STL Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 Since we are talking about formats here, I thought I should mentioned that AAC is poised to be the sucessor to MP3. You'll see now that several aftermarket CD players are now supporting AAC and that phones are coming soon that will also soon support this audio compression. Many people don't know it but MP3 is a fairly old compression that is audio part of MPEG-1. For reference, DVDs use MPEG-2 compression. AAC is the audio part of MPEG-4 and does a much better job of compression with less loss in quality. The most popular portable music players around, iPods, support AAC and now we're starting to see other manufacturers getting on board as well. In addition to AAC, Apple also has their own lossless format (called Apple Lossless) that reduces files sizes by roughly 40% WITHOUT any loss in quality -- and it's pretty fast too. Even if you don't own and iPod you can download a full working version iTunes (for free) and use the AAC and Appple Lossless encoders. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STL Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 On 6/30/2005 12:16:37 PM DizRotus wrote: It seems that the only reason to convert MP3 files to WAV files is to burn CDs to use in players that will not read and/or play MP3 CDs, i.e., that require WAV files. Correct! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STL Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 On 6/30/2005 11:37:38 AM rplace wrote: Questions: 1. Should I use Wav, FLAC, something else? 2. What is good software to accomplish this? Something that will use CDDB or the like to catalogue them by Artist, Album, Track, etc. 1) I would use a lossless format like Apple Lossless 2) Just go download the latest iTunes. Anytime you encode a CD, it automatically fill in all that info about the album (and you can modify it if you want). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rplace Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 Thanks for the quick replies all. Just to be clear, DizRotus. I am not looking to take my existing mp3 and wmf files and convert to wav. I am going to drag out all my redbook CDs, once again, and rip them to the best format once I decide on one. Sounding like WAV is the frontrunner at this point. New Questions: 1. Anyone out there own an Eschent Fireball or similar system http://www.escient.com. I used one briefly and loved it but for the price, unless I am missing something, I dont see the benefit. I believe it is just a slick packaged version of what I am already doing. If you have one or know more then me please tell me the pros/cons 2. Has anyone seen or used a kaleidescape system? http://www.kaleidescape.com It is simply an electronic work of art effortless to get any music or DVD file and instantly play itplus it has all the CD or DVD art to visually select any item you want. However at 30K yea, 30,000 not 3,000 I dont think I will have one any time soon. Still it is way cool. Time to buy a lottery ticket or two. 3. How difficult is it to set up and maintain a RAID system. I am pretty lax at backing things up and would hate to lose all my hard work converting things to WAV. Can a RAID controller be outfitted into a standard PC or would I need to look into a more professional server? Basically I am looking for the best (not necessarily the cheapest) way to have all my music files in one place and easy access to them. The Audiotron is working just finebut wondered what others are using. I will check out slimdevices. Thanks again! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmilas Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 ---------------- On 6/30/2005 12:18:22 PM STL wrote: Since we are talking about formats here, I thought I should mentioned that AAC is poised to be the sucessor to MP3. You'll see now that several aftermarket CD players are now supporting AAC and that phones are coming soon that will also soon support this audio compression. Many people don't know it but MP3 is a fairly old compression that is audio part of MPEG-1. For reference, DVDs use MPEG-2 compression. AAC is the audio part of MPEG-4 and does a much better job of compression with less loss in quality. The most popular portable music players around, iPods, support AAC and now we're starting to see other manufacturers getting on board as well. In addition to AAC, Apple also has their own lossless format (called Apple Lossless) that reduces files sizes by roughly 40% WITHOUT any loss in quality -- and it's pretty fast too. Even if you don't own and iPod you can download a full working version iTunes (for free) and use the AAC and Appple Lossless encoders. ---------------- Well AAC is really just a tweaked mp3 with VBR. Its much better than plain old mp3, but Ogg Vorbis still slaughters it in double blind listening tests. I suggest you give it a try yourself. The exciting thing as you mentioned above is that since its the audio portion of mpeg-4, we will have better quality sound in upcoming mpeg-4 video releases when hardware players switch from mpeg-2 to mpeg-4. Please not that softwware players like divix ect already make use of aac in mpeg4. As far as Apples lossless ecoder. I encourage you to test it against Flac. Flac produces smaller files. Plus the file format is more extensable for streaming servers. However it IS nice to see Apple at least support some type of lossless format for its iTunes suite of applications. The only problems I see with Apples lossless is that the format is not open, so those of us doing serious archiving have no guarantee that they will not get locked out of thier own music files down the road. Plus, Flac compresses tighter. The cool part is that since both apples lossless and Flac ARE lossless you can move between formats with no loss in sound quality. Choice is always good. You can use the one thats best suited for your needs! