Recommend an MP3 ripper / encoder

[Ragnor]

I haven't got around to ripping any cd's to mp3 for a long time.. and now uni exams are over and it's the weekend (no work yay) I've got some time... w00t

I used to use Audio Catalyst a few years ago but I was just wondering..

What everyone else uses.. or recommends? and any other opinions related to mp3 ripping.

[TheCrow]

Ive always used Audio Catalyst, cause its easy to use and it works all the time for me.

[Binky Stunt Cat]

Audio Grabber 1.7+
works better than Audio Catylist, which is basicly AG 1.41 with a MP3 player

[Ragnor]

Hmm I was just looking at this site
http://www.mp3-encoders.com/

They reckon the Xing mp3 encoder isn't as good a quality as the other ones..

[Agent666]

x-ing is about the worst you could ever hope to use.......

I use EAC ... Exact Audio Copy ....... for true 1:1 rips that actually use error correction ..... slower but better than redoing rips..... esp if you find pops etc after giving that borrowed cd back;)

[Geek4Life]

Originally posted by Agent666
x-ing is about the worst you could ever hope to use.......

I use EAC ... Exact Audio Copy ....... for true 1:1 rips that actually use error correction ..... slower but better than redoing rips..... esp if you find pops etc after giving that borrowed cd back;)
I'd second that. EAC with LAME for the actual encoding.

[Ragnor]

I've been trawling the net.. found the EAC site.. sounds good and recommended by you guys too .. cool

Apparently you can use LAME with audio grabber v1.81 too.. just put the lame dll in the folder and change an option.

[tweak'e]

mostly i use cdex tho i have been playing aroung with ogg format. not bad size/quality ratio.

will have to give eac a go when i get time.

[KingJackal]

When I had a LIVE! sound card, I used the Creative Play Center software - which amazingly enough is actually pretty good. Especially cos you could do bit rates anywhere from 20kb/s ( or something equally internet-radio ish ) to 360kb/s.

However, my CD mp3's are all gone - replaced with ogg vorbis' ;). The ONLY downside to ogg vorbis being that in Winamp you get a small pause while switching tracks ( a minor niggle with albumn's like Gatecrasher's, where all the tracks flow into each other ).

GO TEH OGG VORBIS! :D

[tweak'e]

well i have been trying EAC and while it is very good on the cd ripping the compression and id tag side of things is not great. for eg if you use an external compresser such as ogg vorbis you lose the id tag. which means i have to find another prog to do batch id tag renaming from cddb. anyone know of any such prog?

for the time being i'll stick to cdex. at the momnt i'm slowly replacing my old XING (audio catalyst) rips which have degraded in quality over the years.

btw i noticed duke nukem is useing ogg vorbis. (cheaper no doubt)

[Agent666]

;) how do they degrade in quality over the years if they are didgital;).......... me thinks they were crap to start with if you used xing......

[Binky Stunt Cat]

Audio catalyst used Audio Grabbet 1.41....1.7 and later are good.....

whats the EAC site?
(too lazy to look and i have a lab shortly)

[BeachBum]

I'm probably not really up with the play in terms of CD-ripping and MP3 utils but I do use NTI CD-Maker as with that you may rip or write on-the-fly. If I want to do anything a bit out of the ordinary with the ripped file before compressing it then I use CoolEdit Pro which does more things than I think I"ll ever need :)

[tweak'e]

Originally posted by Agent666
;) how do they degrade in quality over the years if they are didgital;).......... me thinks they were crap to start with if you used xing......

i would think that the poorer parts of the mp3 have degraded a bit(lost data) due to being copied to new hardrives over the years. kinda like some mp3's that have been past around on the net heaps get worse and worse, ie copy of a copy of a copy......

not all of my old ones have gone that way. possibly just errors that where on the cd origanally which the ripper didn't correct.

[whetu]

OR

an improved sound subsystem has revealed how crap mp3's sound... I sure noticed that in going from my soundblaster to my AE and now if ripping to mp3, I wont have it at any bitrate below 192k

[Ragnor]

Well this thread sure came back from the dead.. but it's all over for mp3 (well in time it will be) go the .ogg

http://forums.overclockers.co.nz/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1249

[Grrr!!]

I will have to try Ogg Vorbis. Are the files actually any smaller than MP3s?

[OldGrey]

Originally posted by Binky Stunt Cat
Audio catalyst used Audio Grabbet 1.41....1.7 and later are good.....

whats the EAC site?
(too lazy to look and i have a lab shortly)

EAC (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de)

EAC is the best, after using AudioCatalyst ive seen the errors in my ways. First of all its damn good at reading crappy scratched CDS that AudioCatalyst etc would just spit the dummy on. And queued encoding is good if you are ripping a whole bunch of CD's in a sitting and have a bit of hdd space free. You can just keep ripping cd after cd while it queues up all the temp wave files to be encoded and does so in the background while still ripping. Also with lame VBR using --alt-preset standard its hard to beat.

[Agent666]

Originally posted by tweak'e


i would think that the poorer parts of the mp3 have degraded a bit(lost data) due to being copied to new hardrives over the years. kinda like some mp3's that have been past around on the net heaps get worse and worse, ie copy of a copy of a copy......


sorry but if you copy a MP3 back and forth to different HDrives it WILL NOT degrade the data in the file........... complete bollocks :D

you are right in saying that if someone say gets an mp3 and writes it as an audio cd then recompresses it to MP3 from the cd it will not be a true copy as MP3 is a lossy compression standard....

[tweak'e]

Originally posted by Agent666


sorry but if you copy a MP3 back and forth to different HDrives it WILL NOT degrade the data in the file........... complete bollocks :D


ever heard of bad sectors, faulty ide cables, faulty ram, data corrubtion ? :eek:

[Binky Stunt Cat]

Audio Grabber to WAV, then OggDrop
thats my combo atm

[Agent666]

Originally posted by tweak'e


ever heard of bad sectors, faulty ide cables, faulty ram, data corrubtion ? :eek:

yes I have heard of those ;)

but......
1. bad sectors....... file where the bad sector is is unreadable...... yes even if it is a MP3.......

2....


3.....

I can't even be assed writing out reasons for the rest.......... believe me your MP3's dont degrade in quality over time due to the reasons you said........... sorry........ someone else is welcome to prove me wrong but I don't think I am ;) .......

[Agent666]

a argument to illustrate what I mean is do your other files degrade??? ie do words change in your *.doc files?? .... TXT files change contents?.... my guess is no........

[Ragnor]

B*tch fight ..

Now come on girls you're fighting over semantics.

Yes there are things like error detection, retransmission to ensure that things are not lost and the file is an exact replica.. but sometimes it doesn't work out.. hence the odd corrupted file zip file or word doc (yes its rare but it happens)...

Pops and clicks in a mp3 could be considered an exmaple... but its pretty rare

[Binky Stunt Cat]

ok...i tried EAC....but all i got for decompressing WAV files were 1Kb things.....how the heck do i get it to save full WAVs?:confused:

i still wanna use Ogg drop as my encoder...its just so kewl :p

[Ragnor]

What do you mean how do you use EAC..?

You just select the track(s) and click on the WAV button on the left side menu.

You might need to have a look at what your options are set to, if you still getting 1k files.

[Agent666]

blinky I bet you never configured your drives....... and the extraction method......... tut tut....... try it again ;)

[Binky Stunt Cat]

meh...its working now......
its the simple things that kill :p