OT: File formats and digitizing music collection

[ELP71]

I am in the midst of digitizing my CDs and about halfway through (384 CDs and 4900 files later) I am noticing some weirdness.

1) Some tracks getting cut off with like three seconds left or - worst case - about halfway through!
2) One CD in particular - Elvis Costello's Greatest hits CD 2 - cuts off with four to five seconds left and then you hear those few seconds at the top of the next track! Never encountered that before.
3) General 'dead' sound of older CDs bought in the late 80s to early 90s. This goes beyond the acceptable sonic degradationassociated with 'lossy' file formats. Methinks these CDs were mastered before certain advances in the digital realm that warmed the 'remastered' versions up in later years.

I'm importing with iTunes and encoding to MP3 192. Please - no flames for using MP3 as I have my reasons.

I guess I am wondering what everyone else is doing in this area and would welcome any suggestions as I continue this massive undertaking.

[js33]

I don't use iTunes to rip mine as I'm on windows. I could but I use something else. One thing to check is CBR vs. VBR. I would always encode with Constant Bit Rate rather than Variable Bit Rate as players seem to like CBR better.

Cheers,
JS

[Lunatique]

I use foobar2000 with LAME's Preset-Standard for encoding, and it's very very good--in fact it's the audiophile's choice when they need to use mp3 encoding.

If you want to look into non-lossy compression, you can try FLAC, Moneky Audio..etc. You get 100% CD quality with them, but they are a lot bigger than mp3 file sizes (roughly 50% of wav files or better, depending on the compression--with the speed as the trade-off).

If you want to become an expert on the subject, or ask other experts, this forum is hands down the best: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php

[ELP71]

Wow, Luna - there are definitely some dudes with a lot of free time over at that site you linked.

I'm going to perform some experiments this afternoon with other encoders and see how things go. I'll keep everyone posted.

ELP71

[Lunatique]

Wow, Luna - there are definitely some dudes with a lot of free time over at that site you linked.


Yeah, audiophiles are a very strange and particular bunch. The funny thing is, people that actuall make music are not even that picky.

[Alan Lastufka]

I use the .m4a format, which is Apple's lossy algorithm. I rip everything at 192kb/s in iTunes to an external 250GB HDD. Over 2,000 full albums - I live for the random function...

[Lunatique]

I live for the random function...

OMIGOD yes! I used to be anti-mp3 or playing music on the computer, because I love CD packaging and being able to take them to places, but as years went by, with portable mp3 players and bigger hard drives, I've been completely converted. Having tens of thousands of songs on random play really beats the hell out of any CD changer!

Chuck D of Public Enemy said once during a public talk that mp3 players have allowed us to carry with us "the soundtracks of our lives," and that's such an awesome way to put it. Every single song you've ever loved and had an impact on you as a person or musician, can be carried around on something that fits in your pocket, and encoded to such high quality that unless you have a 10k dollar system, you can't hear the difference to a CD.

I have over 500 CD's that I haven't encoded yet, but I did rip my favorite songs from those albums. The other filler songs I could live without.