Hi,

After using Lame for ages, I've decided to start ripping with MPC. I used EAC to rip the CD's to WAVs, and used the MPC Batch Encoder with v0.90s to encode them to MPC.

I have a few questions:
1 - How do I configure EAC to encode to MPC? I've tried a few things, but when the mpp commandline encoder window opens, it closes straight away. It obv. brings up an error but it's too fast for me to read it.

2 - Will my MP3 tagging tools work with MPC? Is there any tool specifically for tagging MPCs?

3 - Most crucially: I ripped Origin Of Symmetry by Muse, the track "Screenager" has a quiet start, and using in_mpc.dll v0.9b with Winamp, the MPC jumps to 17seconds after I play it. If I reduce the "Headroom" setting from 0 to -12, it cuts off the first 7 seconds. Can someone explain what's going on and how I can stop it. I'd like the volume of my MPC's to be pretty much the same as how my MP3's were.

Also, all the silence seems to be cut from the start of every song. I don't know if this is done by the encoder or decoder or both, but how do I keep the silence that was in the original WAV?

Thanks.

I think you will find most of the answers to your questions if you follow this thread:http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/showth...d=6812#post6812

john33

I stuck the in_mpp1.7.9f back into my winamp plugins directory; I didn't care to do all the homework to figure out how to use in_mpc0.90b. With the latter (newer) plugin, which is configured for replaygain, mpc files initially sounded much softer than the original wav files. I adjusted the headroom from 6 dB to 0 dB, but even then they were slightly softer (at -1 dB headroom, mpc was slightly louder than original wav). Clipping protection, I suppose. But I'm not using replaygain yet; I'm going to wait until there is more clean implementation of the system before I start on it.

If you rename to mp3 it probably will. There's no reason why it shouldn't as far as I know.

There's a few programs that supports mpc though.

Helium 2 will let you edit MPC tags. Does a ton of other stuff as well.

MPTagger will do IDv3.1 tags on MPC files with no problems, also renaming. I've done thousands of MPC files with it and it always works. Just make sure you have the option to enter IDv3.2 tags OFF. I think the latest version is 1.60.

BTW, some folks complain about the constraints of using IDv3.1 tags, especially for long song titles. If you have some song titles that won't fit in the IDv3.1 title box then you could use the "comment" IDv3.1 field for extra space. A simple editing of the mpc plugin with a hex editor can help with that.

Using the hex editor do a search and replace for every occurrence of 6E 2E 61 2E within the plugin. Replace it with 00 00 00 00. The hex edit of the plugin just makes Winamp show nothing for the %5 (comments field) in Winamp's scrolling display window instead of "n/a" if there's nothing entered into the IDv3.1 %5 comments field.

Then, tell the plugin to use %5 after %2 and you have more room for the song title, or album title or wherever you wanna use the IDv3.1 "comments" space for. Mine's like this in the plugin %1 %4 %3 - %2 %5 and it works great. Cheers!

This seemed like the appropriate thread...

Is there a switch that yields better quality than -insane?

When using replay gain, do the file names have to be in a specific format?

Using Batch encoder, replay gain -auto doesn't work. The other switches do, but aut doesn't seem to.

Could somebody point me towards a quick and dirt explanation of the functions in the winamp plugin (headroom, etc.)?

Is there a way to enable the clipping protection in the decoder without making a .wav file?

Thanks, in advance, for any help that you might be able to provide.

No. Strange. What version of ReplayGain do you use? There's a help button on the mpc plugins configuration menu. Also you can find more info about dither and noise shaping here: http://www.uni-jena.de/~pfk/mpp/dither.html Sure, ClipProtect also works when you play the files.
Hope this helps.

Thank you very much, Speek.

I am going to try once again, and I will get back to you on the replaygain (.81a) thing. If you say it works, more than likely I have something set up incorrectly-the other functions work, but I'm a newbie. I want to make sure I'm not at fault before I start whining...

I am to assume --insane is the highest quality switch?

Better than insane? Insane's not good enough for ya? IMO Mpc files encoded @ insane is better than any commandline switch you'll use for LAME. Insane's the highest quality "level" you can use in MPC(Musepack) at this time. I think there's talk about some of the settings in this thread: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/showth...13&pagenumber=1

I was simply wondering if there was something else (I didn't think there would be)...

