Noob ripping questions

Moley · 13 May 2009 at 14:28

Looking for a little advice here as I've not done any ripping for... well... years.

My first MP3 player was an Archos Jukebox Recorder 20 onto which I ripped a fair amount of CDs with their recording software. I seem to remember a lot of them sounded a bit pap.

I now own an iPod and having recently purchase 1TB worth of NAS storage I'm seriously considering re-ripping my entire CD collection as storage space is not an issue.

However it's no longer a case of ripping an mp3 and choosing a bitrate from what I understand - there's all these new fangled formats to choose from!

What I am asking I guess, is what format should I be using that will get me good CD quality rips that are compatible firstly with my iPod, but hopefully with any other devices I may get in the future.

FLAC? AAC? It's all gibberish to me!

Thanks for any help.

marlos · 13 May 2009 at 17:38

I'd stick with good old MP3's and use CDex.

Djdom56 · 14 May 2009 at 15:59

marlos said:
I'd stick with good old MP3's and use CDex.

seconded because it seems to me that it is the most widely accepted by the players and software, but i dont use CDex i use itunes or windows media

Hamster · 14 May 2009 at 17:14

Moley said:
What I am asking I guess, is what format should I be using that will get me good CD quality rips that are compatible firstly with my iPod, but hopefully with any other devices I may get in the future.

I would rip to FLAC and store them on your PC, then use something like dbpoweramp to convert the FLACs you want to put onto your mp3 player into whichever format you choose.

This way you will always have the CD quality lossless version readily available on your pc to either put straight onto any future player that supports FLAC, or to convert into whichever format best suits you and your future players.

Converting from FLAC to mp3 or any other format with dbpoweramp batch converter is quick and painless.

I would use EAC to rip to FLAC. Follow this guide; it may look complicated but you only need to follow a few simple steps. It takes a few minutes to set up and then ripping is a breeze:

http://xs.vc/eac/

Also note that although theoretically you can convert from a lossy format to another lossy format (eg 320kbps mp3 to 192kbps mp3) you will always end up with an inferior sounding track than if you converted from lossless directly to the target format ie FLAC>192kbps mp3 is much better than 320kbps mp3>192kbps mp3. Also converting from a lossy format to a lossless format is not good.