Hi Guys, I'm a newbie and sorry if I'm asking something that has already being answered.

I have all my Cds encoded in Wav format that as far as I know is a lossless format. Now, I need to encode my music in mp3. My question would be:

Is there any difference in ripping from the Cd to mp3 than encoding from the Wav file to mp3?

Thanks for your help.

As long as the WAVs were ripped at 16 bit, 44100 Hz, which is the CD audio standard, then there shouldn't be any difference. Pretty much any program is going to rip PCM/WAV at 16/44 by default... but I suppose there's a small possibility otherwise.

Basically, no difference, unless the waves were encoded to another (lossy) format first, and then to CD.

However, you may get a slightly higher quality if you (re-) rip using EAC (unless you did so in the first place), since it corrects for scratched CDs, small surface errors, etc.

Take a look at the several EAC+LAME guides (use search) or go on the WIKI.

Thank guys for your help, I'm using the EAC / Foobar 2000 (Lame) combo...

Just another question...(I haven´t found the answer in the forum...)

I have ripped my Cds to Wav using EAC. Now, every time I open any of the wav files on Itunes I have no tag information (no artist, no album, etc). But, if I rip a Cd on Itunes, I see all the tagging information. Is this behaviour ok or is something wrong with EAC?

Again, thanks for your help...

Yes, it's normal. The WAV standard does not allow tagging. Tags can be added to WAV's, but this breaks with the standard and very few players/tools will recognize the tags. So it's best to just not use them.

What I do is to place the tag info in the file name. EAC allows for this... I use the format: Genre - Artist - CD Title - Track Number - Song Title.wav I encode to MP3 using Lame and then use a tag editor (the name of mine slips my mind now) that will deconstruct the file name and properly tag the file. PM me if you have trouble finding a tag editor that does this and I can send you program name later.

Anyone know of a program that will convert a wav to MP3 and tag using filename all at once?

Tag.exe will tag from filename. Wapet.exe will run an encoder and immediately tag with APEv2 - but I guess you'd be after ID3v1/2.

The only problem with using a filename to store meta data is the illegal character limitiation. You will end up losing information if an artist, album or title contains characters that are not valid for a filename (e.g. : * \ / < >).

Yes, I check for these characters prior to hitting the conversion button.

How else can you store the tag info? When I use EAC, this was the only way that I found to store the info for the tags in wav format.Would be interested to hear a better method when EAC is used to rip the file. Thanks.

I don't know what your goals are, but could you not rip to a lossless format like WavPack and tag the files?

I don't see the point in wanting waves, when you consider the increased file size and no tag issue.

Another option would be some sort of meta text file I guess...

My goals: I would like to rip all of my CD's to a lossless format on my HD for archive. Then convert to MP3 with a compressor of choice. Right now Lame 3.97b, but in the future when a higher level version is out, it would be easy to point to the WAV files and regen my MP3 collection. I have searched this forum and (maybe thru my poor search skills) not come up with a solution other than what I outlined above. I will take a look at WavPak... Thanks

If you search for WACK, REACT or MAREO you will see that you can use EAC to rip to both lossless and MP3 at the same time.

I personally use REACT to rip to a WavPack image with cuesheet. I could use this to create track MP3 files at the same time if I so wished, and many people use a similar technique.

If you use foobar (GUI application) or ACDIR (command line application) it is very easy to convert from WavPack to MP3 (or any other format). foobar will convert anything to anything. ACDIR understands WAVE, FLAC, WavPack and Monkey's Audio.

REACT uses ACDIR to rip to both lossless image file and track lossy files. ACDIR uses a cuesheet (external or embedded) to split an image file into its tracks, and passes that audio data to the encoder.

This is very helpful. Thanks for taking the time to reply.