I'm not sure where the correct placement of this question is, so bear with me.

I am going to rip over 1100 cds, and originally I thought I should just rip them to mp3 because the only way that they are going to be played is through iTunes or on an iPod. That and I thought ripping to FLAC or WAV or some other lossless would take an enormous amount of space, yes?

I really don't want to have to do this again, (if at all possible for at least many years) so I am using dBpoweramp to rip, Lame 3.97 to encode, at a -V2 Standard VBR.

Am I ok sticking with MP3s? Would I be better ripping to a Lossless and then converting (I would have to research how it is done) to MP3s? I would need two different areas for the different files then, I think, any idea on how many Gigs that would turn out to be? These are all studio produced, record store purchased CDs.

Thank you!

.- 1,100 CDs in Lossless would take a lot of space. If you are not going to use them, just don't. Moreover it will take a lot of time too. One CD may vary from around 300 MB to over 500 MB or so, just multiply.

.- Ripping to MP3 V2 is a nice option. Using DBPoweramp, too.

.- You will end up fed up with ripping: too many CDs Good luck.

Greetings.

Given the cheapness of hard drives, and the effort involved in ripping 1,100 CDs, I would definitely recommend ripping to lossless.

Here is a recent thread on the same subject matter.

For 1,100 discs, you are looking at around 300-400GB of lossless files, assuming albums, although the album sizes obviously makes a huge difference. You should be good with a 500GB drive.

It's easy to approximate, let's assume we have around 60 minutes of music on each CD, and the MP3 files average around 192 kilobits per seconds that leaves us with 60 * 60 * 1100 CDs * 192kb / 8 / 1024 / 1024 = around 92GB of data.
Assuming the lossless files average around 900kbps that would need approximately 424GB.

If you have the space (and space is cheap these days) why not go lossless. Of course if you want to keep a backup (which is probably a very good idea) you'd probaly need around one terabyte of storage for MP3 + Lossless combined.

However, the LAME MP3 codec is very mature and recent listening tests showed it is transparet at around 128kbps, so I doubt there would be the need to reencode ever.

I guess it all comes down whetever you want to put down the money, two 500GB hardrives are probably around 150$, given the time it takes you to encode all these CDs it's really not that much money.

If you have the hard drive space and or can afford the space needed to keep both a lossless and lossy collection. Plus additional space for backing up your work/collection. I would do both lossless and lossy at the same time. I don't use dbPoweramp, but I'm pretty sure it can rip to both lossless and lossy simultaneously.

The advantage of doing both would be that you would not have to re-rip if you wanted to change to a different codec in the future and or use an updated version of your choice of codec.

I honestly don't know what I'd do without this forum!

After reading more, I'm going to go Lossless. Fry's just had a 1TB Seagate external for $199. And to think I balked at the idea of ever using that much space last year.

If I understand correctly, I would rip Lossless via dBpoweramp to one of the Lossless formats, and then batch convert to MP3s at said vbr? This is only for professional or cds burned as audio, because MP3 compliation cds cannot be "unshrunk" if I'm following correctly.

This brings the question of FLAC, WAV or Apple Lossless? Can you direct me to somewhere that explains between them?

Thanks again.




Oooo, I will check into that. I really like EAC, but Cover Art is important to me and dBpoweramp puts it in the files.

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...less_comparison

IMO, the best lossless codec/format to choose is the one that works natively with you equipment/software. In your case it might very well be Apple Lossless. You'll be able to keep just one copy of the files and let Itunes convert the files on the fly when it puts them on your Ipod.

If you later feel apple lossless wasn't the right choice you can always convert to FLAC or anything for that matter with dbpoweramp.

One more vote for lossless. (I wish I had done it three years ago, now I'm reripping all my CDs to FLAC.)

And the format: FLAC is an open, widely supported format with excellent tagging possibilities, likely to be around for a very long time.

For the batch processing from lossless to lossy formats, such as MP3, you could use e.g. foobar2000. Unfortunately the present version of foobar2000 doesn't transfer embedded album art to the target file (and I believe you want that).

An alternative is to use a program which synchronizes your files. You just point at a directory tree full of flac files and have it mirrored into a corresponding directory structure full of mp3 files. It only converts those files that need converting, i.e. newly-added files. If only the FLAC tags have been changed, only the tags of the target files will be updated (i.e. no re-transcoding, saves a lot of time). Two programs in this category are Reflacer and flac2mp3.pl

I use the latter, a perl script (platform-independent) written by Robin Bowes. It is very easy to run a synchronization; I just open the command window and type "flac2mp3.pl H:\FLAC H:\MP3". As simple as that.

