A bit of history...I wanted to rip some DVDs to keep on my computer. After playing with numerous commercial products, and realizing they're all pretty much crap, I settled on a couple free tools which are far superior to anything you'd pay for. (DVDShrink and Auto Gordian Knot, if you're interested.)

So I'm thinking I should see what's out there for ripping my music CDs for my iPod. I'm rather disappointed with the MP3 encoder included in iTunes, and I'm thinking that free alternatives must exist -- allowing me to duplicate my pleasant experience with the DVDs. (And yeah, I'm okay with reripping my music collection.)

I've done some research on this board, and based on what I've read, I'm thinking of using these tools:

* EAC - for ripping from CD to .WAV files and getting track information from an online database
* LAME - for encoding, calling from within EAC using the new fast presets
* MP3Gain - for adjusting volumes across an album
* EphPod - for transferring .MP3s to my iPod

I listen mostly in somewhat nosiy environments: car, bus, airplane. On occasion I also fire it up in a hotel using a JBL On Stage. Therefore, I'm thinking that the "-V 4 --vbr-new" ("--preset fast medium", 165kbps) would work well for my needs.

I have a some questions before I begin my project, however.

1. Are there any other tools I should use? Is my toolset selection OK? I see some mention here of CDEX and AudioGrabber, but not as frequently as EAC.

2. Is "-V 4 --vbr-new" (165 kbps) overkill for an iPod used in my kinds of environments? Would "-V 5 --vbr new" (130 kbps) be suitable? What's the file size vs. audio quality tradeoff between these two? The list of recommended settings indicates that even "-V 6 --vbr-new" (115 kbps) is acceptable; how do you feel about this?

3. Should I take this opportunity to ditch MP3 and re-encode everything with MP4 instead?

Thanks for your thoughts and ideas. Great forum here!

--Steve

I too have an iPod, so we're working for somewhat of the same thing...

EAC: Yes, ripper of choice.
LAME: The only mp3 codec you should use.
MP3Gain: Great for gaining after-the-fact.
EphPod: Good, but I've found it to crash frequently. Check out YamiPod.

Here's the thing about ripping...
Do it once. Do it right. Do it to a lossless format. Convert as the flavor of the day (mp3, aac, ogg, etc...) changes.

You'll find that many people will rip from the original CD with EAC to a lossless format. Be it FLAC (my personal choice), Wavpack, Apple Lossless, Monkey's Audio or others, it's sound thinking to go this way as you'll do it once (hopefully).

Here's how I've ripped all my CD's:
1. Fire up EAC and configure it according to what drive you have, the compression you'll be using and the naming scheme.
2. Let EAC connect to freedb for the titles and such, but I generally double check punctuation, capitilization and such against allmusic.com.
3. Rip to single file/cue sheet combination and name it, "Artist - Year - Album".
4. Fire up iTunes and check to see if iTMS has the album. If so, I'll grab the cover art for it and save to the directory of the album just ripped/compressed.
5. Fire up "The GodFather" (tagging, renaming, organizing tool) and via the "Online" component, I'll tag further with Composer, Mood, Style...anything it'll grab from allmusic.com. That's just a few clicks, by the way. I'll also have GF (not "Girl Friend") save the album list as a .html file for reference.
6. Load the .cue files into Foobar for playing and conversion to .mp3 or .m4a for iPod usage. I'll also do the Replaygain steps in Foobar as opposed to a post-conversion MP3Gain. It's more accurate and easier.
7. Put all the converted .mp3 or .m4a's into iTunes and drag 'em onto my iPod.

If you need something clarified, just ask.

Why not just let EAC do the WAV-to-MP3 conversion instead? I don't listen to music on my computer, only on the iPod, so I really don't need a media player like Foobar. Or is it simply "better" in some way to let Foobar do the conversion?

--Steve

I've always used EAC and ripped directly to FLAC. I rip to individual files with a cuesheet. Afterward I load the files in foobar and Label and Catalogue # tags and replyagain. Then scan the artwork with my annoying scanner and fix it up with Photoshop. These days I tend to use WavPack instead of FLAC though. If my CD is missing the art I check the usual places, wal-mart.com, discogs.com and amazon.com for the cover.

