Hey,

Quality and codec are not the only things you have to think about when ripping audio...

In the close future what I imagine most people would like is to be able to put in a CD rip it and then let a program automatically download all the tags/cd art/lyrics from an open soruce standard datebase, or music companies putting the files online so no need for ripping, or whatever. And I seriosly can not wait for that, but I do wonder what we have atm...

For the last couple of years I have been ripping in Windows Media Player in 320kbps 44100Hz CBR MP3 Stereo and then letting WMP download the tags/art automatically. I have done this becuase it nearly always
gets the art and tags, but now i want to rip all in lossless and really want to do it right first time. (See DarkAngel's quote)

I tryed a couple of things out:

WMA Lossless (Ripping in WMP):
Gets lots of tags and album art nicely

FLAC (Ripping in FooBar, Using CepiPerez cfg and its recommended plugins)
Tags are from freedb and similar to Windows tags
Not a very good standard way of getting album art (although I am only using a plugin)
With the lyrics plugin, would be really good when has a good, standard db (especially with timestamped lyrics!)

FLAC (Ripping in MediaMoney Gold)
Best use of Amazon.com tagging for ease of use.
One of the most badly designed programs.

So mainly I was just wondering how most of you people manage your audio after ripping and what programs you use

Thanks a lot, Samuel

I use EAC to rip my cds and foobar to play them back, tag, move, rename, organize etc.

iTunes with Apple Lossless, fix up tags with info from allmusic.com, find the best album art using images.google.com, then iVolume.

Then I just listen to music...

not spending time micromanaging files like it's 1989.

- Ripping: dbPoweramp R12 reference w/ AccurateRip, allmusic.com metadata, and CommandLineInterface (FLAC 1.1.4)
- Mass metadata changes/file-renaming: MP3Tag
- Playing, Replaygain analysis, conversion to lossy (Vorbis -q5): Foobar
- Acoustic analysis, organizing music library: MusicIP

WMP11's fantastic metadata, tagging, album art, and even synchronized lyrics features are one of the main reasons I still use it too. A couple comments on your methods:

WMA Lossless: I wouldn't recommend it since there's no officially supported way of converting the files back to the original WAV, and playback support is not as good as that for FLAC

FLAC: Terrible DirectShow support (buggy filters), but at least tagging and library management are supported via WMPTSE

As a WMP user since 2001, IMO because of the above issues WMP doesn't deliver the same high experience with lossless as it does with lossy. For playback that's not much of a problem because you can't ABX a 320kbps MP3 vs. a FLAC rip anyway.

However, there is a way to get the best of both worlds in a manner of speaking, which is what I do:

1 - Rip the CD to CUE+WAV using EAC
2 - Mount the resulting CUE+WAV on a virtual drive and rip with WMP11
3 - Use a frontend to compress the CUE+WAV for archiving (I use Monkey's Audio)

This way, you get all the frills of WMP with the security and accuracy of EAC as well as a perfect backup of your CD.

Thanks for all the replies so far!

Tryed out MediaMoneky = Its crap
MusicIP = Ok, but there are better

Never really like iTunes from the start, but I decided as I am trying everything atm to go along with it...

ATM: just trying it out for apples lossless codec and tags, etc...


So far I think I will stick to ripping in WMA Lossless, becuase I convert into FLAC or MP3 with ease using dBpowerAMP and the beauty of lossless is that I shouldn't lose any quality and still have original tags and art.


For lyrics, i have been looking around, the one in CepiPerez cfg is pretty good.
You can get some time stamped lyrics which is really amazing, but you do get quite abit of messed up lyrics.

Lyrics Plugin (http://www.lyricsplugin.com) for WMP is really good, just replaces the now playing frame with the lyrics. Nice, sweet, simple, automatic.

Only thing that it doesn't have is timestamped lyrics, but I have recommended that as an improvement
(http://www.lyricsplugin.com/forum/?read=2347)

Unless you all have any sugesstions I would probably use this till I find a large timestamped lyrics db.

Thanks Samuel

It doesnt exist yet, but you can check out this thread:
http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=12424
for what I believe is a very good/advanced tagging tool

The same sort of system could also be applied to a lyrics tool for downloading lyrics from multiple sites and comparing.

