Best music transfer strategy

[mshadel]

Hey Everyone,

After a week of lurking I went out and bought a NH600D last night. Minidisc is great! I had an older unit many years ago, but I abandoned the format because titling was such a pain in ass. Come on, titling discs with a jog dial? Ridiculous!

The good news is that with USB transfer titling is no big deal. But I have to say, the SonicStage software is by farthe weakest link in the chain. I love the hardware, but the software is absolute crap.

But enough ranting. I recently ripped my entire CD collection to the lossless FLAC format. I love it. The music is perfect, it's substantially smaller than WAV, and it includes Vorbis tagging so the song information is all stored with the file. As I buy new CDs I rip them to FLAC and then batch convert to mp3 or whatever format I need to support my various portable players, stereo components, etc. If a new format comes out I can delete the old stuff (keeping the FLACs) and re-encode the whole library to the latest and greatest without disturbing the original CDs. If my house burns down I've got all the original music on a backup drive off site. It's a great system.

The problem is, Sony doesn't support FLAC, so I can't transfer music from the digital originals to HiMD without transcoding to some other format first. SS supports WAV, but if I use that all the titling is lost.

Does Sonic Stage support lossless WMA? If it did I could transcode everything to that format and be able to transfer from there to ATRAC3+ with near perfect quality. Then I just need to find a WMA Lossless encoder somewhere.

Even better would be to find a codec to encode the FLACs directly to MD-compatible OMG files that I could then move over to HiMDs. That way I can encode the entire library ahead of time and avoid having to wait around while SS encodes on the fly.

I'd love to hear the techniques others are using to transfer lossless originals to MD with minimal loss in quality. I don't want to pull my discs out of storage or spend hours (days) re-titling everything. If all else fails I suppose I could convert the FLACs to 320kbps VBR mp3s and go from there to MD. That's as close as mp3 gets to lossless. But still, it's far from perfect.

mshadel

[Fray Adjacent]

Well, here's my process. I don't use FLAC or any other codecs, I archive my stuff in 320kbps MP3.

When I pick up a new CD, I rip it in 320kbps MP3 and store it in my music archive on my server machine. Then I rip it directly to MD using Simple Burner, usually in 256kbps ATRAC3+. (this will become more convenient once HiMD blanks are readily available)

So I really rip each CD twice, but I only do it as needed. I don't have a lot of CDs (maybe 110 or so), so it's not a big hassle to re rip everything for me. Doing it twice means no transcoding, and thus I don't have to worry about loss.

[elfbrand]

I also archive my stuff in lossless format (Monkey’s Audio and FLAC), so I had the same problem you had when I got my NH-600D; Sonic Stage doesn’t support those formats. I found two ways to work around this problem.

One, Sonic Stage does support WMA lossless, so at first I was using Easy CD-DA Extractor to convert my music to that format and then transfer it to my player. I still do that way when I’m not transferring whole CD’s or when I’m making compilations.

However I found another way to do it for whole CD’s and it works great for live albums or CD’s with tracks that run together. I use Nero 6 (with the appropriate plugins for the codecs of course) to make a CD image from my music files. Nero has a great virtual CD program that I use to load the image up, and than transfer it to MD using MD Simple Burner. If your are using lossless files you are using an exact copy of the CD for the transfer. It sounds tedious, but if you have a relatively new computer it really doesn’t take long at all.

[Breepee]

Well, here's my process.  I don't use FLAC or any other codecs, I archive my stuff in 320kbps MP3. 

When I pick up a new CD, I rip it in 320kbps MP3 and store it in my music archive on my server machine.  Then I rip it directly to MD using Simple Burner, usually in 256kbps ATRAC3+.  (this will become more convenient once HiMD blanks are readily available)

So I really rip each CD twice, but I only do it as needed.  I don't have a lot of CDs (maybe 110 or so), so it's not a big hassle to re rip everything for me.  Doing it twice means no transcoding, and thus I don't have to worry about loss.

That's a completely other option you should not want.

I keep a mastercopy of every CD that passes through my hands in my PC in APE (something like FLAC). This is lossless, but compressed (almost half the size of a wav file, compression is like zip of rar). So these files a compressed, not encoded. Encoding to mp3 or atrac is not transcoding but just encoding (a batch of extracting and then encoding).

APE's/FLAC's are as good as a CD, but with the advantage of your entire music collection at CD-quality at your fingertips.

I agree that Sony's software sucks bigtime at this piont (as a matter of fact, *any* software being produced by Sony sucks. DRM seems top priority over there). I also don't know what would be the smart thing. I'm still in doubt wether to buy a HiMD or a HDD-player or something. Sony's hardware is absolutely fine and if my choice depended solely on that, it would be definitely be a HiMD for me, but I'm just sick and tired of this neurotic and over-the-top DRM-thing Sony presses upon the MD. I like the freedom I have with a MP3-player. But this is another discussion

I hope Sony is going to support formats like FLAC, or APE or some other lossless but compressed format (I would like the units to support it too, like Apple with its 'AAC' lossless). For now, I wouldn't know how to get your files tagged onto your HiMDiscs.

