MP3 collection destroyed - what format shall I encode in?

scoobyrichuk

scoobyrichuk

scoobyrichuk

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OK I managed to lose my entire MP3 collection, I did manage to recover it with Ontrack easy recovery but it's all messed up - the MP3's have been combined into lots of large files so I'm just going to start again. Shall I just rip and encode in 192Kbps MP3 format or is there is another format I should consider?
Cheers
 
Ouch!
Do you use a portable MP3 player regularly? If not, then you can't do better (in terms of using lossy codecs) than MP+/Musepack at high bitrate. Highly recommended, and easy to use with winamp.
Still, there's no hassle re-encoding it to MP3 if you do use a player.
 
Ouch yes :( Not a terrible loss as I can re-encode them but it's going to eat up valuable time. I don't use a portable player so I'll check that link out.
Cheers
 
McHaMmEr, if you decide to go for MPC, I recommend reading this list of useful information for best quality ripping with EAC.
But, I'd suggest adding the '--ape2' switch to the compression options - as this will allow for long tag names (MPC natively uses ID3 v1 - which truncates long names in the tag fields).
 
Mr Augmented brings up a noteworthy tangent: like his good self, I wholeheartedly recommend you use nothing other than EAC and it's secure 'mode' for all your ripping requirements. :)
 
I agree with the opinions of the lovely people above me - if you're not concerned about playing the songs on a portable device, MPC is the format of choice. It's much faster to encode - I can't rip CDs fast enough to keep up! - and the quality surpasses MP3 easily. It's also properly gapless, unlike MP3 which, by it's very nature inserts gaps at the start/end of tracks.

Combined with EAC in secure mode, it's the daddy of all ripping combinations.
 
Yup...if you're not concerned about portables, use mpc if you want fairly low size (standard profile should be enough and will be appoximately 160-180 kbps average depending on the type of music). The quality will be much better than mp3.

If you want to be guaranteed perfect quality, go for one of the losselss codecs. I personally use FLAC, but there are many others. The filesizes are much larger than lossy codecs though, so be warned.

As for the ripper, definitely use EAC in secure mode. For a very good guide on how to set it up for different audio formats, go here: http://www.ca5e.tk (under misc).

Hope this helps.


edit: having also recently lost my entire 65 Gig mp3/mpc collection, I feel for you mate! I'll now back up *everything* to DVD-R...
 
Just another recommendation for MP+. It's a format superior in every way to every other lossy codec I've tried :)

arty
 
MP+ it is then, I'm going to start ripping/encoding tommorow. The Belgain, I plan to purchase a DVD Rewriter as soon as I can afford one! Thanks for the suggestions guys, this has been a helpful thread...
 
Picking up on an oldish thread here, but basically I am just about to put my cd collection onto the pc and was wondering about the best format etc.

I see that you guys mainly recommended to use MPC or MP+?

Has anyone got a link to the actual software?
I am a total noob when it comes to things like Codecs etc, what do I need to know?
What media player can I play these formats with?

Any advice greatly appreciated!
 
Originally posted by mark66
Picking up on an oldish thread here, but basically I am just about to put my cd collection onto the pc and was wondering about the best format etc.

I see that you guys mainly recommended to use MPC or MP+?

Has anyone got a link to the actual software?
I am a total noob when it comes to things like Codecs etc, what do I need to know?
What media player can I play these formats with?

Any advice greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...

www.mpegplus.de is a good place to start. You can definitely play MP+ / MPC files with Winamp 2, Winamp 3 and Foobar2k (which supports them natively i.e. no extra plug-in is required to play them). I think you can also play them with XMSS and one or two other less well-known media players.

arty
 
Get yourself a copy of itunes and use AAC :)

128kbs AAC = 192kbs MP3 (CD qual)
128kbs AAC file size = 128kbs MP3 file size

I can now fit tons more on my ipod! :)
 
Originally posted by E1mo
Can't believe no one has mentioned Ogg Vorbis. Fully open-sourced, great quality at all bitrates, no fee to any company (yes, even MP3 isn't royalty free).

http://www.vorbis.com
Click to expand...

If you are not concerned with using portable players, you really should go for Ogg Vorbis. I have recently re-encoded all my CDs into this format and saved about 1/3 of space, with no loss of quality!
 
Originally posted by elephant
If you are not concerned with using portable players, you really should go for Ogg Vorbis. I have recently re-encoded all my CDs into this format and saved about 1/3 of space, with no loss of quality!
Click to expand...

What media player do you use to play that format?
 
Originally posted by mark66
What media player do you use to play that format?
Click to expand...

Winamp 2 does, "out of the box", and is my choice. I guess Winamp 3 does too, but I couldn't tell you on account of not having a ten foot bargepole.

Sonique does, via a plugin/codec. Again, no idea. Does anybody still use this?

Oh, and you may have heard of a little program from a tiny collective of startup upstarts calling themselves Apple. Called "iTunes", it's a free download, and it is without question the best Windows application ever written[1]. It supports Ogg Vorbis through a codec download.


[1] - Dry humour levels reading critical, cap'n...
 
Been using MPC over MP3 for quite a while and I am very happy with it indeed. Much better quality than MP3's and smaller files. Only bad thing is that there is not a great support for it at the moment.

There is a Winamp plugin for it and also Foobar2000 supports MPC, there is also a Nero MPC plugin for on the fly burning as with MP3's

Check out these forums for anything you could wanna know about encoding music http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?
 
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Ogg Vorbis nearly always comes top or near the top of listening tests, it's completely free, UT2003 does Ogg (And not MP3) and there are plugins for pretty much any popular media player.

Ogg Vorbis is now starting to appear in portable players too. iRiver have an extensive support plan, their iHP-120 is shipping with Ogg support now and most of their other players are getting upgraded firmware in the next couple of months. The Rio Karma supports Ogg and Frontier Labs (The Nex series) have told me they will have Ogg support before the end of the year. The iPod is capable of playing Ogg, people have done it, but Apple don't seem to want to add support in their firmware.

Ogg is the future.
 
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