Hi all, this is my first post on Hydrogenaudio. I've been lurking on and off for over a year now, however. You've given me some great material to read during that time.

I could use some workflow advice for my cd ripping mission. Each time I rip a disc I'd like to end up with a back-up / home listening version and a portable media player version. My home network is a snarled mix of Macs and PCs (I currently use an x86 mutt), but Macs are slowly winning the battle. Because of that I'm going to be using ALAC for my lossless music format and MP3s (LAME -aps) for my lossy format.

I currently use EAC + LAME for ripping and encoding, as well as foobar2000 when I need to convert a FLAC file to another format. I've experimented with Otto's iTunesEncoder a bit but I'm not comfortable with it just quite yet. iTunes is the program I use for playing all my music.

Somewhere within these programs has got to be an efficient method of ripping and encoding to two formats. I'm not even concerned much with the file placement issues yet. I'm happy to back all my data up by hand. All I want is a quick way to get both copies of my rips as easily as possible, and with all relevant tags intact.

Any advice would be apprecated, thanks!

What you want is MAREO. I've not used it, but its whole reason for being is to do exactly what you want. You can use it with Otto's itunesencode to get your ALAC files and with LAME to get your MP3 files.

EDIT: Correct a typo

*hi5*

dbpoweramp (100% GUI) ....go and search the beta forum of dbpoweramp
this function you mentioned is only available in beta

ok i am in the same position as you. my home network consists of a IBM Windows Laptop (Beamer, yes that is common), Windows PC (we call her Pandora as she behaves that way), and iMac (Spider because she hangs on a wall). My portable music player is a iPod (Wrigleys because that what she looks like). If we get a Mac mini we plan to christen her Herbie or MiniMe.

I dont know anything about computers or Mp3 in fact I did not have a MP3 untill my nephew gifted us the iMac and iPod (we live in India and he carried the Apple stuff over from the US) all connected via something called a 802.11 router. Besides being on the wrong side of 40 we are not very computer literate. Our nehpew did all this so we dont know what he did it just works.

A couple of kind souls (Synthetic Soul and Ponchorage) helped us out this this and SS even wrote some batch files for us.

the recomendations were as follows:
Use EAC to create a CDImage.wack.wav file
Use Wack 0.46 http://www.uninformative.com/wack/index.php to then run 2 encoders Lame 3.96.1 and WavPack 4.2
SS modified the encoders.ini file in wack to give me a Mp3 quality that has a compresion ratio of about 5:1 or 6:1 (Alt Present Extreme). which i wanted.
So far I have managed to "rip" about 300-400 (of my 600+ CDs) and only a few have not worked. Funnily while scratched CDs have run fine some CDs that look physically ok have not (about 5). Also sometimes wack stops inthe middle so SS wrote me a batch file that runs on the CDImage.wack.wav file and creates the .wv (wavpack) and .mp3 (Lame) files without me having to run EAC again.

I suggest you contact these 2 guys they are totally amazing. trust them. dont think just do as they recommend, I'm sure glad I did. they know more than I can ever learn. There are others here too that are really smart too but i only recommend SS and ponchorage as I have experienced their fantastic and selfless advise and help.

BTW I have still to play my Mp3s on the iPod. We are afraid becuase iPod says that it uses something called AAC and all we have are .wv and .mp3. our nehpew says it is ok but will the ipod play mp3 will the mp3 damage the ipod? See not all Indians know Computeese or should I call it Compu-tease as we feel these gadgets taunt us.

The iPod will play mp3s. I don't think there is a DAP in existence besides some minidisc players that doesn't. It's kinda financial suicide to not support it.

I use MAREO and itunesencode to do exactly what you are talking about.

I use EAC to rip to individual tracks in secure mode, and then have 3 actions assigned to each track in MAREO.

1. used wavegain to get the volume accross all tracks corrected to 89db. (i use shuffle ALOT on my ipod)

2. rip to MP3 using LAME 3.96.1 -aps for the ipod

3. rip to ALAC for archives and listening on the PC.

it works really well.

here's my mareo.ini all you have to do is get the paths to the files right for your system.

==================================================
; MAREO - (M.)ultiple (A.)pplications (R.)unner for (E.)AC and (O.)thers.