[mshadel]

Thanks for all your comments. I decided to take advantage of Sonic Stage's strong WMA support and convert my FLAC files to WMA Lossless using DBPowerAMP. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft's DRM tainted formats, but it does work well. Music transferred to MD from the lossless original sounds much better than that sourced from mp3. If Sony ever decides to support FLAC (which I seriously doubt) that I can convert everything back to that format again.

I'm hopeful that some clever hackers will take advantage of Hi-MD's data drive capability to decode MD's music format and write software to convert and transfer music without the need for Sonic Stage. And maybe the DMCA will get repealed so they won't get dragged through the courts for doing it.

Or maybe Sony will release the ATRAC3+ codec so people can transcode using their own software and just use Sonic Stage for the transfer and DRM.

Or maybe Sony will release a new firmware that allows drag and drop for music files.

Or maybe monkeys will fly out of my... well, you get the picture.

Thanks everyone!

[Fray Adjacent]

So what does one use to rip CDs into FLAC? Once they're in FLAC, what does one use to PLAY the files??

I think if/when I get a couple large IDE drives and mirror them, then maybe I'll rerip into something like FLAC.

[Breepee]

So what does one use to rip CDs into FLAC?  Once they're in FLAC, what does one use to PLAY the files?? 

I think if/when I get a couple large IDE drives and mirror them, then maybe I'll rerip into something like FLAC.

One uses the best ripper around, EAC, and uses a playback program of choice, like Winamp or foobar, as I do. Also WMP can play them back with the appropiate codecs installed. There's actually a lot of programs that support FLAC and Ape. Have a look around on the net and let lossless amaze you

mshadel, is that hypothetical or have you actually got some CD's thru WMA lossless onto your MD? That would be GREAT news! Or is it just an assumption?

[Breepee]

[qoute instead of edit ]

[mshadel]

I've got a Hi-MD disc next to me with a bunch of music encoded from WMA Lossless originals. It works! It gives the exact same quality as music ripped directly from CD to MD, but without the need for keeping the originals on hand. Putting together a quick mix of music is much easier that way.

I used CDEX to rip my original CDs to FLAC. I'll be ripping to WMA Lossless from now on. The FLAC distribution comes with plug-ins for Winamp and Nero. CDEX supports FLAC via command line encoder. Hopefully it will allow ripping straigt to WMA Lossless as well.

Fray, you've got the right idea. Delete your mp3's that originated from one of your CDs. Re-rip to a lossless format and be sure to get the tagging right. Lock your CDs in storage. Listen to the lossless files on your computer with winamp or whatever you prefer. Batch encode the whole library to mp3, aac, or whatever you need for your portable players. Burn a CD from the lossless source when you want to take something on the road with you.

But first, buy two bigger hard drives- one to hold the data, and one to back it all up! If you lose the lossless originals you'll be in for a lot of re-ripping.

When I can do the same with DVDs I'll really be happy!

[Breepee]

I've got a Hi-MD disc next to me with a bunch of music encoded from WMA Lossless originals. It works! It gives the exact same quality as music ripped directly from CD to MD, but without the need for keeping the originals on hand. Putting together a quick mix of music is much easier  that way.

I used CDEX to rip my original CDs to FLAC. I'll be ripping to WMA Lossless from now on. The FLAC distribution comes with plug-ins for Winamp and Nero. CDEX supports FLAC via command line encoder. Hopefully it will allow ripping straigt to WMA Lossless as well.

That extremely good news! And how are tags handled with WMA lossless, just like mp3 id3?

[mshadel]

Yup, WMA has its own tagging format, but the tags are essentially the same as ID3. They will transfer easily to MP3, ATRAC, or whatever else you use.

[Fray Adjacent]

I didn't know CDEX would do that... I haven't looked through the codecs... I just left it on the default MP3. I'll check it when I get home.

Harddrive space will be the big limiting factor. I only have a 30gb partition in which I can store stuff. Someday I'll get a couple huge ID drives and mirror them, then do the FLAC idea for archiving.

[Breepee]

I didn't know CDEX would do that... I haven't looked through the codecs... I just left it on the default MP3.  I'll check it when I get home.

Harddrive space will be the big limiting factor.  I only have a 30gb partition in which I can store stuff.  Someday I'll get a couple huge ID drives and mirror them, then do the FLAC idea for archiving.

30GB is indeed not much. Here in the Netherlands a 160GB disks costs only around 100 euros, so that offers some bang for your buck. Get such a disk and you can stuff around 500 CD's on it (when using APE/FLAC/WMAlossless).