Wav

[nvening]

Is it better to rip in wav, instead of mp3? I understand wav is CD quality, it is the raw audio, no compression?

[skuzgib]

If you have the space, I suppose so

[blockers]

For quality it would be but it is 50mb per song......

[autopilot]

Try FLACK or Monkey Audio. These are 'lossless' compression types and have no loss of quality from the original CD/Wav. Still take quite a bit of space - compression is typically 40-60% of the orginal size. They can also be inflated back up to the orginal full size WAV, should you find some reason to do that (i.e. having trouble burning a .APE file etc).

Depends on what you plan to do with the files really. If you are archiving them on a large drive and planning to burn back to CD for use in a decent HiFi, then lossless is probably the way to go. If it's for 'el cheapo 256mb flash MP3 player for the gym, MP3/OGG/AAC/WMA etc is what you probably want.

[nvening]

so is wav the pure audio, like dv?

[Jonny M]

Yes. But it's 50MB per song, and you can't ID3 tag it.

[nvening]

Ok, basically, i want to have all my music archived. But obviously i dont want it done in mp3 as it is not proper raw audio. I have pleny of spaceand may endup putting them on dvd. The only thing that concerns me is this id3 tag thing. All the files would be organised properly and named, so does this matter? Also, as its the raw audio does this mean that its at the smae quality as the cd so its future proof ish?

[autopilot]

Yes, but using WAV would be very silly when lossless compression technolgies such as FLACK, Money Audio and WMA Lossless exist and are very good - no loss of quality at all. Rippers such Audio Grabber, Cdex and EAC will rip using these formats.

By far the best way to archive music, in my opinion, is to rip using EAC (or Cdex) with FLACK (or MA etc), creating one long file for the complete CD of tracks. EAC will create a CUE file (containing track names and timing), meaning it can be burned back to a CD with tracking names and indexing exactly to the same as the orginal CD.

[nvening]

Originally Posted by dangerous_dom

By far the best way to archive music, in my opinion, is to rip using EAC (or Cdex) with FLACK (or MA etc), creating one long file for the complete CD of tracks. EAC will create a CUE file (containing track names and timing), meaning it can be burned back to a CD with tracking names and indexing exactly to the same as the orginal CD.

Im sorry but, WHAT? in english please!!!!!!!

Well, what i can understand is, rip into wav using a good ripper. Compress lossless with FLACK and after that you lost me sos.

[Jonny M]

Basically you rip the whole 60 minutes of audio on the CD as one file, and the CUE file tells the player / burner where to put the track breaks. This is great for mix CDs, and is the best way to recreate the original CD from a rip.

[Nana]

lossless compression? bit of a contradiction in terms isn't it? technically impossible, there's no such thing as true lossless. Bit like "microsoft works" or "airline food" - oxymoronic.

If you have the money go for Cyrus "uncompressed" sound server. Like it says on the box, no compression rips whole discs to wave files. And it's upgradeable, you can have as many HDD's of whatever size you like. But, cos it's the best, it's also jolly jolly expensive.

[autopilot]

You can also get a Winamp pluggin for playing these types of gapless files. Winamp reads the CUE file and plays the tracks back as if they were individual tracks. So you don't have to fastforward/rewind to get to the tarck you want - they apear separate in the playlist window.

Have a look at these threads, Also take a look at the Hydrogenaudio site (links in the threads);

whats your favourite "lossless" compression method for music files

EAC and FLAC

CD encoder

Sorry nvening if this is information overload, but if you are going to do it, you may as well do it properly

[tommylittleboy@]

Originally Posted by dangerous_dom

You can also get a Winamp pluggin for playing these types of gapless files. Winamp reads the CUE file and plays the tracks back as if they were individual tracks. So you don't have to fastforward/rewind to get to the tarck you want - they apear separate in the playlist window.

Have a look at these threads, Also take a look at the Hydrogenaudio site (links in the threads);

whats your favourite "lossless" compression method for music files

EAC and FLAC

CD encoder

Sorry nvening if this is information overload, but if you are going to do it, you may as well do it properly

I use Daemon tools to open these CUE files, that way it appears as a virtual audio CD

[autopilot]

Originally Posted by Nana

lossless compression? bit of a contradiction in terms isn't it? technically impossible

Actually, no it's not. Winzip is a prime example of lossless compression. FLAC/APE file can be inflated back to an exact copy of the orginal WAV. Not that you need to do that, as most burners/media players can be setup you handle these formats.

Originally Posted by tommylittleboy@

I use Daemon tools to open these CUE files, that way it appears as a virtual audio CD

Top tip! Can it read the FLAC etc files directly, or do they need to be inflated to WAV first?

[nvening]

Well i just riped a cd with EAC. I did it in single tracks, in wav. So this CUE thing is just a single file which is kinda like an image file but it can be read by eg winamp and played like they are seperate tracks. Is CUE a single wav? or is it a seperate file type, if so is it stil raw audio?

[autopilot]

A cue file is just a text file. Here is an example...

PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
TITLE "You Can Be Special Too"
FILE "Evil Nine - You Can Be Special Too.wav" WAVE

TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Crooked"
PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "Devil Stuff"
PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
INDEX 01 05:46:68
TRACK 03 AUDIO
TITLE "Earth"
PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
INDEX 01 10:38:73
TRACK 04 AUDIO
TITLE "You Can Be Special (Skit)"
PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
INDEX 01 15:35:06
TRACK 05 AUDIO
TITLE "We Have the Energy"
PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
INDEX 01 16:11:35
TRACK 06 AUDIO
TITLE "Snack Bar Lounge"
PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
INDEX 01 21:28:19
TRACK 07 AUDIO
TITLE "Help (Skit)"
PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
INDEX 01 24:23:47
TRACK 08 AUDIO
TITLE "Pearl Shot"
PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
INDEX 01 24:45:68
TRACK 09 AUDIO
TITLE "You Are Not Through"
PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
INDEX 01 30:05:02
TRACK 10 AUDIO
TITLE "Richard & Jane (Skit)"
PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
INDEX 01 34:53:23
TRACK 11 AUDIO
TITLE "For Lovers Not Fighters"
PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
INDEX 01 35:23:46
TRACK 12 AUDIO
TITLE "Even the Smells"
PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
INDEX 01 39:35:38
TRACK 13 AUDIO
TITLE "Restless"
PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
INDEX 01 41:38:39
TRACK 14 AUDIO
TITLE "You Can Be Special 2 (Skit)"
PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
INDEX 01 46:32:62
TRACK 15 AUDIO
TITLE "Hired Goons"
PERFORMER "Evil Nine"
INDEX 01 47:04:20

They will work with most file types, including MP3's, FLAC, WAV etc. All you need to do is edit the file name at the top of the file.

So basically, after EAC has done it's magic you will have 2 files - One long file containing the whole album (i.e. EvilNine.mp3), and a cue file (I.e Evilnine.CUE) which tells other software (i.e. NERO, Winamp etc) how to handle, play and burn the music file. With me?