I've been ripping my own mp3s with CDex. So far I've been using "Very High Quality (q=0)" and been ripping it at 192kbps. I've heard that "--alt-preset-extreme" would be a better option. Would this create larger mp3s or would they be the same and would there be a noticible increase in quality? Thanks.

--alt-preset extreme will give you larger files.

you should try using --alt-preset standard. It will give you files about the same size as 192kbps mp3 and the quality will be better!

for more info click here

you should also think about using EAC (Exact audio copy). It's a ripper just like cdex only it's much better.

ok cool. regarding EAC when you say it's better do you mean in terms of quality... or just features?

both!

you will get more accurate rips with EAC than cdex.

you should check out the tutorial. the first time you use EAC it could be pretty scary because there are lots of features. it was for me anyway.

>you will get more accurate rips with EAC than cdex.

OK, I know I'll cause a bit of a stir, but WHY is EAC better than Cdex for ripping fairly good quality cds? I've read stuff about why EAC is better for damaged cds, but for ones in good condition what is the difference? Have there been any thorough tests comparing Cdex's cdparanoia with EAC's secure mode?

I use both programs, but find that Cdex is much faster on my system because it can use lame (3.90.2) as an internal encoder - it can rip and encode in one step. This is good because I use a fairly slow drive to rip (Yamaha 8424S). If I had a faster drive I'd use EAC all the time, but sometimes I can't wait that long for a rip.

I have also noticed that mp3s encoded internally using cdex are a bit smaller and have a lower average bitrate than those made by EAC (both done using -aps). Is this because the lame .dll and the .exe are quite different? Is it a bad thing to use the dll?

btw, when is the next version of EAC going to appear???

dd.

YES

I don't know if EAC is better or the same on fairly good cd's, you'll have to wait for an expert to answer that question. But I know it can't do worse than cdex.. I just like to use EAC for everything even on cd's that i just unwrapped.

In my opinion, the best all around feature of EAC, the one I like the most, is the error log. It is so damn accurate when EAC has been configured correctly that you can completely trust it. It even works very well with the non-secure modes. So there's your answer. What do you get if your fast rips are bad ones? This happens even with new CDs that sometimes are defective (and I'm not talking about copy protection). So I think that if you have CDs in good condition you should try "burst" mode. I should give better results than CDex if fast ripping speeds is what you crave.

you can encode on-the-fly with EAC using
Dibrom's Modified 3.90.2 DLL just read the readme and configure EAC so it uses it as the encoder.

BTW if your drive doesn't do caching cdparanoia is almost as good as EAC but if it does it's very insecure.

Well, at the EAC forum, Andre was talking about a couple of weeks, so keep your fingers crossed.

This is a common misconception. The reason why EAC is considered better by many people is not that it's good at ripping scratched CDs flawlessly (this is certainly not the case!), it's that its error reporting is very reliable, as AtaqueEG pointed out.

I can't confirm this because I have never seriously tried it, but I have seen many cases reported where CDex managed to rip CDs that EAC would choke on (reporting a read/sync error and hence introducing audible glitches, or locking up completely) - of course, you'll have to listen to the CDex rips to be absolutely certain, because its error reporting is extremely unreliable. (That I can confirm - I remember one particular public library CD which EAC would refuse to extract without a read error always occurring at a certain position. CDex claimed to have extracted that track successfully, but it had a fat audible glitch at the exact position where EAC reported the read error.)

This is a circular argument, really!! But I'll have my two cents anyway!!

I have a particularly awful CD that is great for testing the reading capability of drives. It looks like it's been used to run a giant slalom on!! The only way I can get an almost 100% rip with this CD is to use EAC in burst mode. Any other mode in CDex or EAC and there are delightful pops and crackles all over the place.

With every other CD I have and I do look after them normally(!! ), I get identical rips with either piece of software. So if it's really bad, I look to EAC, but otherwise it doesn't really matter.

I think it's not so much CDex we should praise about, as its only a kind of glorified GUI for CD Paranoia. Here we are basically comparing the hidden EAC ripping method against the fully open CD Paranoia method. Consider that you can use CD Paranoia in many other OSes together with any encoder and gui, and you could also do the same in windows using another GUI or not GUI at all. So i would better compare CD Paranoia against EAC (compare only ripping, as EAC seems to do a lot more nowdays...).