Ive just made a home theatre pc that im going to store all my music on, it will go via digital cable to my amp
I want to store my cd's to harddrive, but i want the best quality possible, really hate mp3 , space isnt a consideration
Any thoughts on the best way to do this , i understand everyone here looks for the best quality possible
This is my first post here so be gentle, i dont know much about getting best possible quality, even reading through the posts, some of the jargon went over my head
I understand EAC and lame, use to rip mp3 at 128 VBR, thats about as much as i know
thanks

I don't know why you hate mp3. Because this is your best choice. Lame MP3 vbr with an "average" bit rate of about 200 kbps will make impossible for you to discern it from the original in ABX test.

HOWEVER. If you really want to waste disc space you should consider FLAC (which is lossless or 100% equivalent to the sound of your CD's.)

Other option is to use Apple Lossless (with iTunes) or WMA lossless with Windows Media Player. They are also 100% (not a bit less!) equivalent to your CD's quality.

Please note. If you chose lossy instead of lossless. Try to search the forum for more info in comparisom tests and try to ABX some tracks to find out where your ears "stand" in perceived quality.

I guess everyone is different, but I easily ABXd 192 vbr mp3s (14/15). ANd that was on my regular system, not even the hifi one. I can post the results and files if you want.

Are you saying that jumping up to 200 would change this result?

The OP said space WASN't an issue. Given that, a lossless format will clearly be the way to go for this poster. SOmething like FLAC or Apple lossless should work great. Winamp would be a good down load as it will natively rip to Flac (no need to mess with eac and setting it up, although that would be preffered) or iTunes for ALAC.

Yeah post them. I find that all LAME encoders even really old ones are high quality at 200~250k joint stereo and vbr isn't really needed at these bitrates. You could try --preset 224 or 256 as that may give you improvement or even correct the problem.

Did you ABX LAME mp3's?! I guess not.



Try ABXing Lame and posting the results



With Lame that would be overkill.

Go with MPC. I hear it's going to take over the world some day!

Here are some quotes from some recent stellar reviews:
"...gives a much higher 'headroom' quality at playing..."
"...gives such a nice and pleasing 'watering' effect..."

L,

I did use lame, but I actually ABX'd lame mp3s vs the original .wav file. NOT lame MP3s.

Here is the post from months ago:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofive.../t52755-50.html

The files are a bit big, but I can post the mp3 at least if that would help. ANd the ABX report also if you want it.

Just tell me where.

Try ABXing this with Lame x WAV using foobar:

-V1 --vbr-new (~210 kbps)

You have to get 13 right out of 16

Getting back to your question onlinejames - I recommend going the lossless route since you are not concerned with hard drive space. Personally, I use FLAC due to the fact that it's compatible with a fair amount of hardware and software players. I noticed a couple of front ends for HTPCs that play FLACs. Do check out the Knowledgebase. From there, check out Exact Audio Copy (EAC) - it's the ripper of choice for most around here. On the EAC page, you'll find links to tutorials to get you started. Just search around...it's all here . Welcome to HA, by the way.

I will do this, but it will be a week before I can get my system to be resolving enough to hear the difference. My wife has the better head phones at her office, and I'm travelling through thursday, but I'll post when I get the results.

Thanks for the info.