dad311 Posted January 19, 2010 Share Posted January 19, 2010 Those of you that rip CDs, what format do you use for ripping that will sound JUST LIKE THE CD? Ive purchased a new reciever and speakers and I dont feel like im doing my new setup justice by playing mp3 files. In the past lve always ripped for file size / quality. Now, Im more interest in pure quality. thanks for any suggestions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rivernuggets Posted January 19, 2010 Share Posted January 19, 2010 Welcome to the Forum dad311. If your MP3 player plays Vorbis files (.ogg files), those provide better sound quality than a file of the same size in MP3. Here's more info: Link. If you are indeed interested in better quality, consider using a cd or dvd player and enjoy uncompressed music. I know the random button won't be as cool, but the music will. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wuzzzer Posted January 19, 2010 Share Posted January 19, 2010 You want to use a lossless format, depending on what you're using to play the songs and what software you have on your computer the name of the format will vary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
germerikan Posted January 19, 2010 Share Posted January 19, 2010 I use Apple Lossless on my pc and iTunes. I can not hear a difference between the CD and what comes out of my Pc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtnfoley Posted January 19, 2010 Share Posted January 19, 2010 Free Lossless Audio Codec (flac) files are quite commonly supported on MP3 players also. I'm using Exact Audio Copy to rip to WAV, and running MAREO as the external CODEC (which is configured to create both .flac and high bit rate .mp3 files.) Google both those names and setup recipes are all over the place, especially on the MAREO site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KdAgain Posted January 19, 2010 Share Posted January 19, 2010 Those of you that rip CDs, what format do you use for ripping that will sound JUST LIKE THE CD? Ive purchased a new reciever and speakers and I dont feel like im doing my new setup justice by playing mp3 files. In the past lve always ripped for file size / quality. Now, Im more interest in pure quality. thanks for any suggestions. What computer are you using for ripping and playback - a Pc or Mac? That will have a big influence on the encoder you choose. Are you sending analog or digital from the computer to the receiver? Also do you use a separate DAC or do you have a high quality soundcard in the computer? Typically taking the computers original analog out to a receiver will not give as good of sound quality as a decent CD player. Rod Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dad311 Posted January 19, 2010 Author Share Posted January 19, 2010 Well Im not using a PC or MAC. Last year I built a Mythtv box to hold all my Vidoes, Music and Photos and everything was fine until last week until my wallet opened up at the audio store. With all the tips I recieved in the thread, Ive reseached FLAC and it looks like the direction I need to go. Using the FLAC codec with Linux I have lots of options for ripping to a Lossless format. Im glad you ask about my audio card. Im using the digital audio out (Tos-link) from the system motherboard. Are there high quality audio cards for digital out? If so what make the difference? thx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KdAgain Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 If Flac will work well on your system it's a great way to go. We have all of our music in FLAC. You will find some purists that claim they can hear a difference between FLAC and WAV, but most believe you can't. I can't help you with a digital out card that will work in your Linux box, in fact don't even know if the cards are OS specific. We are using an EMU-0404USB external DAC. It does 192/24 over USB 2.0 using proprietary USB drivers done by EMU. But I have a hunch it will only work on Windows machines. There are some folks on the Audio Asylum, Computer Audio Asylum section that are using Linux boxes. Good luck. Let us know how it works out. Rod Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dad311 Posted January 20, 2010 Author Share Posted January 20, 2010 Thanks for all the help. I will be ripping using FLAC and have a new sound card (Audiophile 2496) on order. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dad311 Posted January 20, 2010 Author Share Posted January 20, 2010 I know Ill see a big difference in analog sound with a new sound card, but how about digital sound? I was under the impression digital was digital and any processing was done inside the reciever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brockybear Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 The best audio extraction software is a program called EAC which stands for "Exact Audio Copy" it will rip a CD at 99.999% accuracy. This is achieved because the program will compensate for reading errors in the CD Drive. It will then compress the sound file in any format you like. I would recommend Apple Lossless or FLAC (which is rapidly becoming an audiophile favorite) or leave it as a WAV file. I use iTunes and have been happy with Apple Lossless codec which is not much different to FLAC. EAC is considered to be the most accurate ripping software available and it is free. Just go to http://www.exactaudiocopy.de to learn about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thefluffy Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 I recently built a new HTPC with the primary concern being music. I am using Linux as the OS with XBMC as the media player. I will add another vote for FLAC. It's non-proprietary and lossless. I had a lot of issues finding a good quality sound card that worked well in Linux without using JACK. However, I am using the analog out not the digital out. There are a lot of great quality firewire sound cards as well as USB sound cards that do a great job. Unfortunately, most of them have aweful Linux support. The USB EMU-404 being a good example. It is a great card (less the headphone amp) but with terrible linux support. I saw the same issue with a lot of the M-Audio solutions. The externel M-Audio Audiophile 2496 being an example. I finally settled on a Asus Xonar Essence STX. It has a superb analog section and the C-Media based chipset has pretty good Linux support in the latest readily available Kernels as well as ALSA. The main negative with the Xonar is the lack of Hardware mixing. I spent a few month digging for info before I finally settled on this decision. I am also under the impression that for the most part.... all digital outs are equal. I know that some cards support on the fly DTS encoding and some do not. Past that, I don't think there is much to compare other than digital formats that are supported.... which I think is pretty comparable for most all sound cards. The obvious limitation is bitstreaming which is only available over HDMI. The newer AMD Video cards support bitstreaming through a built in audio chip.... but only in Windows. Hopefully you get something useful out of this. Daniel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jacksonbart Posted January 21, 2010 Share Posted January 21, 2010 .. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Invidiosulus Posted January 22, 2010 Share Posted January 22, 2010 How do you like your MythTV setup? I tried it a while back on a spare computer but was only running a PIII 750MHz so I didn't end up using it much It seemed like it had a ton of awesome features though. -josh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dad311 Posted January 22, 2010 Author Share Posted January 22, 2010 I love my Mythtv. Mythtv holds all my music, photos and ripped DVDs/BLU-RAYs. Ive recently added a HDTV tunner and now its also a full featured dual tuner PVR. Mythtv will also play just about any format MP3,WMA,AVI,MP4,MVK,OGG,etc. Im now starting to regret ripping all my music to MP3s. I might spend a few weeks re-ripping to FLAC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.