I too would like a good source for time stamped lyrics with a better method for matching the lyrics with the actual song version.

Future (I wished it happen quicker):

After looking at this post I realised how messed up things really are:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=13253
(About how big peoples file collection were+formats+quality)

Really its all down to standards.

My quick thoughts on how it should go........



Major audio labels and distributers, as well as major computing companies, have to decide on a top quality format for audio.
Top quality, digital surround sound and with everything else music.
This should be uploaded to the internet, where it can be brought or whatever.

With being at top quality you can then do anything you want with it.
e.g. Use whatever codec you want to convert it and save it to your hard drive
(as well as the ability to use the original top quality file as many times as you wish, if you wish to change formats of your songs)
(this should maintain the high quality of codecs we see today)

However with the file there is also a code that links to a mass free database.
Where the artists can add what information they want to, to the file.

This database would mainly include:
For the song: Track data - linked to a database of artist data - linked to a database of album data

Track data includes: Track title, genre, mood, lyrics (timestamped), individual composers, individual lyricists, individual preformer, (track number?).
Album data includes: Album title, tracks includuded, art (includuing cd art), time released.
Artist data includes: Name, composers, link to their website.

Then also a personal database, where you can include your ratings of songs and albums as well as comments. This data can then be uploaded to the main database where an average score can be compiles.

And obviosuly this database it completely adjustable, updatable and expandable. And data should be added as modern day tags.

But then you also have to think about is some data necessary?
e.g. track number? was it only invented to easily navigate cds?
e.g. albums at all, should artist just upload thier songs?
e.g. Even to the extent do we need any kind of distribution bar the internet? (Would achieve perfect sales records for the charts to use as country related information as well as global charts)

Should the database be extended to allow other information
e.g. Latest news from the band, etc (you be better for small bands that don't have a website.)



Its all still a bit of a mix because I am saying a solution for a perfect new world and as we know this is not a new world and so would have to try an fit it in as best as possible.

Comments?

What exactly is crap about Mediamonkey?

Also, have you checked out the Mediamonkey 3 alpha?

Ok, i didn't actaully mean its crap, just they are better programs thats do the same thing.
Somethings I don't like in it are:

You have to pay for gold, you have to pay for:
File Monitor (automatically updates library)
Advanced Searches and AutoPlaylists
Unlimited MP3 encoding

The GUI, very poor (altough slighty improved in version 3)


In gerneral what i don't like in some new players and managers is the fact they are taking away my power.
I want to store the file in the way I want, i seem to be lossing control over my own files!



Addition to my future post:

Why bother? What will it do/achieve? Some reasons...

Allow people easily to access information, that they could get to, but have know idea on the integrity of the informaion (+saves on time)
Greater increase in songs listed by mood
No great time trying to find the best album art to add or the right tags to add
No need for mass lyric websites, never download or see crap lyrics, just the official ones by the artist
(time stamped and syncronsied aswell to allow for great karaoke nights)
No need in general for mass music websites that have only bits of inrfomation you want
People to find a more music they like (e.g. what people with the same music brought, also own)

You really think that MusicIP is better than MediaMonkey? Strange... MediaMonkey has much more features and has a a lot of scripts which enhance the functionality.

I'd have a look at the new version 3.0 Alpha 3...

Big_Berny

I don't know which one is better, if I had to choose I would have look at them more extensively.

However I would never use any of them really as they require you to pay. (For the additional functions)

Seems stupid when they are better applications for free.

I concentrate on major players (WMP, VLC) and now also other open source players, Foobar, etc...

This is precisely my issue with MediaMonkey also. I've wound up using the same lineup as you: WMP11 for music library management and playback, VLC for video and fb2k for auxiliary playback of tracks that aren't in my music library.

You can replace the lame_enc.dll with the rarewares one and have unlimited mp3 encoding.

Altho they file monitoring and autoplaylists makes gold great.

I'm a huge MM fan myself. Of all the players/music managers, its the best balance of ease of use, flexibility, performance of HUGE libraries (I have 100k+ of mixed files mp3/flac and MM is the only program I've seen which can manage that wihout bogging down), and the power that scripts provide over and above the built in functionality.