If iTunes has it, chances are it'll be very high quality and 600x600. Fire up iTunes, search for the Artist, find the album in question, right-click on it and select "Copy iTunes Music Store URL", then paste into:
http://tpemble.urfbownd.net/itunes/itunes-art.php

How many times have there been revisions of mp3 codecs? How about new versions of the AAC codec used in iTunes? Point is: Store as lossless once and you'll not have to re-rip the CD when a newer, better, whiz bang codec comes along. In Foobar, it's as easy as configuring the codec, via the command line diskwriter component, right-click>convert. There ya go, all fresh with the new car smell.

The foobar2000 0.9 betas add secure ripping. The only hurdle is sending the files to an iPod which should be possible once 0.9 comes out of beta (it is currently possible with foobar2000 0.8.3 with the foo_pod component, but 0.8.3 doesn't have secure ripping).

I agree - once fb2k 0.9 goes out of beta, it may very well replace most other tools for digital audio-management - even for those who prefer another app for playback.

This is all very interesting, thanks so far for your posts.

I must admit, I hadn't thought of saving the unencoded rips. Good idea, and I'll do that.

Which leads to another question. If I read everything correctly, EAC rips uncompressed files. I can tell EAC to pass those through a lossless compressor like FLAC or WavPack. I'm guessing that this is simply to save space? If one has sufficient hard drive space to store uncompressed files, is the FLAC/WavPack step really necessary? Or am I misunderstanding the purpose of those tools?

--Steve

You've got it. Lossless is analagous to a .zip file. Compression without loss.

Sorry for an OT question. I cannot find the settings about offset correction. Can you tell me where it is?

You understand exactly.

I am planning to backup all my audio CDs with FLAC to some DVDs. With FLAC, it is possible to store most of my Ayu CDs in a single DVD.

Do a search for "The Coaster Factory" and many EAC questions will be answered.

I am sorry, clintb. I asked the location of the offset settings in foobar2000 0.9 beta 12.

William- make sure you are running a 0.9 beta with the cddb component installed (I believe it is checked by default in the installer).

Go to Components > Play Audio CD... and click the "Drive Settings" button.

hi clintb - Could you clarify the steps above a little.

I have ripped to a single FLAC file with embedded CUE, however when I open in TGF, it doesn't seem to recognise the CUE/FLAC combo - it only shows the single FLAC file with no separate tracks. Is something needed to enable this? A TGF script perhaps??

Thanks.

This will not change your volume.

foobar's ReplayGain adds tags to files to be read within foobar.

You must still use MP3Gain

Just my two cents on this. I also use an iPod (2nd Gen Ipod Mini firmware 1.4). There are some issues with Lame, iPods and certain VBR settings, as covered on this site. With sudden increases in bitrate it sometimes create skips due to the battery saving function on the ipod. I would rip the CDs you have to a lossless format first regardless, then to whatever lossy format you prefer, and yes, I also prefer Lame and will continue to do so.

Regarding the file transfer the best program in my opinion is still Anapod, having used it for about 2 years its amazing, and by far the best alternative to iTunes, although a commercial package.

He's referring to the "Use replaygain" option in fb2k's converter, which applies the replaygain adjustment before doing the conversion, so that the output file is normalized.

Oh... Ok, then!

I discovered Max a week ago and its taken place as my favorite cd ripping toolset.
It uses cdparanoia to extract the audio from the cd, then it compress the audio using various encoders. My favorites are Apple Lossless and LAME.

I rip to WAV with EAC, edit the cuesheet COMMENT tag to match the catalogue number on the CD side (or disc face, if they're different), then compress with WavPack, embedding the cuesheet (and adding the DISCNUMBER tag if necessary). If I ever want to make MP3s I use the latest beta of foobar2000 with the latest LAME and get it to do all the tagging for me.