Ripping a CD with best MP3 settings

by **Big_Berny** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 4:09 am

Are you sure that it preserves data? I almost can't believe that.... If you encode to wave you should have a bitdepth of 20 instead of 16.

by **telliott** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 7:43 pm

I just did a test and MediaMonkey as well as EAC preserves HDCD data.

I ripped an HDCD encoded CD to flac using both programs and used Nero, with flac plugin, to burn a sample of tracks to a virtual CD. I had 2 virtual CDs, one containing rips from each program. Then I loaded each into Daemon tools and played the virtual disk in WMP11, which is the only program I know of that will decode and display HDCD. The HDCD display came on for both rips.

Maybe one day we will figure out how to use that extra data to make better mp3s.

Tim

by **Big_Berny** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 2:36 am

@telliott: Well I thinkt that accuraterip is not needed by te majority of users because they just don't care. And it would need a lot time to implement that. That's why it's not implemented yet. But if you really want to be sure to have perfect rips I'd use EAC or dBpoweramp.

by **telliott** » Sun Jun 15, 2008 11:25 pm

I'm ripping a large collection and MM ripping to flac is fast. I tried EAC and it reported accurate results. Perfect is perfect (to me) and nearly all ny CDs are scratchless. I may go back toe EAC to rip a few CDs I got used to make sure I get an accurate rip.

Can someone from the MM development team explain why secure rip is not needed? It's been a requested feature for a long time. To me, if the CD is good and the drive is working properly it should not matter. Will MM report errors if it's unable to read every sample?

Tim

by **Big_Berny** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 6:10 pm

Well, the difference of filesizes (bitrate) of this two options isn't so big. So you also could pick the CBR as it surely has the better quality (even if I doubt that you hear the difference) and the files are only a bit larger.

EDIT: But IMHO a bitrate of about 192 @VBR is already more than enough!

by **Teknojnky** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 2:37 pm

320 cbr wastes a huge amount of space.

I am sure in 99% of the cases, the 256 vbr (v1 or v2) will be sufficient.

When in doubt, ABX and prove it to yourself as everyone's ears are different.

by **Seeker** » Tue Jun 03, 2008 2:23 pm

Question from a friend:

If I have two mp3s of differing bit rates, which would be preferred:
256 VBR, or
320 Fixed?

Extreme: VBR ~256 kbps - Near CD Quality+
Insane: CBR ~320 kbps - Highest Quality

From the above it appears the latter, but others may have different opinions.

by **Guest** » Mon May 05, 2008 5:04 pm

Agreed that EAC in secure mode is the only way to rip. And as also pointed out, Hydrogenaudio is THE place to go for answers to your audio questions (no doubt everything you want to know is already in the wiki--always go there before the forums).

Looks like you found the info for setting up EAC. As far as the different LAME settings and what to use for what, this link goes direct to that:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME

by **Guest** » Mon May 05, 2008 4:55 pm

Agreed that EAC in secure mode is the only way to rip. And as also pointed out, Hydrogenaudio is THE place to go for answers to your audio questions (no doubt everything you want to know is already in the wiki--always go there before the forums).

Looks like you found the info for setting up EAC. As far as the different LAME settings and what to use for what, this link goes direct to that:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME

by **Big_Berny** » Mon May 05, 2008 5:39 am

MCSmarties wrote:My recommendation (you can find everything you ever wanted to know on the topic at Hydrogenaudio)
is to use -V2 but NOT the --vbr-new switch. Yes it's much slower, but I found that some portable MP3 players won't play music encoded with the new algorithm properly.

That's really strange because it vbr-algorithm shouldn't affect the compatibility as the format of the MP3 should be exactly the same. If this really happened on your system then I'd report the problem to the lame-devs!

@vpsean: Try a different drive if you have one. If not I'd use the recommended secure mode - should be much faster as burst with test&copy. And if you use AccurateRip in EAC you'll see if you get accurate results.
And have a look at this site: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=EAC . There are also some guides at the end. Btw I'd recommend the use of --vbr-new as it's faster at the same quality (at least it's not worse).
IMHO better because faster and more comfortable is DBpoweramp - but unfortunately it's shareware. But eventhough it's an alternative which is maybe worth a look.

Big_Berny

by **VPSean** » Sat May 03, 2008 1:54 pm

WHOAA!!!

Hey guys -- specifically NoHitter as you'll probably have the answer -- I followed all the settings for EAC and am stoked to have it doing some quality rips...However, I think I went a little over board. When I was using it several years ago it was doing the 'skip prevention,' and took about 30 minutes per CD....Right now it's got an ETA of 3 hours and 45 minutes!!! Yikes!

Are there any settings you would recommend I tone down to give it some better time, but still with no skip?

Right now the CD's I'm ripping don't even have any scratches on them really....and if any, very minor....

Thanks a ton!!

--Sean
Update: I'm doing some minor things on my computer and the new ETA is 4 hours and 20 minutes!

by **VPSean** » Sat May 03, 2008 1:34 am

Thanks nohitter! I'm all set now!

--Sean

by **nohitter151** » Sat May 03, 2008 12:20 am

@VP sean... no no no. tar.gz is a linux archive file.

Follow the instructions here: http://www.teqnilogik.com/tutorials/eac ... OptionsMP3

by **VPSean** » Fri May 02, 2008 10:15 pm

Hey Guys thanks a ton for your help...I really appreciate it...

MCSmarties: What you said is exactly what I needed to hear! It was EAC I used to use and I couldn't remember what it is....

Here's what I'm wondering though now -- what the heck do I do with LAME? I downloaded a file titled "lame-3.98b8.tar.gz" -- and I looked around to find out what to do with it, but I have no idea. I also downloaded EAC, and my gut tells me I have to extract lame into a folder on EAC or something....

And then once I do that...do I follow the quality settings that I saw on that Hyrogenaudio wiki site you showed me?

Just a little confused in how it all mixes together: EAC, LAME, and the settings from the Wiki.

Thanks a ton man, sincerely appreciated.

--Sean

by **MCSmarties** » Mon Apr 28, 2008 9:36 am

Well, I only rip with EAC.

Don't get me wrong, I love mediamonkey and I think it has a very capable ripper - my girlfriend uses it all the time - but in my opinion why use anything less than the absolutely best ripper available, specially since it's freeware?

As for the encoding settings, that's a completely different cup of tea.
I do use mediamonkey to for example transcode FLAC to MP3.

My recommendation (you can find everything you ever wanted to know on the topic at Hydrogenaudio)
is to use -V2 but NOT the --vbr-new switch. Yes it's much slower, but I found that some portable MP3 players won't play music encoded with the new algorithm properly.

I do't see the point of using -V0 or -b 320.
If I want archival quality, I'll directly go lossless (e.g. FLAC) instead.

Ripping a CD with best MP3 settings

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