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rplace Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 New question if WAV is just a wrapper for PCM data and all I really want to do is have all my "CDs" on my HDD for ease of use. Can I/Should I just save PCM data? My goal would be to have CD quality music on my computers hard drive so it can be accessed quickly and in turn put all my CD into storage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STL Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 On 6/30/2005 12:33:52 PM wmilas wrote: Well AAC is really just a tweaked mp3 with VBR. Its much better than plain old mp3, but Ogg Vorbis still slaughters it in double blind listening tests. It's a bit more than that. AAC is VBR, but not in the same way MP3 is currenting doing VBR. AAC varies bit rates but the variance from the target bit rate are very small. True AAC VBR is coming (in fact Quicktime 7 for Mac already has it) and it will further improve AAC. As far and OV being "so" superior to AAC -- I haven't seen anything to confirm that. In fact, I have see a test where AAC beat out OV! On 6/30/2005 12:33:52 PM wmilas wrote: As far as Apples lossless ecoder. I encourage you to test it against Flac. Flac produces smaller files. FLAC does produce smaller files, but they don't seem to be that much smaller -- and FLAC takes longer. On 6/30/2005 12:33:52 PM wmilas wrote: The only problems I see with Apples lossless is that the format is not open, so those of us doing serious archiving have no guarantee that they will not get locked out of thier own music files down the road. That chance of that happening is about a close to zero as you can get. If by some twisted fate that did happen, you better believe some hacker will open the format up within days -- so I'm not worried. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STL Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 On 6/30/2005 12:43:10 PM rplace wrote: My goal would be to have CD quality music on my computers hard drive so it can be accessed quickly and in turn put all my CD into storage. Why not use a lossless format? Like the name implies, you won't lose any quality -- but you will get substantially smaller files sizes! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scriven Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 ---------------- On 6/30/2005 12:43:10 PM rplace wrote: New question if WAV is just a wrapper for PCM data and all I really want to do is have all my "CDs" on my HDD for ease of use. Can I/Should I just save PCM data? My goal would be to have CD quality music on my computers hard drive so it can be accessed quickly and in turn put all my CD into storage. ---------------- You need the wrapper! Without that you just have a large pile of bits and programs won't know what to do with your pile. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmilas Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 ---------------- On 6/30/2005 12:32:53 PM rplace wrote: Thanks for the quick replies all. Just to be clear, DizRotus. I am not looking to take my existing mp3 and wmf files and convert to wav. I am going to drag out all my redbook CDs, once again, and rip them to the best format once I decide on one. Sounding like WAV is the frontrunner at this point. New Questions: 1. Anyone out there own an Eschent Fireball or similar system http://www.escient.com . I used one briefly and loved it but for the price, unless I am missing something, I don’t see the benefit. I believe it is just a slick packaged version of what I am already doing. If you have one or know more then me please tell me the pros/cons 2. Has anyone seen or used a kaleidescape system? http://www.kaleidescape.com It is simply an electronic work of art effortless to get any music or DVD file and instantly play it…plus it has all the CD or DVD art to visually select any item you want. However at 30K yea, 30,000 not 3,000 I don’t think I will have one any time soon. Still is it way cool. Time to buy a lottery ticket or two. 3. How difficult is it to set up and maintain a RAID system. I am pretty lax at backing things up and would hate to lose all my hard work converting things to WAV. Can a RAID controller be outfitted into a standard PC’ or would I need to look into a more professional server? Basically I am looking for the best (not necessarily the cheapest) way to have all my music files in one place and easy access to them. The Audiotron is working just fine…but wondered what others are using. I will check out slimdevices. Thanks again! ---------------- 1) The fireball is slick. It also supports Flac Digital music players come in 2 basic formats. The all in one system and the server/front end 2 piece system. The fireball is an all in one. it uses your tv for the OSD. Its slick, it works, it looks great in your av rack. Its expensive. Something like the SueezeBox2 i mentioned before is just a small front end player with a remote that gets the music from a server located somewhere in your house. Its upsides are that its cheap, and you can have them all over your hosue in different rooms. The downside is that teh display is smaller since its built into the device, and its not nearly as slick. I personally go the front end/server route because all my music wont fit on an all in one unless I spend stupid money. Since I'm a technical guy anyways I jsut have a whole house server. If you get a trembly over maintining a