Ripping To .mp3

[Vargas]

Originally posted by summerlinda@20 February 2004 - 16:35
Huh?
Why? Can you search for VBR or CBR on Kazaa? I dont get it...

because regular kazaa users can only get search results for mp3's 128kbs and lower
and VBR shows up in kazaa as 128kbs

[FuNkY CaPrIcOrN]

Look all I am saying is just because this other so called "audio enthusist" forum says a certain way is better does not mean you have to go with that.

It is my Ears.It sounds fine to me.And I know I am not the only one that does CBR.

See this is why the Sticky should be closed.It will be 10 Pages long of what way is right.

[Afronaut]

Originally posted by FuNkY CaPrIcOrN@20 February 2004 - 19:17

See this is why the Sticky should be closed.It will be 10 Pages long of what way is right.

Good Point...

[FuNkY CaPrIcOrN]

There I bumped the other Thread with the Poll.Will not Post anymore in here.Not good at doing up a Guide and others have done well anyway.

Time to think of another Sticky.


* Maybe that Poll should be a Sticky. *

[Afronaut]

Yeah, the Bitrate Poll has lotsa "Debating" allready about whats the best.

I've been thinking maybe taking out all the cool Posts about Software and make a
one Sticky of them all, kinda like copy/paste. I think i saw a Winamp Guide also...

And then Close it.

Hows about that folks?

[FuNkY CaPrIcOrN]

Originally posted by Guitar-Slinger@20 February 2004 - 12:28
Yeah, the Bitrate Poll has lotsa "Debating" allready about whats the best.

I've been thinking maybe taking out all the cool Posts about Software and make a
one Sticky of them all, kinda like copy/paste. I think i saw a Winamp Guide also...

And then Close it.

Hows about that folks?

We all will agree to that Slinger.

I have to ask again.What about Pauls Thread.We do not want 2 of them dealing with the same thing.Just going to add them right?

[FuNkY CaPrIcOrN]

You can thank me for the Idea on this Sticky later by Buying me a Beer.The Weekend is here!

[FuNkY CaPrIcOrN]

Double Post!



*I said I would not Post anymore in here didnt I? *

[CrumbCat]

*CrumbCat is hoping this is helpful.......

Okay, you want my opinion? Here you go....
(The following information is a mix of past posts by Jibbler, some of my own words, and additional information from the OCR ripping guide)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you really want to create quality rips and get the most out of your time invested, you need something which will create NFO/SFV/M3U files automatically.

Ripping groups have designed kits which are very easy to understand, and they all use EAC/Lame, QuickSFV for making/checking SFV files, CDTag for proper tagging (tag and rename is ok, but they want to be consistent and uniform), and some short tutorials....

Okay, here is where things get interesting... the "scene" standard (the rules used by ripping groups) argue that mp3s are to be 192 Constant Bit Rate. Some audiofiles will argue that VBR (variable bit rate) encoding is better...

In order to see the bigger picture, you have to understand one small detail. The 'mp3 scene' has now made a commitment in 2004 to make all their rips VBR. This includes some major groups like FNT, RNS, aPC, and more... however, instead of a low quality 128 VBR rip, they are talking about either 256 or 320 for CD quality VBR.

After some detailed comparisons, it appears that the file sizes (of 192 CBR vs. the new VBR standard) are about the same. Approx 3 to 5 mb for a song. The new VBR standard uses a different way of encoding VBR than people have been using in the past. It should have advantages over 192CBR files, and should sound much better than your basic VBR (alt-preset-standard)...

If you have been paying attention to the new releases available on mIRC as well as SoulSeek, you have noticed that the new VBR standards have been impliminted.....and if you have listened to any of these files, you have heard for yourself that the quality is as good as it gets - hands down.

