Jump to content

Ripping Music from CD

Rate this topic


aethyrmaster

Recommended Posts

I was ripping some CD's to my PC the other day, and ran into a problem. Now that I'm back into MD really heavy, how do I want to rip my files? Also, above and beyond format, what bitrate do I want?

I've always been an iTunes user, just because I liked the interface and layout better than winamp. Now, though, Running SonicStage and iTunes together and trying to make sure that my music library doesn't get all jumbled is too much.

Should I just switch entirely to OMG and SonicStage? What bitrate of ATRAC should I rip at, if I typically made mp3's at 192 kbps? As it stands now, I have no Hi-MD equipment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ideally rip to some sort of lossless codec. If you plan on working natively with Sonic Stage and don't want to decode a lossless file to wav for use with it then go with WMA Lossless. Else Flac or Monkeys Audio are good options. If you can't go that route I'd use the highest bitrate mp3 you can afford space-wise. Best to use some sort of format that's portable to other systems should your preferences change later. Lossless is really the way to go though, if you can afford the space premium.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

With cheap DVD writers and DVD blanks, I don't see any good reason for lossless codecs anymore, considering the lack of compatiblity and support among software and hardware. This is what I do with my audioCDs.

Software: EAC, and Daemon Tools. both are freeware

1. Rip the AudioCD to a WAV image + CUE sheet with EAC. EAC will rip your CD into 1 big WAV file (preserving gapless if applicable), and store track marks and title/artist info in the CUE sheet. You can store your original AudioCD in a safe place.

2. Whenever you want to "rip" the CD, all you need is the WAV + CUE sheet, and daemon tools. Daemon Tools can mount the CUE sheet, tricking windows into thinking that it actually has an AudioCD. Any software would recognize it as the AudioCD.

Pros:

-No compatiblity issues associated with lossless formats

-No need to decode to WAV.

-Gapless is preserved.

-Compatible with all software that can rip form an AudioCD.

-The WAV image + CUE sheet can be backed up to DVD or any media easily.

Cons:

-Does not work on MacOS. Currently, there is no way to mount a CUE sheet associated with an audio file in MacOS. There is no Mac version of Daemon tools.

If you're going to MD exclusively, then by all means use sonicstage. Note that if you have 2nd gen HiMd units or later, they support native MP3 playback, so you don't have to encode to Atrac. I do still find iTunes really useful. If your music are all in MP3 format (iTunes won't recognize Atrac), you can use iTunes' smart playlist feature to easily create your playlists (you can limit their size so it will fit your MD), and you can simply drag-n-drop the arranged tracks into Sonicstage's playlist creation screen, and viola, Sonicstage will collect all the MP3s and turn them into its own playlist that you can transfer to your MD. Very useful in creating mixes form thousands of MP3s.

Edited by pata2001
Link to comment
Share on other sites

With cheap DVD writers and DVD blanks, I don't see any good reason for lossless codecs anymore, considering the lack of compatiblity and support among software and hardware. This is what I do with my audioCDs.

Erm. 40% more space when archiving, even on DVD? And yes, you can keep gaplessness upon reconstruction.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

upon reconstruction.

That's the problem. If the software cannot encode directly form the lossless version, you have to de-compress to WAV first, and you loose the tags. It's fine if you just want a single track or 2, but doing that for full CDs takes too much time. Much easier to just mount an image and it will be recognized just like the actual AudioCD. Track info can be easily put on the CUE sheet file, and the mounted image will be recognized as an AudioCD with CD-TEXT.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Losing tags on conversion used to bug me alot, then I tried the Gracenote CDDB thingie in Sonic Stage. It works fairly well even identifying the wavs of decompressed CD. CUE+WAV is no good for me as I store ALL of my ripped CD's for use with my Squeezebox or listening directly on a PC. CUE+WAV would easily take up 300+ GB whereas the Monkeys Audio files only use about 150GB for around 400 CD's. If you juggle music around on MDs alot I could see digging out an archive DVD being a tad annoying, especially if you only want a few tracks from each album for a mix or something.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Losing tags on conversion used to bug me alot, then I tried the Gracenote CDDB thingie in Sonic Stage. It works fairly well even identifying the wavs of decompressed CD. CUE+WAV is no good for me as I store ALL of my ripped CD's for use with my Squeezebox or listening directly on a PC. CUE+WAV would easily take up 300+ GB whereas the Monkeys Audio files only use about 150GB for around 400 CD's. If you juggle music around on MDs alot I could see digging out an archive DVD being a tad annoying, especially if you only want a few tracks from each album for a mix or something.

Good for you. For me, Gracenote and freedb sometimes work great, but most of the time, it will have plenty of errors, or cannot recognize the CD at all. The method I use is intended for archival purposes, not regular use. I simply rip and encode all my non-gapless tracks to MP3, and use iTunes to organize my MP3s. Creating mixes with iTunes is incredibly simple, even for use with Sonicstage.

foobar works great with CUE sheet. :) you can even compress the WAV file into MP3 or whatnot, modify the CUE sheet to point to that file, and foobar will still keep the track marks and title info properly.

Edited by pata2001
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 6 months later...

You said: "Creating mixes with iTunes is incredibly simple, even for use with Sonicstage."

Can you confirm that transferring iTunes playlist to SonicStage 4.2 actually works? I have had too many lost hours of sleep trying to get a playlist from iTunes to drag and drop into SS: it just does nothing!

BTW this works for me from Windows Media Player if you export the playlist as .m3U and import it to SS. But I'd like to use iTunes for making playlists.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...