linux raid 5 box (I wouldnt trust my music to a raid 5 array runing windows) then the all in one solution may be for you. 2) The kaleidescape is the same thing only on a bigger level. Its the 2 piece system only they sell it to you. ITs really slick, but its really expensive. I have built the same thing for myself, but again, there is some no how involved. I used teh HTPC all aluminum black Coolermaster case and poped in a small athlon 64 system with a geforce 6600 to my HDTV. My DVD's re ripped to my server. The server streams them over to teh HTPC which dishes it via DVI to the HDTV. Works great for a fraction of the price. The reality is though that I dont use it that much. I had the server anyways for audio and the HTPC front end was pennies to build. However unless you watch ALOT of movies just use the DVD player and get yourself a squeezebox 3) There are 2 types of raid 5's hardware and software. I would NOT trust a software raid 5 in a windows box. If you are looking at the raid cards be aware that jsut because the raid card says its raid 5, it MAY be a software raid 5. Double check. I use software raid 5 with plain jane sata controllers and drives in my linux box. Reason being mainly price. Software raid with vanilla Sata controllers is faster and cheaper that hardware controllers till you get into the 10 grand controller range. Even then there are plusses and minuses of going hardware over software. Proper server and raid maintenence is a tricky thing and should not be taken lightly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmilas Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 ---------------- On 6/30/2005 12:54:07 PM scriven wrote: ---------------- On 6/30/2005 12:43:10 PM rplace wrote: New question if WAV is just a wrapper for PCM data and all I really want to do is have all my "CDs" on my HDD for ease of use. Can I/Should I just save PCM data? My goal would be to have CD quality music on my computers hard drive so it can be accessed quickly and in turn put all my CD into storage. ---------------- You need the wrapper! Without that you just have a large pile of bits and programs won't know what to do with your pile. ---------------- Absolutely you need a wrapper. Besides the wav continer is very small. A handful of bytes to a few kilobytes at the most. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rplace Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 ---------------- On 6/30/2005 12:53:24 PM STL wrote: Why not use a lossless format? Like the name implies, you won't lose any quality -- but you will get substantially smaller files sizes! ---------------- I have already ripped all the CDs once to mp3/wmf before I really knew what I was doing. I did rip them at the highest quality possible. This took a great deal of time swapping CDs for days. So my thinking was that I kept it as close to the original CD as possible that would be best. Im guessing (correct me if I am wrong) that if I have the WAV file it would be a simple matter to take a subset of those, say 100 or so and convert them to a format I want like mp3 for a portable player. Also, I am a bit skepticalmaybe I am just ignorant to the inner workings of a lossless format. My pea brain tells me that if you are converting it and making it smaller you have to lose something (am I wrong here?). So I was considering the path of storage size plays no part, hard drive are cheap I am willing to buy what I need. I want the best, easiest, fastest method for storing them so I dont ever have to drag out a CD again. If I buy a new CD I would put it on the computer that day and throw the CD in the closet with the rest never to bee seen again. Maybe it is the once bitten twice shy ideabut I dont want to copy CDs again once this is done. Am I just being stupid here? Will a lossless compression sound every bit as good as a non compressed file? I thought with any compression there was a trade off between size and quality. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meuge Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 ---------------- On 6/30/2005 12:32:53 PM rplace wrote: Thanks for the quick replies all. Just to be clear, DizRotus. I am not looking to take my existing mp3 and wmf files and convert to wav. I am going to drag out all my redbook CDs, once again, and rip them to the best format once I decide on one. Sounding like WAV is the frontrunner at this point. Basically I am looking for the best (not necessarily the cheapest) way to have all my music files in one place and easy access to them. Thanks again! ---------------- If you're looking for an all-in-one system, a dedicated HTPC sounds like the way to go. The only problem is that disk space in a standard HTPC case is fairly limited, simply because of space contstraints - you cannot shove enough hard drives into one. So ideally, what you would have is a large tower case, located out of view, with a RAID 5 array of SerialATA hard drives (4+)... 