Best way to rip my CD's

[greamec]

Hi all,

Just got a J3 and I would like to know users opinion on the best my to rip my Cd's for use on the Cowon J3. I will want them to be gapless for albums like (Pink Floyd the wall). I am looking for advice on ripping software to use and the smallest bitrate I can get away with. Whats the best way to get the album art onto the player?

If this post irritates you please do not post, its been ages since I have done any ripping and I am just looking for helpful comments

Thanks in advance

Cheers Greame

[Urne]

As for ripping and making backups of CD's I use Exact Audio Copy. With it I create FLAC files which I then convert to MP3 of variable bitrate using Foobar 2000 (It is however also possible to convert your ripped CD tracks straight to mp3 instead of flac).

Note that Exact Audio Copy will take some time to set-up: This guide helped me through the whole process and makes it fairly easy though.

[DSperber]

You might read this post of mine, which describes the method I use to do all the things you're asking about.

Everybody's got their own habits and approach, so you should probably keep an open mind and maybe try out several different methods until you find probably some combination or compromise approach that you feel most comfortable with.

As far as trying to produce the SMALLEST file you can "get away with", I think with the J3's fantastic audio quality you would probably try making a set of MP3 files with varying bitrates and quality parameters (which convert to varying file sizes), and then listen to them all through your headphones or other playback equipment, and decide what you really want to create for your collection.

The 32GB+32GB=64GB capacity of the player (which is the size of mine) is large enough for me to hold the BEST SOUNDING HIGHEST-QUALITY VBR MP3 files I could create (about 5500 MP3 files from my 1100 CDs) and also create 1200 lossless FLAC files (for my "favorite favorites"). FLAC played back on the J3 sounds fabulous.

If you've bought a J3 it's probably for its outstanding audio quality, and the "smallest file you can get away with" may not really be what actually will enjoy the most. I'd recommend you spend a little time exploring the various encoding options, bitrates, quality parameters, etc., for MP3, and probably even do it in FLAC as well. Then compare, and decide for yourself how you really want to build your digital music file collection.

[greamec]

Originally Posted by Urne

As for ripping and making backups of CD's I use Exact Audio Copy. With it I create FLAC files which I then convert to MP3 of variable bitrate using Foobar 2000 (It is however also possible to convert your ripped CD tracks straight to mp3 instead of flac).

Note that Exact Audio Copy will take some time to set-up: This guide helped me through the whole process and makes it fairly easy though.

Thanks Urne,


Couple of questions:
1. Why do you convert to FLAC to MP3?
2. Is FLAC a set bitrate and if so what is it?

Thanks again Greame

[greamec]

Originally Posted by DSperber

You might read this post of mine, which describes the method I use to do all the things you're asking about.

Everybody's got their own habits and approach, so you should probably keep an open mind and maybe try out several different methods until you find probably some combination or compromise approach that you feel most comfortable with.

As far as trying to produce the SMALLEST file you can "get away with", I think with the J3's fantastic audio quality you would probably try making a set of MP3 files with varying bitrates and quality parameters (which convert to varying file sizes), and then listen to them all through your headphones or other playback equipment, and decide what you really want to create for your collection.

The 32GB+32GB=64GB capacity of the player (which is the size of mine) is large enough for me to hold the BEST SOUNDING HIGHEST-QUALITY VBR MP3 files I could create (about 5500 MP3 files from my 1100 CDs) and also create 1200 lossless FLAC files (for my "favorite favorites"). FLAC played back on the J3 sounds fabulous.

If you've bought a J3 it's probably for its outstanding audio quality, and the "smallest file you can get away with" may not really be what actually will enjoy the most. I'd recommend you spend a little time exploring the various encoding options, bitrates, quality parameters, etc., for MP3, and probably even do it in FLAC as well. Then compare, and decide for yourself how you really want to build your digital music file collection.

Hi DSperber

Thanks for your post, like yourself I am looking for quality. I downloaded Lame and audiograber, pointed audio grabber to Lame encoder. I have got a bit stuck at this point, would you mind sharing your setting with me please for quality. Or even post them for everyone.

Many thanks Greame

[Urne]

> 1. Why do you convert to FLAC to MP3?
I use EAC to "take a backup" of my CDs so to say. FLAC is a lossless format meaning that I won't loose any quality by doing that - the advantage of FLAC over pure WAV is that FLAC files is a lot smaller in file size however.

FLAC still takes up a lot of space compared to lossy MP3 files though. And since I can't hear the difference between a high quality MP3 and FLAC 99% of the time, I keep a library of MP3 files on my Cowon J3. It makes it possible to store a lot more music on it. Right now the MP3 music library takes up 10GB space (800 files approx). If I were to use FLAC it would probably exceed the 32GB memory I have available on my J3.

2. Is FLAC a set bitrate and if so what is it?
As mentioned previously FLAC is lossless so it shouldn't matter much. There is different "levels" of lossless compression though that affects the final file size but I haven't looked into it myself. Someone else with more knowledge about FLAC is more than welcome to chime in!

[DSperber]

As you can see from the following screenshot, I use the following command-line parameters for invoking LAME:

%s %d -q 0 -V 0 -m s

This produces highest-quality VBR results (i.e. up to 320Kbps, with full "stereo").




