I'm in the process of ripping my CD collection to my hard drive for the first time and want ot make sure I do it right.

I have already done a few discs using the rip feature on windows media player 10 at 192 kbps MP3, and it sounds fine, plus the interface is easy. I don't think I can tell the difference between the MP3 and original CD In the comparisons I've done so far.

I have tried doing searches on the LAME encoder and the EAC ripper, but I can't get a clear cut understanding of the advantages of using LAME and EAC over Windows Media. Heck, I don't even understand if the two are mutually exclusive or if they can work together.

In summary, am I fine just using Windows Media 10 to rip the files and convert them to MP3, or am I making some audible compromises by not using programs like LAME and EAC? If anyone could break down the advantages of LAME and EAC over windows media ripping in simple terms, I'd greatly appreciate it!

Thanks for your help, and go easy on me, I'm new to this!

Hey, and welcome to the Hydrogenaudio forums.

If you can't sense a difference in quality between the original CD tracks and your MP3 rips, then I guess that's fine. Differences in quality are subjective - you might percieve a difference in quality between two samples while someone else may not.

If you really want to check if you can sense differences between tracks, I suggest you ABX them. That means having four choices of sound, A,B,X, and Y. Two of these are one of the samples, while the other two are the other. If you can listen to A,B,X, and Y and match them up (for example, A is B and X is Y) without knowing which sample is which, it suggests that you can percieve a difference in quality between the two samples.
If you want to do some ABX tests, try using the ABX comparator in foobar2000 (It may be an optional component, so you may have to choose it when installing, or download it separately). Add the two files to a playlist, select both, right-click them, and go to utils->ABX two tracks.

However, even if you can't detect a difference in quality, I suggest you switch to EAC, CDex, or foobar2000 for ripping. This is because they can rip to many other formats, which you might want to use somewhere down the line (like lossless ones for example - a lot of us here are audiophiles - we're all about quality ). Also, these applications are better rippers than Windows Media Player, because they're secure rippers (except for CDex). Thus, they're better at ripping with no errors when compared to Windows Media Player.

Yes, LAME and EAC can work together. If you want to know how, just search for a guide on EAC and LAME. (Google is your friend, and I know there are some guides out there).

And one last thing. If you are using LAME, you can give it other command-line parameters that can enhance and further customize the MP3's you produce.

Hope this helps.

nazgulord.

LAME is a tremendously more sophisticated MP3 encoder. Basically its the best available from the mp3 format. EAC is a CD ripper that works well with damaged CDs and can generally produce clean rips on many disks that less advanced rippers cannot.

I would strongly recommend you use LAME. Its a good 5 or 6 years newer then the encoder MS includes (I believe anyway), and almost universally considered better. EAC probably isn't a big deal unless you have scratched CDs. Though personally I think EAC is a really nice app and I always use it regardless.

Well I went ahead and restarted process using LAME, EAC, and Foobar.

Everything is going fine, I am using the info on the wiki to help, however I am encountering one significant problem.

I cannot get the files I rip in EAC to carry over their album and artist info into Foobar or Windows Media. Of course I can get EAC to include the album and artist in the filename along with the song title, but that just makes the filename long and ambiguous and doesn't help with organization.

I think I am missing something when it comes to tags. Any help with this one? I seem to be coming up empty by scouring the wiki. IDtags are probably the most confusing part of this I've come across thus far.

Wrong. Anything that deviates from the -V x settings should be considered to degrade audio quality, not enhance it. There may be rare examples where that is not true, but unless you've got ABX tests proving otherwise, don't assume altering the command-line will improve quality one bit.

Take a look at the section on "Setting up EAC for LAME.exe with tagging" at the recommended LAME settings thread.
Use a command line such as [-V2 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --ta "%a" --tt "%t" --tl "%g" --ty "%y" --tn "%n" %s %d] for adding id3v1&2 tags in EAC.
Hope this helps.

Yep, it's fixed! Things are going pretty smoothly. There's a lot to learn about this new software, especially with FOOBAR. I'm using EAC with lame at the -V2 VBR setting.

EAC finds errors on a few of my CD's every once in a while and it takes a looooong time to rip those, but when I listen to the encoded MP3's they sound fine. I think it does that on CD's that might have some scratching.

I'm really delving into the wiki to try and figure things out, tons of info.

Well, I don't think even the -V x settings are in WMP are they?

And another thing - you could be a bit nicer about telling people that they're wrong.