160-200GB apiece. I would say that you could probably have one made for under $1000... which would be a lot more versatile, not to mention a lot cheaper than one of the systems you've described. Unless you want to use it as a full HTPC, you don't need to worry about getting a powerful CPU or lots of memory... so you could get those components for nickels and dimes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmilas Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 While I agree that AAC at higher bitrates is nearly indistinguishable from Ogg at low bitrates multiple tests show that at low to mid bitrates Ogg is still superior. Pop over to http://www.hydrogenaudio.org and take a look around. Its where alot of us codec losers hang out Also might want to look at: http://www.rjamorim.com/test/ For a listenign test. There are dozens you can find at hydrogen though. The reality is that AAC and Vorbis are both much much better than mp3. Either one is a good choice. Mp3 is not such a good choice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rplace Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 ---------------- On 6/30/2005 12:58:31 PM wmilas wrote: Something like the SueezeBox2 i mentioned before is just a small front end player with a remote that gets the music from a server located somewhere in your house. Its upsides are that its cheap, and you can have them all over your hosue in different rooms. The downside is that teh display is smaller since its built into the device, and its not nearly as slick. ---------------- wmilas, I checked out the squeezebox...along the same lines as my Audiotron by Turtle Beach...front end to a computer network that has you music files. I like their ripping service. That would surely save time and since they give them to you on DVD there is my backup. I also like the optical and coax digital outs plus the fact that they user burr brown DACs. Not sure of the DAC in my A-tron and I only have optical for my digital out. Do you let your Squeeze box do the D to A conversion or do you use one of the digital outs? How does it sound? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmilas Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 ---------------- I have already ripped all the CDs once to mp3/wmf before I really knew what I was doing. I did rip them at the highest quality possible. This took a great deal of time swapping CDs for days. So my thinking was that I kept it as close to the original CD as possible that would be best. I’m guessing (correct me if I am wrong) that if I have the WAV file it would be a simple matter to take a subset of those, say 100 or so and convert them to a format I want like mp3 for a portable player. Correct. Also, I am a bit skeptical…maybe I am just ignorant to the inner workings of a lossless format. My pea brain tells me that if you are converting it and making it smaller you have to lose something (am I wrong here?). Lossy formats (Ogg, AAC, mp3) throw away info. Lossless formats (Flac, Apple lossless) do NOT throw away info. You can compress and decompress a wav file with flac all day long and you always get the same wav file back. Think of ti like zip for windows. You can zip a file, and when you unzip it, you get the exact same file back. This is a bit simplistic, but think of this. PCM data is a positive 16 bit integer. this means you have a range of numbers for 0 to 2 to the 16th power (big number dont worry about it). absolute silence is 0. So lets say you got 10 seconfs at the beginning of a tack with pure silence (I know you never have pure silence, jsut play along). you got a whole string of 0's. instead of having 0 after 0 over and over why not record it as 0 2000 times. Thats two numbers isntead of 2000 0's. Thats a big savings. Its alot more complicated than that and I'd be happy to go into the gory details if you are interested but it is very possible to compress a sound file and lose absolutely 0 data. So I was considering the path of storage size plays no part, hard drive are cheap I am willing to buy what I need. I want the best, easiest, fastest method for storing them so I don’t ever have to drag out a CD again. If I buy a new CD I would put it on the computer that day and throw the CD in the closet with the rest never to bee seen again. Maybe it is the once bitten twice shy idea…but I don’t want to copy CDs again once this is done. Am I just being stupid here? Will a lossless compression sound every bit as good as a non compressed file? I thought with any compression there was a trade off between size and quality. ---------------- You can do it either as plain wav files or as lossless compressed. The more important part here is how youstore your data. Will you want the whole CD as one big file or speperate files? Do you want play lists generated for teh cd for your favorite music player? Ect. Hop over to Hydrogen and take a look around. You'll find that whats more important, assuming that you are saving the audio as some type of lossless format, is the metadata such as the track names, the album names, the track lengths, ect. It'd be a shame to rip it all again then decide you have to re-rip it because you dont like the way your files are named, ect. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sivadselim Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 rplace, "lossless" means just that. if you convert a wav to a lossless format like, for example, flac, and then convert that flac back into a wav, you'll get back the exact same wav that you started with. the lossy formats offer the advantage of taking up less space. your choices, if you want to perfectly archive your CDs on your hdd, are either to simply save your CDs' content as the original wav files that they are or use a lossless format. if hdd space is of no concern whatsoever, then archiving them as wavs would be the correct choice. however, there ARE several software players and plug-ins available for playing back the lossless formats, allowing you to play your music directly back, perfectly, from FLAC or Apple lossless files. a potential reason to not use flac or apple lossless, though, might be flexibility, if you ever wanted to move the files to a portable player or another computer; almost everything can read/play a wav. but as long as the player or second computer was equipped to read those formats you'd be fine. also, wavs are