; Literal From Replacing Value
; @finalnameonly@ Parameter # 2 Encoded File Final File Name (ie.: artist - cd - track - name)
; @source@ Parameter # 3 FULL Source File Name
; @dest@ Parameter # 4 FULL Destination File Name
; @artist@ Parameter # 5 CD Artist Name
; @album@ Parameter # 6 CD Name
; @title@ Parameter # 7 Song Name
; @track@ Parameter # 8 Track (song) Number
; @year@ Parameter # 9 Year of the CD release
; @genre@ Parameter # 10 CD's Music Genre
; @11@ .. @nn@ Parameter # 11... User Definenable
;
; @ownpath@ MAREO finds out the full path to MAREO, without the the ending backslash
; @finalpathonly@ MAREO finds out the final path to where the encode file will end
; @finalfullname@ MAREO finds out the final full name of the encoded file: @finalpathonly@ + \ + @finanameonly@
; @tmpfullname@ MAREO finds out the full temporal name with the encoder extension
; @tmppathonly@ MAREO finds out the full temporal path, without the ending backslash
; @tmpnameonly@ MAREO finds out the temporal name, without any extension
; @extonly@ MAREO finds out the encoder file extension without the dot (ie: OGG)

; ====================================================================================================
=======================
; PRE-PROCESSORS
; ====================================================================================================
=======================

; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; WAVEGAIN
; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EXT = NONE
PATH = NONE
ENCODER = k:\Program Files\wavegain\wavegain.exe
PARAMETERS = --radio --apply --noclip "@source@"

; ====================================================================================================
=======================
; LOSSY ENCODERS
; ====================================================================================================
=======================

; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; MP3 LAME (--alt-preset standard)
; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EXT = mp3
PATH = m:\mp3\@artist@\@album@
ENCODER = k:\Program Files\LAME\lame.exe
PARAMETERS = --alt-preset standard --ignore-tag-errors --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "@artist@" --tl "@album@" --tt "@title@" --tn "@track@" --ty @year@ --tg "@genre@" --tc "EAC,LAME396.1 APS,MAREO" "@source@" "@dest@"


; ====================================================================================================
=======================
; LOSSLESS ENOCERS
; ====================================================================================================
=======================


; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; MP4 (iTunes + iTunesEncode: http://otto.homedns.org:8888/iTunes/iTunesEncode.zip)
; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EXT = m4a
PATH = m:\ALAC\@artist@\@album@
ENCODER = k:\program files\itunesencode\iTunesEncode.exe
; Usage: iTunesEncode.exe [options] -i <input.wav> [-o <output.ext>]
PARAMETERS = -e "Lossless Encoder" -a "@artist@" -l "@album@" -n @track@ -t "@title@" -y @year@ -g "@genre@" -c "EAC,itunesencode,MAREO,itunes4.9" -i "@source@" -o "@dest@" -d

;-d to delete temp file from itunes library after created.

; EOF


====================================================

Hey vodka_mike - how do you keep your tracks organized in iTunes? I've been trying to set things up so I don't have the alac and mp3 versions of all my albums jumbled together, but I haven't settled on a good solution yet. Thanks for your response in this thread, btw.

I use iTunes with xACT, as a middle step for all the music process, that goes like the following:

1) rip in linux with crip (cdparanoia/flac) (maybe there's an option to rip in wav. Of course, silly, just cdparanoia!!!)
2) transfer to imac
3) convert to wav with xact
4) mount cd image with toast
5) rip to ALAC the cd image
6) burn to DVD many albums, with iTunes, so they get loaded in the library when inserted.
6bis) create PAR2 (4%) recovery for the files in the DVDs (this involves copying back all the contents of the DVD to hard disk, to lessen the use of the DVD)
7) rerip everything from the DVD, using iTunes-Lame (apple script on doug's site: google for it) (using --preset medium for now)
8) everything back to the linux box, with one playlist for each DVD, and shared with daapd.

This way, the load on iMac's hard disk and processor is very low, except for the process of ripping. And there is no library, you adjust things one for all before burning DVD-R, then you don't change.

[QUOTE][quote=vodka_mike,Jul 29 2005, 04:58 AM]
I use MAREO and itunesencode to do exactly what you are talking about.

I use EAC to rip to individual tracks in secure mode, and then have 3 actions assigned to each track in MAREO.[/QUOTE]

I'm not as informed on the subject, but this is exactly what I would like to do as well. Can you please tell me if there is a tutorial out there that explains this process in detail so a Newbie like myself can understand how to set all this up for automation? I'm not sure if I want to use ALAC or FLAC yet, but I do want to get everything completed at the same time so I do not have to give any more time to the process than my 400 CD collection will already demand of me.

To clarify, I want to be able to rip a CD into two files:
One for a lossless archive
One for a lossy hi quality portable file (LAME MP3, most likely)

www.webearce.com.ar is a tutorial, but download form HA MAREO 2.x topic.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....t=0#entry240386