q/Problem??? I have also set up per "The Radical Guide..." Monkey Audio in order to LossLess compress WAV to APE. I never heard of APE, but downloaded WinAmp LITE to play APE files. However: What use are they? They are half the size or less of WAV files, so they take up less space. BUT ROXIO will not burn APE to an Audio CD, only burn APE as data on a data CD. So I have to keep my WAV files, so now using up more space for both WAV, APE amd MP3s on my USB backup 80 GB Hard Drive. (MP3s will be used for eventaully I want to get an MP3 player.)

Can some one explain? How best to utilize Monkey Audio? I've searched Internet, this Frum, and Monkey Audio's Forum, and have not found a good simple guide, explanation, step-by-step similar to "The Radified Guide..." and its links.

Thanks! And sorry for wordiness, I like to explain, and like explanations...

APE files are a type of lossless compression, i.e. it compresses without discarding any of your audio data. You'd get perfect copies if you used APE and configured EAC correctly. Download APE from the Monkey's Audio website and follow one of the numerous guides to configure EAC.


I'd start with this guide:

http://www.saunalahti.fi/cse/EAC/

I just looked at that guide. Sorry, It doesn't answer my Q.

1.) I already have Monkey Audio.
2.) I already used Monkey to convert WAV created from EAC to *.APE files.
3.) How do i use *.APE files to burn an Audio CD? (So I don't hacve to keep larger WAV files on my Hard Disk.)

Thnaks!

Well, you're off to a great start so far, but just like everything else, you'll hear differing opinions on what to do. I'll just list what I do.

1. Use EAC to rip with Spoon's AccurateRip database. (AccurateRip will automaticaly calculate offsets when a key disc is inserted) www.exactaudiocopy.de & www.accuraterip.com
2. Rip to a single image with .cue file (I use FLAC because it's open source and multi-platform) Action > Copy Image & Create CUE Sheet > Compressed
--best %s "ARTIST=%a" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "GENRE=%m" -T Encoder="Exact Audio Copy (Secure Mode), FLAC 1.10"
3. Use Flexible Renamer to correct the resulting file extensions. Straight out of EAC, FLAC files will have .flac.flac and .flac.cue. Flexible Renamer is super easy, does sub-directories, is free and fast. Flexible Renamer
4. Load .cue files in Foobar 2000.
5. Play music and enjoy.
6. Use Foobar to transcode from FLAC to .mp3. (You'll have to search for that one as I don't have my settings with me to post at the moment.
Somebody else will have to comment on burning with Foobar since I've never done it.

Hopefully I understand you correctly. I'll try to clarify:

1. Monkey's audio is a lossless audio data compressor. It's kinda like a ZIP for audio files, meaning that you are able to restore the original audio file. If you convert an APE file to a WAV file it will be exactly the same as the original WAV file you compressed.

2. MP3 is a lossy audio data compressor. It works by discarding the information that you are unlikely to hear during normal playback conditions. In this case you are unable to restore the original audio. If you convert a MP3 file to a WAV file it will be different from the original WAV file you compressed.

Bottom line: if you have the APE files you may discard the WAV ones, because you are able to restore them losslessly.

As per burning APE files you have 2 choices IMO:

1. Use a Monkey's Audio compatible burner such as burnatonce and burrrn! (google for it)
2. Convert the APE files to WAV and burn them. Delete the WAV files afterwards, of course.

One personal advice: read the FAQ and research a little more. If you are a newbie you will take much longer than 4 days to learn about audio compression.

EAC has built-in burner which support burning from APE files, so the only one thing you have to do is to have a appropriate cue-sheet to rebuild the CD structure from you APE file (1 compessed wav) or files.
When you have loaded the cue-sheet in EAC Burner, you're ready to make a backup of your CD's...

PS: There's no need to store your wave files on the disk since you already have apes...

1. I understood before, thanks.

2. I understood before, thanks.

The "Bottom line" is the problem. HOW, which Software is Best (or good) at converting APEs back to WAV to burn an Audio CD?

I will read your suggested FAQ link.

P.S. I know it will take a LOT longer than 4 days. I just wanted to get started, somewhere. (Clnts (sic) answer was very technical and very complicated. Maybe in a year I might be able to follow his suggestions, if I ever decide to get to that level. That's an awful lot of software and tech to take in for a newbie.)

CUE sheet? As I said i know I have a lot to learn. What's a CUE sheet? I'll look at the suggested FAQ. So it is essential to have a CUE sheet to burn Audio CDs from APE files? (Thereby not creating WAV files on my system? Or are WAV files created by EAC and then I have to delete them? "Referre to as on-the-fly CD burning?
thanks.

Cue-sheet is a simple text file (*.cue) which is storing information about indexes, gaps, CD-Text etc. of the CD. You need a cue sheet mostly when you're burning from an image (1 big compressed / uncompressed file)...
You can get a cue sheet by EAC: Action - Create Cue Sheet...