the standard and will remain so as long as music is still released on cd. you might not won't to fill a hdd with compressed files using a lossless format that may completely obsolete and unsupported in 5 years. (edit: oops, wmilas posted while i was composin' my post, so there's some redundant info there) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmilas Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 ---------------- On 6/30/2005 1:32:27 PM rplace wrote: wmilas, I checked out the squeezebox...along the same lines as my Audiotron by Turtle Beach...front end to a computer network that has you music files. I like their ripping service. That would surely save time and since they give them to you on DVD there is my backup. I also like the optical and coax digital outs plus the fact that they user burr brown DACs. Not sure of the DAC in my A-tron and I only have optical for my digital out. Do you let your Squeeze box do the D to A conversion or do you use one of the digital outs? How does it sound? ---------------- I use the toslink out so i don't use its internal Dac's. I have tried em but not enough to comment on em besides they do sound good. I imagine everyone here has a good pre/pro so I dont know why you wouldn't just use your pre/pro. If you had a not so great reciever, I'd imagine the dacs in the squeezebox would sound better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erukian Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 As far as best ripper goes. Linux -- Grip uses the famous CD Paranoia core to rip. Some guy in IRC years ago had a peice of dried (something) on his cd, and cd-paranoia actually re-read the thing so many times, increased the laser power on the drive and spun it so fast that it would actually get through the substance to get a consistant reading off the disc. Pretty impressive... Most cd-ripping front-ends in linux use cd paranoia for it's base. Windows - CDex is great, Exact Audio Copy is the best. Found here just read the technology section of the site if your skeptical. Mac - Itunes does a great job ripping to Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC). While it's not as good as EAC at making you feel good about everyting being a bit-perfect copy it does a good job at covering up jitter and "pops" from old discs. ALAC is at least compatible with iPods, which are by far dominating the MP3 player market. The only bad thing about iPods is the DAC's on them are pretty bad and they really underpower headphones and cause clipping in the bass -- really badly... As far as encoding goes. I see three main types of people here. 1) Those who just want their CD's on their portable player, not too concerned about sound quality on the portable, if they want sound quality, they can use their high end stereo at home. So if you have a Rio or iRiver product, they should support OGG Vorbis. If you have an ipod. AAC (advanced audio codec) is what Apple sells music on the iTunes music store with, which is compatible of course with the iPods and sound quality is definately superior to MP3. In fact quite a few Vorbis developers jumped ship to AAC because they think it has more of a chance than Vorbis did at giving MP3 a run for its money without compromising sound quality. For an iPod, 128-192kbps is about as transparent as the ipod can put out because of limiting factors, like the relatively poor amp and DAC in the ipod. 2) Those who want to listen to their music on the computer from the CD Collection or from downloaded tunes. For this, OGG Vorbis/AAC/Musepack (all VBR codecs by nature) are probably the best choices you have. Those codecs are of course, lossy, not lossless, so you ARE losing bits of audio quality. If you do have the hard-drive space, then rip to FLAC, plus it might give you a warm fuzzy feeling about having perfect copies of your WAV files. 3) The guys who want their music backed up or to use a PC as a transport. FLAC is definately the way to go. EAC is also the way to go, you can even try using CUE file sheets, but I won't get into that and just say this. CUE file sheets will store any gap-information that's on the CD. So if there's supposed to be a Gap between songs, it'll be there when your outputting it to your stereo, just as if you were listening to the CD itself. Otherwise Tracks play out gaplessly if that's how the CD has the audio laid out on it. So it seems there's quite a few options in the audio codec world. For those guys in #2 I would use FLAC or ALAC if you have the space, just in case you want to burn the music back to a CD to replace it ... say if it gets stolen or destoryed of if you just want a copy you can put in your car. For #3, never backup as lossy, always lossless, you probably figure that since you paid for the CD, you might as well keep all the quality on it with a 1:1 bit perfect copy. Also your mind can be at ease knowing that when using the computer as a transport, the data is the same as if you put in the physical disc, which makes our audiophile insides all happy The only thing you'd have to worry about would be digital jitter, which a high end DAC can take care of.. usually. -Joe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olorin Posted June 30, 2005 Share Posted June 30, 2005 Rich, Much as I hate "Me too" posts, I also recommend EAC. Been using it and loving it for a long time. In my defense, I decided to speak up was I was reading page one. I also like FLAC a good deal. If space is truly not an issue, though, you might as well just rip to WAV and be done with it. Like you said, you can do whatever you want with the WAV file for your portables. 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.