As I am sure that most people will have read similar posts before, I want to preface this with a "Thanks for your help." I have googled, searched, read, noted, and audio tested format after format and I am still in a fog. Here's my deal: I have about 2000 CD's which I want to rip into a Mac mini (for better or worse I ONLY use Apple) to play though a pretty good stereo system (Pioneer Elite Rec, B&W speakers). My research has produced the following:

1. I want to rip into a format which can be used for years to come (so probably no Apple proprietary formats) in case Apple goes away one year (sounds crazy, but think MCI, Enron...)
2. I will probably rip though Itunes to make life easier.
3. I have listened over and over to the following formats: AAC 128-320kbps, AIFF, Apple Lossless, MP3 192-320kbps, and WAV. I have also read a lot about LAME but not tried it yet.

I cannot hear a huge difference between formats, which would make the obvious answer "rip them at the smallest fastest rate." BUT I figure that I want to do this once and never have to rip the entire collection again. So I would like to get it in at the best format within reason. Who knows what I will be doing with this library in 15 years, so I would like to keep it high quality.

That's my deal. Now I turn to the folks who have the better ears, are smarter about this, and have more experience than I do. What rip road do you recommed I take? Any and all advice is much appreciated.

Then use Max:

http://sbooth.org/Max/



FLAC would be a good choice.



Then use a lossless format; FLAC would be the obvious choice here. For use, transcode from that into whatever lossy format is currently popular or whatever works with whatever particular device you have on hand (e.g. 160kbps VBR AAC for the iPod). Max can encode to FLAC. Max is reasonably fast, too, so long as you set the choice of ripper in its preferences to CDParanoia. And there's a convert function in Max, so you can use it convert your FLACs to something less space-hungry for portable use.



Source:

http://www.pretentiousname.com/mp3players/

I could have said it any better than Nick E. I agree with all his suggestions.

I REALLY appreciate the advice. One question. It may seem silly, but I would rather look silly than assume wrong. Once I use Max to create the FLAC files, is it as simple as dragging the individual album folders into Itunes for importation into the Itunes library? Would Itunes read/recognize FLAC files? Also, will I then need to maintain 2 libraries, the one form the original Max rip, then the one I import into Itunes? I do not have a ton of experience with this so I am learning on the job here. Thanks again.

Itunes does not natively read FLAC files, but there is a Xiph Quicktime component that can make Itunes read Ogg and FLAC files.
I haven't tried it, but if that doesn't do it, maybe Apple Lossless would be better suited for you instead of FLAC?

Edit: It doesn't support FLAC, my mistake.

If I go apple lossless, is it easy to take the contents of thed Itunes library and convert them into another less-propritary lossless format at a future date? I just do not want to do that much ripping and be completly locked into Apple

Yes, there are Open Source libraries for encoding en decoding Apple Lossless. Even if Apple for some strange reason would stop supporting Apple Lossless other apps would still be able to convert. Max supports Apple Lossless for instance.

Converting Apple Lossless to any other lossless format in the future will be a lossless operation. You would lose nothing but time. Best of all, once you got it on a harddrive instead of CD's you could automate the whole conversion. The first rip from CD into a lossless format takes the most effort, afterwards all conversions are relatively easy.

Again, Thanks to everyone for their help.

Two small points.

1. When you import to iTunes, you can choose whether or not to import the actual files into the iTunes library (Preferences -> Advanced -> General). I don't know what the advantage of doing so might be, but you will end up with two copies of everything if you do so. Could be a problem on a Mini, with 2000 CDs in lossless.

2. Max can simultaneously rip to lossless and a lossy format, which could be useful to know if you decide to get a portable player.

Best

Michael

Thanks for the pointers Michael.

I guess when I select the import I will just try to link the files as opposed to importing the actual file. I am actually leaning towards just using Apple's rip within Itunes and going Apple lossless.

Does anyone know if Max is faster than Apple to rip CD's? Also, does Max have an Apple lossless rip option?
I like the idea of simultaneous lossless and lossy rips. I actually have a few Ipods now, but have never been that concerned with having ALL of my music on them. How would you manage the two libraries without worrying about the overlap?

Dan

Yes:


Don't know about the speed difference, though...it's been awhile since I've used Max (I did most of my ripping on my PC, due to the difference in drive speeds outlined below - that, and the ability to use EAC ).


Smart playlists - create one with "Kind" "contains" "lossless", and another with "Kind" "does not contain" "lossless", check "Live updating" - done. You'll then need to either transfer songs to your iPod(s) manually, i.e. no automatic syncing, or you can do what I do (or a variant of what I do - I don't have any ALAC files in my library): create a smart playlist with "Kind" "does not contain" "lossless" and check "Match only checked items", then check only the songs you want to transfer in your non-lossless smart playlist. Set your iPod(s) to only update checked items, and you're good to go.