So, having said all of this, here is what I use:

CrumbCat's ripper.......
Exact Audio Copy 0.95 Prebeta 3
* It works with a new technology, reading audio CDs almost perfectly. If there
are any errors that can't be corrected, it will tell you on which time position the
possible) distortion occurred, so you could easily control it with e.g. the media
player.
Features of EAC
* Usage of the Windows 95 and Windows NT ASPI Interface, so both SCSI
and ATAPI CD-ROM drives are supported
* Hidden sector synchronization (jitter correction)
* Secure, fast and burst extraction method selectable. Fast extraction
should get the same speed as other grabbers, but is probably not exact
anymore. Burst mode just grabs the audio data without any
synchronization.
* Read error and complete lost of sync detection and correction in
secure modes, as far as possible
* Output of time positions of all non exact corrections and listen to
these positions
* Copy of ranges of music data, not only tracks
* Automatic Speed reduction on errors and fallback afterwards
* Normalization of extracted audio
* Usage of the Windows Audio Compression Manager (ACM Codecs) for direct
compression e.g. to MP3 waves
* Support for the BladeEnc DLL that is usable like an ACM Codec for
online MP3 compression
* Support of external MP3, VQF, RA and AAC encoders for automatic
compression after extraction
* Batch compression and decompression of/to WAV files
* Compression offset support for exact compression/decompression
* Detection of pre-track gaps
* Detection of silence in pre-track gaps
* Automatic creation of CUE sheets for CDRWin, including all gaps,
indicies, track attributes, UPC and ISRC
* CD player functionality and prelistening to selected ranges
* Automatic detection of drive features, whether a drive has an accurate
stream and/or does caching
* Sample Offsets for drives with no accurate streams, including the
option of filling up missing samples with silence
* Option for synchronizing tracks for non-accurate stream drives
* Filename editing with local and remote CDDB database and cdplayer.ini
support and more features like ID3 tagging
* Lyric database support from www.lyrics.ch
* Browse and edit local database
* Certified Escient ® CDDB™ Compatible
* Local CDDB support
* Record and Loop Record functions for recording from LP, radio, etc.
* Automatic rename of MP3 files according to their ID3 tag
* Catalog extraction function
* Multisession (CD-Extra) support
* CD-Text support
* ID3 Tag editor with drag and drop possibility from track listing and
database
* Glitch removal after extraction
* Small WAV editor with functions for delete, trim, normalize, pad,
glitch removal, pop detection, interpolation of ranges, noise
reduction, fade in/out, undo and more
* Program is Cardware, so feel free to copy

CrumbCat's encoder......
LAME 3.90.3
Intergrated into EAC (some apps require that you add this separately) and, IMO, all other songs encoded by anything else suck a$$ compared to LAME

CrumbCat's settings.....
I use "%s %d --alt-preset standard" as the command line for VBR encoding, where the % point to the respective file names for EAC's use.
Setting the bit rate from this drop down menu is moot because that is always taken care of by whatever preset you choose.
Picking high or low quality wont matter what its set to because again this is all taken care of via the presets.

Using EAC
Goto EAC | Configuration Wizard... to configure your CDrom drives.
- Choose "I prefer to have accurate results" when the time comes.
- It's up to you whether you want to trust any pre-detected values.
- DO NOT let it detect Lame for you it might find an old version of it.
UNCHECK that option when it comes to it.
- As for the email address, leave it blank.
- Also tell it that you're an expert. That way you have access to all options.

Goto EAC | Drive Options... | Drive and pick "Autodetect read command now..."

Then exit EAC so it saves the settings to file.

Ripping:
Restart EAC
1. Insert the CD and wait. The track titles should be automatically filled in by FreeDB.
- If not get the FreeDB Info by clicking on the CD icon (3rd from right).
- If all else fails do it later in CDTag.

2. Press Shift+F6, create a new folder on your hard drive, enter this folder and click save.
- It will now test rip the track and copy the track. The test is to make sure that it rips the
same, if the CRCs match on the test and actual copies there's a better chance your rip is good.
- Then it will pause the ripping and open the LAME encoder in a MS-DOS window to encode the files
from WAV to MP3.

3. All tracks should say Track quality 100.0% (or near 100.0%) in the Status Report when ripping has completed.
- All tracks should say Copy OK as well and "No errors occurred" should be at the bottom of the report.
- If any tracks weren't up to par quality-wise, try ripping those tracks again.
- If you can't rip them perfect, don't rip them at all.

So, that's it, take it for what it's worth. My hope in sharing this information is that from this point forward, everybody's rips will be 100% accurate, as well as consistent - nobody wants to spend time downloading a full album, only to then hear glitches in the tracks!

Enjoy,

CC

[FuNkY CaPrIcOrN]

Ok I am sorry(I am Posting in here again).But a NOOB is going to get confused over all this.He sees some of us say CBR and some others say VBR and what not.

Maybe Slinger you make the First Post Explaning why that is.