Using dbpoweramp (and the multi encoder plugin from dbpoweramp codec central) it is also possible to rip to 2 formats at the same time. This could save some time with that many cds.

Edit: already been said, I should read more closely

As others have said, go with lossless and then encode your lossless files to a lossy format. That way you have a perfect bit-for-bit copy of your CDs that you can encode to newer lossy formats/encoders later down the line. After all, Lame 3.98 has replaced 3.97 and I am sure dBpowerAMP will update their software here pretty soon. A new version of Lame will probably come out within a few years as well (or at least a new beta).

Ripping to lossless would ensure that you will never have to rip your CDs again (that is if your storage hardware doesn't fail). You can pick up an external 500GB hard drive for $150 or less, a 750GB hard drive for $175 or less, and a 1TB hard drive for ~$225 or less. There is no reason these days to rely on lossy encoding for archiving purposes these days when storage is so inexpensive. It is fine to rely on lossy encoding for your listening needs, I just think it is always best to have a lossless archive.

Edit: As for the lossless format, I would have to say to go with what your hardware/software supports. I myself ripped all of my CDs to Apple lossless using dBpowerAMP, used iTunes to convert the ALAC files to AAC at 128kbps VBR for portable listening, then used foobar2000 to convert the files to -V 2 using Lame 3.98.

Go FLAC for sure, it's open source and arguably the most used by far. By having your albums ripped to FLAC you have two options:

1- Mass transcode your files when newer lossy codec versions are created using softwares like foobar2000 for example.

2- I believe a few years from now portable music players will have such large capacities that we will be able to put a lot of lossless stuff on them.

Even though the OP said he uses iTunes?

Ok, getting warmer.

It looks like dBpoweramp can rip to more than one format at a time, and do I understand correctly that if I rip to FLAC, say, and later I want to change to Monkey's Audio there is no loss in the switch unlike MP3 to AAC or something of a lossy file?

What I really want are the ID3 tags and the Cover Art to be consistent. (I'm not sure how these work in the Lossless vs. Lossy files?) And a nice lossless back up. After looking at the Wiki breakdown (thank you for the link) I'm thinking FLAC, Monkey's Audio or Wavpack... maybe Apple Lossless but it doesn't seem to be as popular here.

Any opinions?

Edit: I am using an iPod as a portable player and iTunes to play my music through, but I am a PC user if that matters. The MP3 encoder I'm using is Lame v3.97 in dBpoweramp with -v2 standard, did I say that already? I like it better than AAC.





More great information, however, if I'm using a multi-encoder through dBpoweramp, I just use that every time I add a CD and it will encode lossy and lossless at the same time so would I need this still?

You are right. You can switch between lossless formats without losing quality. Lossless is lossless no matter what the source is. A lossless file will have the exact same quality as the source file if the encoding process is conducted without any errors.

It is true that Apple lossless isn't popular due to its limited integration. FLAC is more supported since it is open source and integrated into more software apps. However, FLAC files cannot be played back in iTunes. I don't know how important that is to you.

I can tell you what I did in terms of album art though: like you, I have well over 1,000 CDs that I ripped with dBpowerAMP. I didn't let dBpowerAMP do any of the album art though as it uses artwork that is too low in resolution for me. I much prefer images from Amazon or even a Google image search. They take up slightly more space than the ones from dBpowerAMP yet they look good on my computer and iPod touch. dBpowerAMP's album art always looked terrible on both my computer and iPod touch. Anyway, so I ripped my CDs to ALAC without any album art and imported everything into iTunes. I then went through and embedded all the album art to my ALAC files using iTunes. The process took about 5 hours for 12,000+ songs. I then used foobar2000 to convert my ALAC files to Lame mp3 with version 3.98. After that, I went back and used iTunes to embed the album art again. This time, the process took a mere 2 hours as I already had the album art and didn't need to look it up again.

I don't know if you want to complete that much work but I am picky about my album art and the database that dBpowerAMP used was rather terrible. I don't know if that has changed or not since I am still using an older version of dBpowerAMP and don't pay for AMG or any other services like that.

R13 also uses GD3 and will pull 500x500 album art.

OK, that clarifies things then. I was using an older version and I believe the album art as 50X50 which looked terrible. Is GD3 a pay service or is it free?

I understand, I'd have to play my mp3 files in iTunes. This is actually better because when I sync up with my iPod, I don't want the FLAC files going in there.

Can someone explain the ID3 support that is NOT in FLAC, however? What does that mean? Anyone know how the coverart is stored? Similar to folder.jpg with the mp3 files?

I wonder if dBpoweramp places a folder.jpg in each location/folder.

