maxg Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 The other week - or maybe a couple of weeks ago now - I upgraded my media player on the PC from V9 to V10 of the Microsoft Windows Media Player. Now I have not been keeping up to date with all these media players - rippers and whatnot but the other day (Saturday) whilst at home I decided to rip a few CD's to the hard disk so listen to whilst at the office. In the old version of the software this was a fairly arcane process that seemd to have problems in selecting the quality of MP3 I wanted. This version jumped, seemingly, straight to 256 Kb and has stayed there. As far as I know this is about as good as MP3 gets - so that suited me fine. It did give me the option of saving in Microsoft's own format instead - but I am a little wary of using non-standard formats so I ignored it - possibly wrongly - Tony has heard it is a better format - ah well.... As it happened I was on-line at the time I inserted the first CD and the software went off and picked up all the track info - automatically mind you - no input from me required. Now here is the funny thing - there is a button called "Find Album Info". What else to find? I already have all the track details - so I press it. Hey presto - the album details appear - with the accompanying image of the front of the album. Click on Finish and then on RIP. All the tracks are then stored in a sub folder of my music - with the picture installed on the folder as an icon in explorer and the like. This brings up the next thing. I hadnt realised how fast it is to rip a CD. Actually I still dont really know as I have been doing other things on the Pc and elsewhere whilst the process in going on - but I am fairly sure the typial CD is less than 10 minutes - maybe as little as 7. Every time I check to see progress it has finished already. And then there is the thing that really impressed me. Whilst ripping - I am playing back other titles I have already ripped, browsing the net, working in word and checking my mail. All the while CD's are being finished within minutes. So now I am in the office. Its around lunchtime. I brought in all the Cd's from the car and have been ripping them on and off throughout the morning - 10 down, one in progress - whoops - no - that has finished now, 11 down - 1 to go. This is in addition to the music I ripped at home on Saturday - about 30 something albums all told so far. In all but 2 cases the search process has been flawless - the 2 problematic albums have both been Deutche Grammaphon - one came up in Japanese (?) and the other was thought to be a similar EMI title. Other DG recordings went through without problem - although I noticed that these were from "User Feedback" and did not contain the graphics. Still this is all way too easy - and there are portable media players that link into the Media Player 10 and pick up everything it has created if you want them to. Apparently these can now do the same thing with photos and videos as you could with music - all integrated with the media player. The mind boggles! I wonder if Santa is going to come up with one of these for me for Xmas? The only thing I am left pondering is this. Is this legal with music? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxg Posted September 27, 2004 Author Share Posted September 27, 2004 ---------------- On 9/27/2004 8:12:39 AM mdeneen wrote: "As it happened I was on-line at the time I inserted the first CD and the software went off and picked up all the track info - automatically mind you - no input from me required." ========= Hmmm? I guess MicroSoft is now only 3 years behind Apple! mdeneen ---------------- and I thought the McIntosh MR-71 in your signature was something to do with audio... It is fully possible that the MS software has been able to do this for years for all I know - I dont think I have ever ripped and been on line at the same time. I am definitely at least 3 years behind apple - MS I am not so sure about - maybe.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seti Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 ========= Hmmm? I guess MicroSoft is now only 3 years behind Apple! mdeneen ---------------- yeah mac os x is the best os ever ! i made my own dvd last night from an enhanced music cd i bought that had some music videos on it in about 45 minutes and that includes menu creation etc very nice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dougdrake Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 Max - I use both Media Player 10 and iTunes on my PC. Personally, I find iTunes incredibly easy to use. (Ever try to figure out the shuffle function in MP?). In my case, I've copied all my CDs to my hard drive using Media Player 9 in Microsoft's lossless format, so there is little compression. I then can either copy them back to CD in original form, convert to MP3 (using dbAmp) for use with my portable player and my Netgear wireless MP3/stereo link, or stream them directly out my m-Audio card to my 2-channel system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilbert Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 The best ripper is cDex................the best playback is WinAmp..........Nothing MS makes (IMO) is worth a damn, sound quality-wise. With both you have the choice of several codecs to choose from, and several settings for each codec. The best codec in my opinion is Ogg-Vorbis............MP3 sucks. Just my opinion. Max..get yourself one of these.... http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile2496-main.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorcilantro Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 Good call on the 2496..those are great cards, and you get midi I/O. You'll run into a few problems eventually with CDDB, as with FreeDB, and the new YADB; people using lowercase, small errors, or reversed naming schemes, but it sure beats typing everything in. EAC, is commonly know as the best ripper and has been for years. I have read of CDex tests that didn't result so well (I don't even think it has secure mode rips). same goes for WMA. WMA is not a secure ripper IIRC; chances are that's whay your ripping so fast. Once you rip that disc with a couple errors, scratches, or just have some excess jitter your going to have problems with your data. EAC and J. River Media Center (among others) rip in Secure mode which usually tops out around 10x, depending on your drive though, YMMV. Honestly, if you like WMP you will absolutely love Media Center. It supports more codecs and does a better job, and has more settings. I should take some screenshots and post them with comments, that's how happy I am with this software. It also correctly supports .ape files (MAC lossless compression scheme), you can burn DSP effects to disk (fades,etc.), stores album covers, plays movies, etc. etc. Another good player that is light on resources is Foobar2000. Glad to see you so excited about this, I backup my cd's and archive LP's & 45's of on genre and it's a lot of fun, and a lot of work. I don't share it on the web so I feel purdy legal. my .02 DC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marvel Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 Max, Microsoft's wma format is really very good but you are