Time to put most of my music onto my media player.

[Big Vern]

I have the Mede8er MED500X2 with a 2TB internal HD that holds near enough all my films. I also have a spare external 1TD HD that I want to shove all my music on to make a massive jukebox!
All of my music is on its original CD, so I wanna convert to an acceptable format that retains the quality, but I also need to shrink it a tad to cram as much on as possible!
MP3 is out of the question, as I think its c**p. I am looking at FLAC at its highest quality, or maybe AC3 stereo?

Any ideas, and a decent tool for the conversion process?

Thanks.......

[tebasuna51]

What is the problem with MP3?
Of course FLAC is better because is losseless (you can't select a quality), but AC3?

With MP3 max quality (320 Kb/s) you compress the audio CD size to the 20%, with FLAC is variable but greater than 50%.

The recommended tool is Exact audio copy (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.php/resources/download/)

[Inspector.Gadget]

Use LAME, VBR new, V2, or Nero Digital's AAC Encoder at Q 0.5. It is scientifically impossible that you will hear a difference between these files and the original FLAC in 95% or greater of test cases ever considered in ABX testing. AC3 is laughably inferior to MP3 or AAC-LC compression efficiency, so the fact that you even raise that as a possibility reveals that your "MP3 is crap" claim is made in ignorance and not out of any understanding of human perception or how MP3 encoding actually works.

[GodofaGap]

How big is you collection? With 1TB you easily could fit 2000+ full-length CDs using FLAC. If you need another format later for a portable or whatever you could always transcode from there.

I'm not sure how you can consider AC3 when you dismiss MP3.

[Lyle_JP]

I would use AAC at 256k. You'll get a 6:1 compression ratio and the quality is excellent. The files would also be highly portable and Apple iPod compliant (in fact, compliant with most modern portable devices).

[hello_hello]

Any ideas, and a decent tool for the conversion process?

Foobar2000.
It's an audio player (one of the best) and it'll perform the ripping and converting for you too.
It'll rip CDs in secure mode if you wish, and convert them to pretty much all the usual formats. Which one you use, is I guess up to you.
To use it, you need to manually install the LAME encoder (for MP3) or the Nero AAC encoder, or the FLAC encoder etc. When you first try to convert to a particular format, Foobar2000 will ask you for the location of the appropriate converter and you're ready to go. You can set up multiple conversion presets so converting is generally only a matter of right clicking on the selected files in the playlist and then selecting the appropriate preset. The standard Foobar2000 presets for each format are probably exactly what you'd want to use anyway.

Me..... I rip CDs in secure mode using Foobar2000 to Flac, which I then convert to MP3 for use with my portable player. I do so because then I've got a lossless version stored for safekeeping, and if one day I decide to use AAC instead of MP3 I won't have to rip the CDs again. I can just use Foobar2000 to convert all the Flac files to another format.

Foobar2000 also supports replaygain and tagging etc, but that's probably another topic. There's also a wide variety of plugins available for it to add to it's functionality.

[Vurbal]

With that much space I'd go with FLAC. No point in lossy encoding unless there's some reason you need it, either for space or compatibility. I'd use Exact Audio Copy and FLAC for the job. For MP3 I'd use EAC and LAME.

IIRC the EAC configuration wizard can automatically configure the options for either of those encoders. EAC can also be used with any other command line encoder you want, although you may have to do a little more work to figure out the correct options.

[SeeMoreDigital]

It's FLAC for me too :)

[Sparktank]

I use EAC to rip my CD's into FLAC for my 1TB external. I only convert them to mp3 when I want to hear them on my mp3 player when Im on the go.
And when I do that, I use VBR-0 with Foobar.

I think APE does a higher compression, but the seek time is not that great.
And I think WavPack can do higher compression? I'm not sure, I don't use WavPack so much. I do know it can create hybrid formats of lossless/lossy. Although I've never ventured into that.

[Inspector.Gadget]

It was a simple question. No reason to give an a-hole answer.

If you think that constitutes an a-hole answer I don't believe you'll feel very comfortable on these forums.

[Big Vern]

Thanks for the replies :)

I am going to go with AAC 320k. Now I have over 6000 CDs to process, albums and singles!!!
During the 80s and 90s, me and my pal use to troll near enough every record collectors fair in the South East [UK] and buy anything that grabbed our attention. Some of the discs are going to need to need the old toothpaste trick to get a good read, but it will keep me busy for the next few months! Then they go into storage along with my vinyl collection.

[SallyDog]

If you think that constitutes an a-hole answer I don't believe you'll feel very comfortable on these forums.

I haven't felt uncomfortable while being here for the last 9 years, but I have no desire to get into a pissing match with you either :):D:D

[Sparktank]

Some of the discs are going to need the old toothpaste trick to get a good read

EAC has some features (drive dependent) to help better read from scratched discs. But that can cause a lot of strain on the drive in the long run.
There's also a lot of options to configure to do an accurate rip, and there's several guides out there with different preferences for accurate results.

[Ghitulescu]

No reason to say mp3 is crap cause it simply isn't.

People chose MP3 back in the early nineties for space reasons not quality :) I'd go for FLAC. FLAC is also available on most new portable players.

[smok3]

Thanks for the replies :)

I am going to go with AAC 320k. Now I have over 6000 CDs to process, albums and singles!!!
During the 80s and 90s, me and my pal use to troll near enough every record collectors fair in the South East [UK] and buy anything that grabbed our attention. Some of the discs are going to need to need the old toothpaste trick to get a good read, but it will keep me busy for the next few months! Then they go into storage along with my vinyl collection.

you can do a three-step process:

a. rip to flac/ape/lossless

later if disk size becomes an issue

b. convert less important albums into lossy formats, delete lossless.

c. in a year or so you will know what albums you never listen, so convert those into lossy versions as well, delete lossless.

[TinTime]

c. in a year or so you will know what albums you never listen, so convert those into lossy versions as well, delete lossless.

That's assuming he's found time to actually rip 6000 CDs by this time next year :)

16.4 discs a day, every day for a year...

Personally I'd rip losslessly to FLAC. When the 1TB drive is finally full you can then make a judgement about whether to convert to lossy or just buy another drive. I suspect they will be pretty cheap by the time the first TB is done.

[smok3]

That's assuming he's found time to actually rip 6000 CDs by this time next year :)
16.4 discs a day, every day for a year...
... I suspect they will be pretty cheap by the time the first TB is done.
good point.

[jj666]

Given the amount of work involved and how cheap storage space is, it would make more sense to rip to a lossless format to at least future-proof the collection, then if you want to convert to a lossy format, it's one click in Foobar to do so for storage on the Media Player ;-)

I just did 1,000 CD's -> FLAC between a friend and myself (fully digitised my collection and using a Logitech Squeezebox Touch for playback), was some work indeed, good luck!

Cheers,

-jj-