I also have a Mac mini, and be aware that the CD/DVD drive - being a laptop drive - is very slow at ripping audio CDs, or at least compared to full-sized drives. When ripping to either AIFF or Apple Lossless, the speed ranges from ~6x at the inside of the disc to ~13x at the outside of a 78 minute CD - most full-sized drives have no problem hitting ~13x at the inside and 40x or higher at the outside. Getting a full-sized drive in an external USB or FireWire enclosure might be well worth the money, considering the number of CDs you have to rip...

Edit: After reading it again, the creation of the "match only checked items" playlist seems strange, as it's not necessary - the iPod will sync to checked songs no matter what playlist they're in...having the "checked items" playlist is for the benefit of the user, as it makes it much, much easier to know exactly what is/is going to be on your iPod when you have a library that is many times the size of the storage capacity of your iPod.

XiphQT doesn't support native FLAC yet. It only supports Ogg FLAC.

Lossless files are hellish bulky. If you do decide to have a lossless archive, a better strategy might be to keep those on an external hard drive. Those don't cost a lot per MB of storage compared with most other storage methods. And you have the advantage that most external hard drives intended, and pre-formatted, for the Mac have firewire.

So if you want to use Max you could set it to spit out two formats at once - lossless (FLAC or Apple Lossless) and lossy (AAC or LAME MP3). You could then drag the lossless files to an external hard drive and only import the lossy ones to iTunes. I agree with the others who said that there's no real problem with Apple Lossless; but FLAC is far more widely used, and it looks like Apple itself is going to support FLAC in OS X Leopard, so that's what I use.

The main use for the lossless files is for archiving rather than listening - as you said right at beginning, to be able to "rip into a format which can be used for years to come". However, you can still listen to them. It is possible to run two iTunes libraries in different locations, though not easy to set up. Or you could simply use a different player when you want to play the lossless files. For example, there's Cog. Cog can play either Apple Lossless or FLAC.

Here's another matter that hasn't been broached yet that you may want to think about. Some people like to have their archival lossless rips encoded as single files with an embedded cuesheet, because it's felt that this better mimics how the original CDs are organized. FLAC supports this. And Max can encode in that fashion: you just open its preferences and check the boxes "Rip to a single file" and "Generate a cue sheet". To play these you need a player that supports cue sheets. In effect, it's just like playing a virtual CD. You drop the file on its icon, like putting a CD in a player, and the player will look at the cuesheet and tell you the number and lengths of tracks, just like a CD player.

At the moment, I think the only player for OS X that will play single FLACs with cuesheets is the open source Japanese player XLD:

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

These single FLACs can be split into individual tracks, and transcoded into some other (e.g., lossy) format, if necessary and XLD can do that, too.

Maurits will know about this better than me, but my guess is that Cog will add support for cuesheets, and Max's developer also has a player in the works called Play. I'd expect that to, as well. It's interesting to see these changes going on - interesting times in the digital audio world.

I'm not suggesting that if you do want to encode losslessly - which you mightn't anyway - you should encode to single files rather multiple tracks. But it is an intriguing option to think about. AFAIK, most of the guys on Windows, who have more tools available to them, have had the option for some time and like it very much.

A few things I should have added to my original post. I have all of my music stored on a 700GB external drive to which I will add all of the new rips. Also, I have an external Iomega CD drive to use to rip. I did not even think about the speed issue (though it looks to be WAY faster) as much as I did not want to burn out the mini drive w. so many CDs.

So after reading everyone's posts (THANKS!!!) I think that I am leaning in this direction:

Using Max to rip the collection as 2 formats: Apple Lossless and LAME MP3.
I will then import the Apple lossless into Itunes to play on the stereo, and the files will live on an external drive. I will take the MP3's and put them into Itunes on my Laptop which I can then use for my portable.

I like the idea of FLAC files, but worry that Leopard will take longer to come out than any of us anticipate. Also, it sounds like I can convert the Apple Lossless files into FLAC files at a later date without any quality loss.

Before I embark, is there any encoding advice when using Max to make the MP3s and Apple Lossless files? I will download LAME. Do not know much about using it, although it sounds very good. It installing/operating the LAME capability fairly intuitive?

Thanks again for all of the knowledge.

Yes, you can.



No need to download LAME. Just get Max - LAME is included with it.

Right on. 10-4. Over and out.
May the ripping begin.

I am sure you will see an emergency post here again in a few days!

Thanks all.