at their mercy so far I think. You can do MP3 format up to 320kbits. The 256 is pretty good. Just depends on what you can tolerate. I have a ripper that will do vbr, so the rate changes througout the song. Many players can't alculate the time when you do that. You could do the song/track info with version 9. I am still using Win2k so I can't get version 10. Marvel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilbert Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 Hey DrCilantro, I'll give EAC a try, but I have not had any problems with mine. But as for that Foobar2000, well, the name alone kinda scares the you know what out of me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjohnsonhp Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 I have Microsoft Media Center Edition. I have burned WMA lossless and also gone outside of MCE and used EAC for burning and MCE playback. I really like displaying all my album cover thumbnails and scrolling through the covers playing tracks. The remote is much easier than a mouse but I'm not as good at customizing MCE. MusicMatch seems to offer more features that I can easily use...the "now playing" features automatically displays the album cover off the net and it used to display the AMG album review and band info. Now I get the MusicMatch music store band info which is less informative. I also have iTunes which is nice but I haven't learned how to do as much as with MusicMatch...maybe that's a fuction of what I learned first. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
007 Posted September 27, 2004 Share Posted September 27, 2004 ---------------- On 9/27/2004 9:36:32 AM seti wrote: ========= Hmmm? I guess MicroSoft is now only 3 years behind Apple! mdeneen ---------------- yeah mac os x is the best os ever ! i made my own dvd last night from an enhanced music cd i bought that had some music videos on it in about 45 minutes and that includes menu creation etc very nice. ---------------- os 10 is only good cuz its unix. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxg Posted September 28, 2004 Author Share Posted September 28, 2004 Wow - what responses!! Erm...well....a couple of things. Firstly I should point out it took me 5 minutes to work out what CDDB meant (getting the non-techie picture?) - so vey little of what was posted thereafter made much sense to me. Various questions like: Org vorbis? huh - what? sound cards? what does this have to do with the ripping part? Is the soundcard involved in that process? Ripping - are we saying that 2 pieces of software ripping a CD to MP3 at a given bit-rate will do it differently - one better than the other? Why? Isnt there a standard engine for this kind of thing? Other than that: I didnt realise there was a higher quality MP3 than 256 - 320 is new to me - bugger - I dont want to have to do this again!! Quality isnt really the primary driver here - convenience is - I want this mainly for the office - and it is being played over a pair of Creative SBS250 speakers (1 watt each or thereabouts - sonically not great - not terrible, but not great - about what you would expect for the $15 I spent on them). Probably equally important is portability - I want to be able to play these ripped albums on any other of these little eletronic devices I might buy in the future. This is the main reason behind going for MP3 - I am fairly sure any future device will be compatible with that - as opposed to the other options (including MS own format and this Org Vorbis thing). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seti Posted September 28, 2004 Share Posted September 28, 2004 os 10 is only good cuz its unix. ---------------- This is so very true and not just any unix but BSD! I have been using OS X since it was called rhapsody and before that I had a next box now that was an interesting machine. It took a company like apple to put such a pretty face on unix. I even plan on replacing my limping nt 4.0 domain controllers with os x tiger server when it is finaly released now that should be fun! unix rulez Seti Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gtDark Posted September 28, 2004 Share Posted September 28, 2004 I use CDex to rip and 1)iTunes for long-term storage, 2)WinAmp for previewing (think recently downloaded w/o ID3 tags). iTunes is a nice clean interface with pretty good management of tons of songs. WinAmp is just a quick and easy way to play back mp3's; plus it has virtually infinite mod-ability and customization. I have a friend that swears by JRiver, says it's better than iTunes; I haven't had a chance to try it myself though. All these media players have freeware versions, go try them all and report back on what you like. iTunes J. River Media Center WinAmp ("Get Free" button) Max, OggVorbis is just a different compression encoding scheme. Some people say it provides better sound at the same file size than the mp3 counterpart. Here, play these sound clips comparing different formats and see if YOU can tell a difference. Honestly on my old Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 computer speakers I couldn't tell a difference between Ogg and mp3; haven't tried with my RF-3's or Belles though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctorcilantro Posted September 28, 2004 Share Posted September 28, 2004 http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=23355 This site is a great source for audio codec information. I found someone on th eweb discussing the Pro Mp3 codec in Windows Media Player and a tool to let any encoder use that codec, but this is from the link above, "Last: still no hardware device for WMApro (though its not a reason to exclude an audio format from a test including MPC, its a disappointing situation". The drive you use to rip your audio can affect the process; some won't use anything less than a Plextor etc. so programs like EAC incorporate analysing tools and settings that help ensure the most Secure rip as possible for whatever drive you may use. So the software, drive, and codec are all involved in the process. You can rip with all kinds of tools, WMP, Feurio! EAC, Nero, Sonic, CDex, J. River MC, etc. but the codec you decide upon is up to you and some programs don't neccesarily support every codec that's been developed. I'm sure your rips are okay, but when you embark on archiving up to 250gb's of music whether or not it is going to be in a lossy conversion scheme like mp3/ogg or a lossless compression scheme like FLAC/MAC you want that stability. So, you could look around and decide on the best format and maybe do a little better, but I'd say finding a stable and secure ripper is even more important. I think the Ipod supports FLAC & Ogg Vorbis schemes now, not sure. Or maybe that's the Nomad player. Again, I can't speak highly enough about J. River Media Center. I used to be a Winamp guy big time, the surreal functionality of MC is really great; if your archiving or storing a large amount of audio, it's a godsend. It's so tweakable you can get lost trying to find the perfect setup; my only complaint but more of a catch-22 actually. enjoy the music JC ps MAc's rock (wish I could afford one right now) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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