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[mightynine]

I've got a hair up my rump to do this, but I'd like a little bit of help, if you don't mind.

I have around 650 CDs. What's the best bitrate and format these days?

I also want a dedicated hard drive to hold the files. I'm tapped out on drive bays, so it looks like an external hard drive is the way I'll go. How big of a drive should I consider and does anyone have any recommendations of a brand? (Firewire's cool, since those cards are rather cheap.)

Thanks for the help in advance.

 

[enjoy bell woods]

EAC/LAME

 

[Diablos]

CDex/LAME 3.96.1.
Use Paranoia - Full mode.

http://cdex.n3.net
http://www.mpex.net/en/software/details/lamedll.html

Encode at either 256kbps/high quality/stereo or --alt-preset-extreme.

 

[mightynine]

Thanks for the tip. Any idea of how much hard drive space I would need for that? over 100 GB?

 

[beanoboy7]

MP3 VBR or Apple Lossless

 

[aoi tsuki]

Frankly, if you decide to go with a bitrate of 256kbps, you may as well look at one of the lossless music solutions, like FLAC (my personal favorite), Monkey's Audio (APE), Shorten (SHN) or Windows or Apple Lossless. The downside is that each file will take roughly half the size of the original WAV, or roughly 300MB per 60-minute CD. The benefit is that you can decode your files back into the original WAVs without any loss, and it's the best futureproofing solution available at the moment.

Edit: i just did a quick calculation to determine roughly how much space it would take to convert your files to a lossless format -- roughly 195GB (650 CDs, estimated 60 minute playtime per CD at 300MB per CD). This is actually a little high, since not all of your CDs will be a full hour, and some tracks will end up compressing more than others.

 

[Hitokage]

All of my CDs are archived into single-file FLACs w/ embedded cuesheet and metadata, although I had to write my own scripts in order to burn straight to disc or automatically convert such a file into a folder of properly tagged MP3/Vorbis/AAC/Whatever encodings. Software support for FLAC-as-songtrack is easy to come by, but support for FLAC-as-CD* is not.

* BTW, I had to devise my own method for storing per-track info, which wasn't too hard since FLAC uses vorbis comments which are completely extensible.

 

[aoi tsuki]

All of my CDs are archived into single-file FLACs w/ embedded cuesheet and metadata, although I had to write my own scripts in order to burn straight to disc or automatically convert such a file into a folder of properly tagged MP3/Vorbis/AAC/Whatever encodings.

Does Winamp recognize the cuesheets well? Also, what benefits do you get with using cuesheets with a single file versus multiple files?

While on the topic, do you know of any settings for CDEx that will encode to FLAC with tags and ReplayGain data intact? i can always get one or the other, and i'm tempted to just take the tags and add the ReplayGain data later.

 

[Hitokage]

Well, a FLAC-as-CD which is basically a CUE/BIN in one compressed, playable file so making CDR copies is easy and all trackpoints, pregaps, and indexes are preserved, and getting a folder of FLAC-as-songtracks is trivial since I've already did the work getting it to spit out per-track tagged mp3s(heavy use of flac -d --cue track1.index-track2.index). I will say that since I got this scheme working I don't really care nearly as much anymore about specific codecs since I don't really have to commit myself.

Oh, and use EAC to rip regardless of where you go from there. It's not terribly easy to use but it's the best tool for the job.

 

[wandering goat]

LAME's the only real choice, but you should definitely do it in VBR. I like it between 192 and 256 or 320 kbps, though your mileage may vary depending upon the equipment you use to listen to your music. FLACs, though smaller than waves, are still huge. They usually end up averaging to about 600-950 or so kbps for me and the difference between that and good quality VBRs isn't all that great for the difference in file size. Of course, if you have the storage space, then they're great as you'll never have to rip your CDs again. EAC and CDex are the usual recommended programs for making MP3s. I've never used EAC but CDex has never steered me wrong.

 

[Macam]

Some of this talk is Chinese to me, but it finally got me to checking out FLAC at long last and digging up a OS X program for it. I don't know why I was so wary of it before, as it's great quality and being able to output it to AIFF is fantastic, size aside. I need to get my PC reformatted and clean slated so I can started just using it as a mass server until the Apple/Intel PowerMacs hit next year; there's no way my PowerBook is going to be able to handle it for more than a few months. Here's to hoping 500GB can hold me until then.

 

[john tv]

Is there any way to update the LAME encoder in CDex? The latest version of CDex is 1.51 but the LAME encoder is 3.92.

Also, how do you set up CDEX to encode VBR properly? I know next to nothing about this stuff...

 

[aoi tsuki]

Is there any way to update the LAME encoder in CDex? The latest version of CDex is 1.51 but the LAME encoder is 3.92.

Also, how do you set up CDEX to encode VBR properly? I know next to nothing about this stuff...

The easiest solutions would be iTunes or Windows Media Player 10. If you've got the hard drive space to space (roughly 300MB per 60-minute CD), look into Apple Lossless/Windows Media Lossless. Lossless formats save every bit of the original WAV unlike MP3/AAC/OGG/etc. The downside is the large file size, but you won't have to worry about reripping your collection again or about quality since you're listening to essentially the same thing as the original CD.