hi all

i'm curious what is generally considered to be best practice when backing up your music collection ?

obviously for archival purposes it's probably best to rip to to a lossless format and then transcode to mp3 using lame but which lossless format is best for archival purposes

can any one shed some light on this for me ?

a) If you're out for best compression, rarely decode your archive, and don't care about a codec not in widespread use: LA or OptimFrog with very high compression settings.
b) if you're out for very good compression but also have to care a bit about encoding and especially decoding speed: use Monkey in extra high mode (c4000).
c) if you often decode resp. listen to the archive on your pc:
- use TAK if you don't care about using a rather new codec the format of which may change in the not too far future
- use FLAC for a good codec with widespread use and support
or
- use wavPack as a good alternative to FLAC.

Compression ratio does differ between these codecs especially on specific tracks but in the overall view on average difference is rather small. That's why only few people use LA as filesize gain vs. speed loss isn't impressive.

Some people care about error robustness of the codec, but IMO this is to be considered in context with an overall backup strategy. I personally use a double backup for all my important data so the error recovery of a codec (letting erranous files produce only local errors) is of no concern to me.

I personally use Monkey extra high. Fast enough for me.

Good Lord, what a question!

Have you considered the ripper to use, whether you really do want MP3 or some other lossy format, whether you will rip to tracks or images, etc.?

Probably worth doing some searching for terms such as "backup", "archive", etc.

I'd also take a look at the wiki, especially the lossless comparison.

FYI: I use EAC to rip to WavPack image+cuesheet for archiving and LAME MP3 for listening.

I use FLAC images with very customized EAC + REACT which embeds the Cuesheet in the images.

Robert