so, i'm dealing with live concert discs that were recorded in the 70's with a mini tape recorder or some soundboard recordings.
i do not have lineage or any info as to what the original transfer bit and depth rates were, i only know these are lossless.

*so the question is: not knowing if they were done at 24 or 16 bits originally, what is best to rip them at now to get best results?

i know that if they were originally recorded/transfered at 16bit, then ripping to 24 is pointless... i just want to make sure i preserve the best quality of the media possible.

i am part of a traders forum and they have suggested i just use EAC (16/41 stereo) and that is best...

*i guess one other question is: no matter what the original bit and depth rates were, once burned to a CDR are the songs now 16/41 anyway? therefore useless to try to upconvert to 24bit?

i hope you can see what i'm trying to figure out, it's hard to figure the best way to ask...

thank you for your time

I'd rip at the highest possible and then down sample to 44.1kHz for CD.

Rip at 24/88.2 kHz (or 176.4 kHz) if storage space is of no concern. Otherwise, 24/44.1 kHz or 16/44.1 kHz (not 41 khz). I don't understand the "appeal" of 96 kHz versus 88.2 kHz when the files are likely to be forked to 44.1 kHz at some point. If you need advice on SRC and dither, be sure to come back here and ask

You can burn any type of file to CD-Rs, but they will only be playable as Redbook audio CDs if they're 16-bit/44.1 kHz.

Your post is a little bit confusing, but if you are saying that what you have is Redbook audio CDs or CD-Rs then the best quality you can achieve is 16/44.1. Anything you do from there can only degrade the quality, though not necessarily audibly.

oops, i meant 44.1...

thanks for the input! i guess i will try a track at both 24/88 and 16/44 and listen?

anyone else have something to say, please feel free

blake5298, do you try to rip CD? Or vinyl? Or tape?

pdq--

yea, i thought it might be confusing...

though i don't know the source for sure... the lineage for the music went something like this:

SBD or audience recorded cassette>DAT>CDR>EAC>wav>Flac>wav>CDR>*ME*

so, are you saying no matter the original recording settings, once the music has been put to CDR it is going to be 16/44.1?

i am just trying keep the best quality, but i don't want to "artificially" rip the tracks to 24/88 or 24/96 thinking that will make them better when it won't...

Yes

OK, thanks.

so, to be sure, i can't improve the quality by ripping to higher bit/depth?

Ahhh...I see what you were asking now. I apparently missed the part where you mentioned that you were ripping "discs" -- I assumed an analog medium of some sort.

You can't recreate something that isn't there.

How would you go about ripping at a higher sample rate or bit depth? EAC is not capable of doing this, nor any other CDDA ripping program with which I'm familiar. dBpoweramp can convert HDCD to 24 bit, but it's still ripping the data from the disc at 16.

Express Rip is the program... there's about 50 wav encoding settings to choose from (i didn't count, but that's about right). Google it or go to download.com.

I know EAC doesn't... that's what i've resolved to using, since it apparently makes an exact copy. What I don't understand is that I can burn a disc with flac files converted from wav 24 bit at whatever depth level to a CDR, but then if i rip that CDR with EAC it would only rip at 16 (not an exact copy)... is there something i'm missing?

CD Audio dics can contain only stereo, 44.1 kHz, 16-bit sound. So your 24-bit files were converted to 16 bit before burning to CDR.

OK. So the only way to preserve those levels would be to make a data disc of the files and not a CDR eh?

Now this is off topic, but i want to know before continuing...

when creating data discs of music files, is it best to use TAO or DAO? and open or closed? and why?

also, what do the ISO+juliet / ISO+juliet+UDF / ISO level 2 have to do with? does this setting effect disc readability or anything else?

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOU TIME AND THOUGHT, YOU ALL HAVE BEEN A BIG HELP AND SWIFT TOO

Am I missing something?
Does this not mean that your music as delivered to you has already been written on two occasions to an audio CD.
What is there that still exists beyond 44.1 kHz, 16-bit sound?

terry