Hi all,

1. I am looking for the best quality tool to convert APE, Flac, mp3 files to mp3, USING lame dll and APE, Flac.
2. a direct conversion without converting to wav first, and then encoding agian to mp3.
3. there are: foobar2000, ALL2LAME, RazorLame.
4. other commercial: Easy CD-DA Extractor, dBpowerAMP, which do not use lame dll directly.
5. Can EAC do the convrsion? and how ?

thanks

All software will have to convert to wav first, it's just whether or not you "see" this process.

I'd recommend Foobar2000.

1. are you sure about that?
2. even tiny ALL2LAME does so ?

thanks

I think Max is the "best" tool to convert audio files. It only run on Mac OS X though.

Are you sure about this?
Cause from what I know some applications don't use the wave container for intermediate files, but raw PCM files.

http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/

In many cases, the PCM data resulting from the decoding of the source file will be fed directly to the encoder; no intermediate file, of WAV or any other type, will be used. foobar2000 does this.

dbpoweramp

1. What is the differences between wav and raw PCM files?
2. what if i convert first to wav with EAC and then to mp3?

* WAV is a media container (just like AVI, OGG, MKV, MP4, etc.), which can hold both uncompressed (PCM) and compressed audio.
* PCM is an uncompressed audio stream. Identical to the ones you find in audio CD's.

Useful links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wav
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCM

yes10, what exactly are your concerns about the ''quality'' of conversion tools, or whether the conversion is direct or with a WAV file being written as an intermediate step?

It seems like there might be some confusion here about the differences between transcoding from a lossless (FLAC / APE) or lossy (MP3) source format. Quality will be lost (again) when transcoding from one lossy format to another (including the same lossy format, like MP3 -> MP3). But from a lossless format, the only loss will be in the compression to mp3 ; and the tools used or whether the conversion is ''direct'' or not typically do not affect quality.

---


While dreamliner77's verbalisation is technically incorrect, I believe he knows the difference. The important thing is that there's no difference in the audio data, whether a container or raw temporary file or direct PCM stream is used.

I think there was a misunderstanding there.

Dreamliner77 probably just means that all software will decode to PCM.

yes10 means that he wants the PCM to be piped to the decoder without being saved to disk.

I am absolutely sure that dreamliner77 know the difference between WAV and PCM. I simply commented on his "All software will have to convert to wav first" statement, cause I know applications that transcode without using intermediate WAV files.

I totally agree.
I dont know why the OP care if it use a intermediate WAV file, or not though. Or if a intermediate PCM file (raw, without using the WAV container) is fine for him...


Edit: Ok I figure the OP want direct conversion, without using any intermediate files at all.

no offense, but what is it with your excessive use of color/bold/underline code and 'point listing' here? it's almost as if you assume that without the use of these (color-)coded essentials people will read over the 'most important' parts of your questions..

(oh, and on a sidenote.. why should the program use a dll when encoding to lame, yet use unspecified when decoding/encoding to something else?)

I enjoy using XLD for Mac. It can be used with .cue sheets. At the moment is the only converter with this feature for mac. Max is wonderful, but without .cue support I do not see myself using it.

edit for link: http://tmkk.hp.infoseek.co.jp/xld/index_e.html

>dBpowerAMP, which do not use lame dll directly

Yes it does.

Because people here often do!

hi all

1. I do understand that there will be quality degradation when converting flac, ape, mp3 files to mp3.
2. I ask if the conversion software will cause degradation in quality by itself during the process.
3. so, i am looking for a sofware, if there is one, to convert directly without using intermidiate files, in which
dealing with them can cause degradation in quality.
4. if all conversion programs "have" to use intermediate files, which program does this best.?
5. the conversion time and space is neglected.
6. Can EAC be used for this convertion? and how ??

7. footbar2000 has problem with id3 tag.
8. dBpowerAMP there is big mess to work with its codecs.
9. I want to simplify the process

thanks

1. Well, you're halfway there.
2. No.
3, 4. There won't be any degradation other than that introduced by the MP3 format itself. Many programs can pipe data without creating any files. There will not be any differences in quality, unless the program is greatly flawed, regardless of using intermediate files or not.
7. Define "problem". If you refer to the lack of ID3v2.3 support, it's in 0.9.4.

But there is a big difference in whether the source file is lossy (MP3) or lossless (APE / FLAC).

When transcoding, there is always an intermediate step of decoding the audio data to PCM (or PCM-in-WAV, which is equal) whether you see it or not. This is only a problem if you are transcoding from a lossy source format, because the information that was discarded during compression cannot be restored. So, after you decode an MP3, converting back to MP3 again will cause an additional amount of loss / degradation.

When you decode a lossless file to PCM / WAV, the decompressed data is fully restored to it's original state. Therefore, when you transcode from a lossless format, it will be exactly like converting from the original CD.

[ transcoding ] [ lossy ] [ lossless ]

frontah is another app

dv1989, Cosmo,

1. for yours opinion what is the best tool to use ?
2. does EAC use lame for decoding ? if yes how to set it. Or only for encoding ?
3. if i do the conversion manually, to which format to convert: wav or pcm ?

thanks

1. foobar2000 or dBpowerAMP

2. EAC is an awkward tool for transcoding. for pete's sake , forget about it except for ripping cd

3. whatever , wav = pcm = wav = pcm

good luck

please, stop using so many colors.

1. Google
Well, not really; foobar2000 actually.
2. I don't know what you're on about.
3. Again with 2. Use foobar2000 and stop worrying. WAV is PCM stored in a file with a header. There is no difference. Neither is there a difference if you don't use files. I thought you didn't want files to be created?

1. foobar2000 dont have -b320 lame setting.
and id3v2 problems.
2. which decoder EAC use when decompress mp3 to wav ?

1. use the much more powerful V system instead of clunky CBR files.
every app not supporting a 5 year old standard is hardly a problem of foobar.
2. my guess is that it uses the windows acm codec (fraunhofer), but don't quote me on it.

1. Yes, it does. And, as I said, ID3v2.3 compatibility has been introduced, which I haven't heard to have problems.
2. Don't use EAC.