I use music ip as well, but not for library manage, but more for streaming and playlist/mood generation and some other 'premium' features it has.

Another nice feature of WMP is that it writes the CD TOC to the file's tag, thus rendering all the files ripped from a certain CD "linked" in the library database. The advantage with this is that if for any reason a more accurate metadata definition of the ripped CD pops up in the AMG/other WMP sources database, updating the media info (tags and all) for just one of the files ripped from that CD causes WMP to automatically update them all.

I use EAC to rip to WavPack and I tag afterwards, well sort of. I use freedb in EAC to create the filenames first, but I double-check them against discogs and the CDs themselves first. I use the foobar2000 masstagger and properties dialog to create the tags from filenames.

I think that obtaining tags and filenames from a database can be somewhat useful to start, but the databases are hardly perfect and the tags will need to be tweaked afterwards. This doesn't happen for most CDs, but a lot for mixed albums with multiple artists.

I personally find lyric tags useless. I'm rarely looking at the player itself while listening to music, unless i'm also switching songs or tagging. If i'm only listening to music, i'm usually not in front of my computer.

I don't put album art in the tags. I keep a jpg in the album folder and use foobar's album art plugin.

I stopped using WMP when I stopped using MP3s.
I used Winamp until foobar v0.9 came out.

I don't think I have ever tried MM, but I don't see WavPack on the home page, so I doubt I ever will.

iTunes is garbage.

For ripping lossless, an accurate rip should be important, so I can't recommend anything besides EAC or dbpoweramp. There might be some others that I can't think of at the moment, but WMP and iTunes push their crappy lossless formats and need to be avoided (for lossless ripping).

I want lyrics tags primarily for searching my library. I often can remember a couple words to a song I would like to hear but not the artist or title. If all my songs had lyrics tags it would be easy to search them and find the song.

MM can support wavpack playback (or any other codec) via any winamp 2.x input plugin, however you are correct that does not currently support encoding TO wavpack.

a more comprehensive list of plugins here

the in-development mm3 alpha supports flac 1.1.4 with embedded album art (along with the regular linked art), that may or may not be important depending on personal preference.

if you want the look of WMP 11 (but alot more power/flexibilty of MM), there are a couple mm3 skins in development which look really good.

wmp11 skin here
and here

MM3 does look quite promising. I will definitely be recommending it to my non-techie friends. The fact that it can use winamp plugins is just brilliant.

I daresay you don't even need the skin... they've jacked so many design cues from WMP11 in the default appearance it's not even funny. But hey - imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

I do hope MM3 at least fixes the load time of search-generated playlists. They're instant in WMP11, while in MM2.5.* it can take a while for the playlist to populate completely when you're dealing with thousands of tracks. It would also be awesome if they added support for the AMG database .

Check out this...

I'm sure it will be a matter of time before quite a few useful web sites are added.

Pretty rudimentary, but it's a start, I guess.

Still a tough sell to get me to pay for Gold, though (I don't pirate software), since WMP does pretty much everything I need it to (for library management) for free and I'm a metadata Nazi.

LANjackal,

How do you get WMP to see ape + cue sheets? Or any cue sheets for that matter?
Any indispensable plugins you recommend?

You mount the CUE using a virtual drive. I use Alcohol 120%. This makes the CUE+WAV appear like an original CD to WMP, and then it can be played, ripped, etc. as if it were physically there.

The critical thing is that the virtual drive software can mount the CUE as a CD. If you can find one that can do so for APE files, post back somewhere on HA, because I'm pretty sure a lot of persons would be interested. Unfortunately, those I know support WAV only, so you'll have to decompress the APE file first.

Foobar, miles ahead of all the things I've seen.

Ripping to WavPack w/ EAC, tags from FreeDB manually corrected when needed and album art from Amazon or scans when not available at decent quality online, transcoding to LAME or Nero Digital via batch files for DAP playback.

You can manually add lyrics to the tags using MP3tag under a LYRICS field. Then set up foobar to include the LYRICS field in its library database. Should work, in theory.