If you want I can send you a ZIP file with screenshots of all of my settings, or you can just ask questions here.

[DSperber]

Originally Posted by Urne

2. Is FLAC a set bitrate and if so what is it?
As mentioned previously FLAC is lossless so it shouldn't matter much. There is different "levels" of lossless compression though that affects the final file size but I haven't looked into it myself

FLAC is FLAC (no matter what level of FLAC compression you choose), which as you say is a lossless codec meaning it sounds bit-identical to the original WAV and in fact can be used "in reverse" to reproduce the original WAV if you wanted to.

Obviously this cannot be done with MP3, which is by definition a lossy codec where essentially bits are thrown away according to the specified quality and encoding parameters.

As far as what level of FLAC compression to choose, the only difference is resulting file size of the FLAC file produced vs. encoding time to produce it. But the FLAC encoder is so fast anyway that there's really no difference no matter what you specify. I believe 6 is the default, and that's fine.

But again, no matter what FLAC compression you use... (a) the audible result is bit-identical to the original WAV when played back by a FLAC-capable player, and (b) the bit-identical original WAV can be reproduced when the FLAC codec is run "in reverse". Seems astonishing, but no matter what level of FLAC compression you use the audible results are identical, and you can always reproduce the original WAV from it if you wanted to.

So just leave it at default 6 and forget about it.

[Urne]

...And to accompany DSperber, here is my settings for FLAC:

-8 -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" %source% -o %dest%

I am pretty sure that this will output the following results: the lossless FLAC file which is produced is compressed at level 8 to reduce file size, is of a variable bitrate, and will retrive information from EAC about Track Title, Album, Year, Track Number and Genre which it then tags the files with.

My settings for MP3 is basically the same as DSperber's except I use:

-m j -V 2 -q 0 -lowpass 18.5 --vbr-new -b 32

Now, since I graphical interface to adjust the setting I cannot explain what each of these parameters do (help appreciated). The most important thing to look for however is that I have set the Variable Bitrate to 2. That gives me very decent MP3 quality. Instead of the best-of-the-best quality I have decided to prioritize size a little bit more instead. This is because I *cannot* hear the difference between this quality and V0 - I have figured out from an ABX test I took with the help from Foobar 2000.

[greamec]

Thanks again Dsperber

Would you mind posting those argument settings please so I can copy and paste them in correctly .I think the setting you surgest i.e VBR is the right one for me, are you able to post your zip file with settings?
Cheers Greame

[greamec]

You guys are to quick for me, what is the differance between both your mp3 settings? On a side note what do you use for album art? do you just put a picture file in the album folder with the mp3's?

Thanks both

[Urne]

what is the differance between both your mp3 settings?
Technically DSperber's MP3 files are of better quality than my MP3 files. Instead my MP3 files takes up less space. I prefer this because I cannot hear the difference between DSperber's MP3 settings and my own MP3 settings.

On a side note what do you use for album art?
I use a picture file named "cover.jpg" inside the folder of my album. The J3 will recognize this as album art.

But when I want each file to have its own unique album art, I use MP3Tag to embed the album art into the MP3 file.

[DSperber]

Much of the following is default, and sometimes I make some adjustments depending on what I'm encoding. For example when creating MP3's from a "compilation" CD I might change the naming settings to not create folders for each artist, as I collect "compilations" in a different way than I do for "single-artist" albums.

Also, if during the rip of a track I see that it's peak level has hit 100% (and probably higher), I will stop the rip and go back to set "normalize" (to 98%, with no compression). I don't like my music files to overload or distort on playback, and this is my attempt at ensuring that. It's still pretty loud, but a bit better than 100% or more.

Also I do NOT use "normalize" quiet music to make it louder. I only use "normalize" to make it less loud than 100%.

So you should simply use these as reference, and explore for yourself what you use if you see that my values are other than the defaults.

[greamec]

Originally Posted by Urne

what is the differance between both your mp3 settings?
Technically DSperber's MP3 files are of better quality than my MP3 files. Instead my MP3 files takes up less space. I prefer this because I cannot hear the difference between DSperber's MP3 settings and my own MP3 settings.

On a side note what do you use for album art?
I use a picture file named "cover.jpg" inside the folder of my album. The J3 will recognize this as album art.

But when I want each file to have its own unique album art, I use MP3Tag to embed the album art into the MP3 file.

How much space you saving Urne?

[Urne]

> How much space you saving Urne?
I just did a test:

Song in WAV format: 38.1MB
Song in MP3 V0 format: 7.3MB
Song in MP3 V2 format: 5.9MB
Difference: 1.4MB. The MP3 V2 file is 19.2% smaller than the MP3 V0 file. On a larger scale this might make room for a little bit more music. BUT: I am pretty sure the difference percentage varies from song to song. Sometimes the difference will be larger, sometimes it will be smaller.

I haven't tested MP3 V3 and above. The reason I use V2 is because it was recommended by a lot of people in this thread and because it is also the recommended setting by the LAME devs. I only tested it against V0 with ABX because I wanted to know whether the extra space was worth sacrificing.