So, since I ripped a 16 Track CD into 16 separate WAV files, Used Monkey Audio to compress to 16 separate APE files (there seems to be a *.m3u created by Monkey Audio, and No CUE sheet *.txt) file from EAC, do I need to re-rip 16 tracks with a CUE sheet in order to burn a CD using EAC from *.ape files?

Thanksfor your patience and time.

For burning apes, I think the easiest thing to do is download Burrrn. It is a cd-burning program that has support for ape files. You don't need the cue sheet to be able to burn the cd correctly if you created individual ape files for each song.

If you had created an ape image file, you would need a cue sheet to properly burn the cd, otherwise your cd would just have one really long song made up of all the individual songs. The cue sheet gives indices into the image file to be able to tell where one song ends and another begins.

No, you don't have to re-rip the CD, just take back the CD in the CD-ROM, run EAC and go to "Actions" - "Create Cue Sheet" - Current Gap Settings". EAC will scan the CD and made a cue-sheet (*.cue) where will be all the additional information stored (pregaps, CD-TEXT, ISRC, subchannel info...). It's not necessary to create a cue-sheet but when you want to restore the CD with pregaps there's no other way...
Have in mind that you must edit the cue-sheet when you'll burn from apes, since by default the cue-sheet is stored for wavs. It's very easy just exchange the extensions (*.wav to *.ape) and ending WAVE to APE...
If you'll have additional questions try first F.A.Q. and then come back and ask here...

Thank you! I've got it set up, I think.

1.) Continue Research and Reading.....
2.) Set up EAC with two profiles:
a.) One with LAME 3.90.3 to rip & encode to mp3
b.) Second EAC with Monkey Audio (MAC.exe - I've been do'in more read'n) to Rip & encode to APE (PRIMARY Profile).
3.) I don't really need RAZOR LAME, since it won't later convert APE files sored to MP3.
4.) Use EAC, later, when I want to convert APE files to MP3
5.) Use Burrrn! (installed earlier this afternoon) to burn Audio Cds with APE files.

That should all I need to get started.

6.) Oh and same as # 1! Read more, and absorb.

THANKS!!!

http://mp3.radified.com/

OK, so you want to archive your CD collection, and have an MP3 version as well.

As you have kids I guess you are a busy man and want to automate this as much as possible. I'm near the end to backing up my collection of around 300 CDs, and I've been at it since September 20th. Rather than run EAC twice to create your APE and MP3 files I would suggest you use another application in conjunction with EAC to do both at the same time.

Personally I go for Monkey's Audio, with one image for the whole CD. However, that does make things a little more complicated if you want individual track files also (which I don't). One method is to use an adapted version of LAME which can split an APE file into MP3s using a cuesheet. The other would be to switch to FLAC as your lossless codec (instead of APE), and use FLACattack.

However, if you are happy sticking with individual track APE files then I would suggest you look at MAREO. MAREO would allow you to rip to APE and MP3 at the same time.

NB: I've just tested one of my CD image APE files by burning it to disc using EAC, ripping both the original and copy to WAV using EAC, and then comparing both WAV files using EAC. I'm so chuffed to say that there were no anomolies. After ripping 258 CDs I was so pleased to see that!

For burning compressed formats back to CD, burrrn seems to be the best bet.

http://www.burrrn.net/

It was recommended to me on another forum and apparently uses the official decoders (LAME, Ogg, mpcdec) for compressed files before burning back to make an audio CD (which presumably results in the highest quality burns)

Burrrn is very good.

However, bare in mind that any application would use the "official" decoders to decode to WAV before burning as an audio CD. All these codecs are freeware, and many are open source, therefore there is no need to redevelop a decoder, and you couldn't burn a compressed file to audio CD without decompressing to WAV first.

I don't mean to be pedantic, I'm just trying to be informative.

Well arguably a LAME decoder would (or rather should) be able to decode a LAME Mp3 the best, because it would (or rather should) know how the file was made in the first place.

Copyrighted/proprietary burning software may use Fraunhofer or Dolby decoders, which are generally completely acceptable, but may result in sliiiightly less overall quality when it turns back to WAV.

BTW, I thought some burning programs like Nero might have done the decoding and burn to CDA on the fly, rather than go to WAV

That's true, yes. Sorry, I was (incorrectly) only considering the lossless codecs really. My apologies.
Hmmm... "on the fly" - I think you'll find that the "fly" bit is a WAV stream. These decoders decode to WAV - that's what they do. Ahead can't magically make them do anything else. It's just that instead of APE file -> WAV file -> Burner, you get APE file -> WAV stream -> Burner.

burning on the fly..... the burning program still has to "decompress" the choosen codec (talking lossless here), APE / FLAC to wav file in the temp directory then burn it and move on. so you don't have to do it manually. I decompress with the apporiate codec then burn the wave file, then delete
but that is my choice