I just saw my first mppenc "warning message" that tells me to rencode with a scale value-that's great. My only concern is that how many albums have I done, where I walked away from the computer as the mppenc was doing it's thing, missing the warning messages. Speek, is there a way you could set a flag (within your program, or from commandline if needed) tha would save the verbose output to a text file, so we could set up a bunch of encodings, run the encoder, and check the file for clipping problems later. Furthermore, when batch encoding, one doesn't have that much time to write the information since the information disappears when the next song is encoded...

OK, I guess the replaygain does work, I was reading the "unable to open file" messages, which must be the decoder's response to not ouputting audio, simply running through the fiule looking for the rg value (but I am guessing here)...

I also wonder if there is a way to save the .bat file created to be saved and run at a later date. Since I am trying to keep all mpc files in folders delineated by albums and artists, I can not save all music in one foilder-as is the setup with batch encoder. Then technically, you could make several .bat files, put them all in one bat file and run it-and walk away from the 'puter for a little while. I guess this would only work if the info from the encoder could be saved in a text file...

Anyway, many thanks to everybody who responded to my newbie queries, and a heartfelt "thank you" to all who developed the programs...

PS-I was planning on using He2 for the tagging duties-is this a good way to go?

"--insane" is the best single switch, yes. But of course you can tune it a little more. For instance, i sometimes like to use "--insane --nmt 15 --tmn 30" or "--insane --nmt 16 --tmn 32". First one should stay around 300-320, second one around 300-340 kbit...

No, I looked into this many times, but I have't been able to make such an option so far.
2. You are probably using Winows 98/ME. In Windows 2000/XP you can scroll back when everything is encoded and read it. BTW this clipping information of the encoder is not relevant. First, it's not accurate and second you shouldn't use --scale at encoding time, but instead use replaygain and ClipProtect. I recommend reading the FAQ on Frank Klemm's site: http://www.uni-jena.de/~pfk/mpp/faq.txt I don't really understand what you want to do, but you can find the batch file that's created by the frontend in the same directory. It's named mpcbatch.bat.

I don't get it-the scaled files are no good? So should I re-encode at --insane, and simply ignore the warnings in the encoder? I didn't see a specific referenece in the mppfaq, but I will take your word for it...

btw, it was by modifying the bat file your program creates, adding the --scale 0.xxx line and deleting unneeded segments, that I encoded with scale in the first place...

My directory structure looks like this, with mpc files in their respective album folders:

C:My MusicArtistAlbum

Thus if I were to rip to albums to .wav (via eac), I would want to output the mpc files to different folders. So if I could set everything up for album1 in your program, save batch file BUT defer processing, then set up album2, and defer processing and then encode all the albums together at a time when I would not be near the computer. I have literally hundreds of CDs and hundreds of LPs I am going to convert to mpc for my music library. After lurking around here for a while, I decided upon mpc as the format. Adding the deferred processing option would help me accomplish my task. I guess I could edit the bat files all by hand, too...

Many thanks for all of your help, and the fun programs. Any advice, thoughts or opinions is appreciated...

Sorry, I still don't understand what you want to do (my native language is not English). But wouldn't it be easier to use EAC for ripping AND encoding?

Just read your post again. You first want to rip a number of albums to wav and then later while your not at the PC encode everything. You could just encode everything with the output file in the same directory as the input file (leave the Output directory box in the frontend empty).

Thanks Speek-that's why I was posting in the newbie thread...

Again, you suggest NOT using scale when encoding (--insane as the only switch), and then using replaygain --auto on the files before playback..?

I really do appreciate the help. Thanks again.

Exactly. I'm sure I read this somewhere in Frank Klemms doc explicitly, but I can't find it back. But Q21 of the FAQ does say: (The switch -rescale doen't exist, so I guess he meant --scale.)

You can use the --delinput switch to automatically delete the wav files after encoding.

Also there will soon be a version of replaygain that can do recursive directories. So that will save you some work.

Macdaddy,

I just came across this information in manual.txt that is included in the mppdec-0.99c source code: http://www.uni-jena.de/~pfk/mpp/src/mppdec-0.99c.tar.bz2

True, you could fine-tune it a little more than simply using insane but to my ears when I tried it I didn't hear any audible difference on the 15 randonly selected songs I chose. Well, for me, a simple --insane is great enough. I don't want to get into all that commandline crap again. That's the other reason I got away from Lame, besides the great audio quality mpc gives you. Cheers!