(Cover Art looks good in the recent dBpoweramp, I have the registered version.

if you are dead-set on itunes, you have less choice (although there is fluke which makes playing FLAC in itunes relatively easy on a mac, maybe there is something similar for win itunes). but if you're not, there are plenty of players to choose from on windows and the vast majority will play FLAC.

cover art is stored in the flac file itself in the metadata.

flac has its own metadata system (not id3) but most conversion programs convert the metadata too.

Great, thank you. I think it'll be between FLAC and Apple Lossless, (probably FLAC if it stores the coverart and most programs can convert the metadata system) although if I encode in either I can always change over from what I understand?

I did see a post about speculation regarding if Apple Lossless was really Lossless, but that's probably nitpicking.

Also iTunes 8.0 is coming in a few weeks so who knows what that will have.

Which post? We really don't need to be propagating any myths.

Yep, you can convert between Apple lossless (ALAC) and FLAC without any loss in quality. You can freely convert between lossless formats without worrying. To my knowledge, dBpowerAMP should be able to rip your audio CDs to ALAC with all track tag information including embedded album artwork. It can also do the same for FLAC files. Only go with ALAC if you want iTunes compatibility. Keep in mind that dBpowerAMP can freely convert from ALAC to other formats while keeping all of the track tag information including embedded album artwork. foobar2000 can convert from ALAC as well but the artwork will be lost.

You could wait a couple of weeks to see what iTunes 8.0 offers. Just remember that any iTunes 8.0 news including its release date are rumors as of now. Apple hasn't announced anything about iTunes 8.0 other than its release time frame of Fall 2008. A new version of QuickTime is rumored to be bundled with iTunes 8.0. A new version of QuickTime might not come out until Apple's new OS though. Either way, this shouldn't affect your decision about a lossless encoder unless you wanted to use the iTunes AAC encoder. Any advantages that Apple makes in their ALAC encoder won't be seen right away in dBpowerAMP as it uses a reverse engineered ALAC encoder.

Right, I understand. I honestly just want to pick something to go lossless that will preserve my album art and id3 tag information, because I'm going to be keeping a separate database of mp3s to sync with iTunes and my iPod. I will rip both lossy and lossless simultaneously.

So really, or so it seems, I just should pick one, and since they all seem to carry the id3 tag encoding and album artwork, I guess I'll go with FLAC since it seems to be preferred.



I have been surfing for information so much today I honestly don't remember under which thread, but if I see it I'll post it or PM you.

Maybe this nonsense thread:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=52057

But as one poster to the above thread pointed out, there's been a number of such posts:


C.

one vote for ripping to MP3 Lame 3.98 -V 2. but your way with dbpoweramp and lame 3.97 is also ok. Just continue converting with 3.98.

1100 CDs... I'd try with EAC Burst Mode and Accurate Rip. When you're getting most of the files identified with Accurate Rip, you'll be a lot faster than using the safest mode.

He's She's already using dBpoweramp which works exactly as you described and can be configured to perform a second burst rip automatically when there is no AR verification. If there are discrepancies between the two rips, it will perform re-reads; something that EAC cannot do in burst mode.

EDIT: Sorry about that, ameliajune.

Yes but remember, I mentioned the album art. EAC doesn't support this.


She... me...


I agree....

Actually, it does when combined with REACT.

You've missed the point slightly. Basically: please don't perpetuate FUD. We're only interested in facts, preferably with tangible proof. Even repeating "speculation" just perpetuates it.

Oh my god, I think my head just exploded. The whole reason I went with dBpoweramp was because it embedded cover art in the MP3. Oh well, I'm there now.




Ok then, I should've then just stated the inquiry as such, "I've read that Apple Lossless aren't equivicable with other Lossless files, is this correct?"

Note to self.

Apple Lossless is lossless. Try converting a wav file into apple lossless then converting it back to wav. You'll have the exact same file.

I did mention REACT in your other thread... There was links and everything (eventually).

At least you have not made a turkey-purchase with dbPowerAmp: it's a good piece of software, which should fair you well.

I guess I would have to answer that you perhaps should have raised your questions in the thread in question. If you can't find the thread then just don't mention it, or, just ask whether there are any known issues with Apple Lossless. Saying "I've read that Apple Lossless files aren't really lossless" gives the notion some credance, whether you ask for confirmation or not. One hundred other people read your statement and then go to other threads and say "I've read that Apple Lossless files aren't really lossless.". Etcetera, etcetera. I'm sure that I appear anal; however we are very cautious about making untrue statements on this board. Take a look at TOS #8 in the Terms of Service for proof.

Oh YES, you certainly did. My apologies. I remember I picked dbPowerAmp because it was easier. Turkey-purchase. I love that.


I get it completely, thanks for the clarification.