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| Thread ID: 66550 | 2006-02-27 01:09:00 | Best audio codec for CD archiving...? | bardin (1950) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 434105 | 2006-02-27 01:09:00 | I've begun my CD archiving project, onto my mirrored 250 GB SATA HDDs, and DVD as well. I plan to make this PERMANENT. I've been using mp3 @ 320, but I'm wondering if there's a better quality (perhaps lossless?) format, with better compression? Ideas anyone? I know v little about all this. With some of my CDs (Soundgarden in particular :)), I really want as good quality I can get and not worried about space at all, others I'm happy with mp3 quality (256-320). I personally can't notice the difference between 192 and 320, but I don't have a decent stereo. Might try on my headphones. I'd also like the format to be able to be converted to mp3 / wma easily, so I can make CDs to play on an mp3 stereo, and carry around on my USB key etc. Also, naming convention... I go for: Artist - Album - Year - Track No. - Track name.mp3...ideas? Cheers. |
bardin (1950) | ||
| 434106 | 2006-02-27 01:34:00 | I personally use ogg, but have a look at flac also. Ogg is slightly lossy but better than mp3 by a mile, while I think flac is pretty much lossless | Myth (110) | ||
| 434107 | 2006-02-27 02:38:00 | Oh god.. the format war... I believe technically the highest quality audio is achieved by FLAC. But my personal perference is for high bitrate mp3. While other formats have minor advantages for me they all pale in the shadow of mp3's ability to play on *any* device that plays digital music. If you are happy transcoding though.. FLAC would be my pick. -Qyiet |
qyiet (6730) | ||
| 434108 | 2006-02-27 05:05:00 | FLAC and monkeys are lossless but they will still have fairly big files. it depends on what you want to use it for. with a lossless codec you can convert it back to wave and it will be identical to the original. i'm out of date with the lossless ones so pays to have asearch around. ogg, easy to encode with, good file size to quality. very good in the lower bitrates. mp3 is fine IF you use a good codec and use good settings. you need to know exactly what you are doing to get the best out of it. doing it in mp3 is no gauantee it will play in any players. a lot of players cannot handle high bit rate mp3's. |
tweak'e (69) | ||
| 434109 | 2006-02-27 06:06:00 | This is the program to use with LAME: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ |
zqwerty (97) | ||
| 434110 | 2006-02-27 06:39:00 | Also, naming convention... I go for: Artist - Album - Year - Track No. - Track name.mp3...ideas? Artist\Album\Track No. - Track Name.mp3 Artist as a folder, album as a subfolder, no need for year (that's what the internet is for), then track No. (I always use leading zeros), then track name. My :2cents: Mike. |
Mike (15) | ||
| 434111 | 2006-02-27 19:57:00 | OK, given your storage size, if you're truly concerned about quality, and you don't want some codec throwing out the bits it thinks you don't need to hear (all so-called loss-less compression formats do this. Reducing the original file size has to come from somewhere!), why don't you consider linear storage (24/44.1 etc)? Yep, you use more space, but given the low cost of storage these days, why are we worried about space saving? | Weird Kid (9880) | ||
| 434112 | 2006-02-27 20:13:00 | ... you don't want some codec throwing out the bits it thinks you don't need to hear (all so-called loss-less compression formats do this. Reducing the original file size has to come from somewhere!)Have you never used a zip file before Weird Kid? The word doc that got compressed so it *must* have lost quality somewhere. *sigh* Have a look at en.wikipedia.org for a summary of how lossless compression works. -Qyiet |
qyiet (6730) | ||
| 434113 | 2006-02-27 21:12:00 | Ah yes! But have you tried using your ears with a word document? If storeage isn't an issue, then linear will best represent the original production (provided, of course, it's not some rip picked up by ya mate on holidays in Thailand!) :cool: |
Weird Kid (9880) | ||
| 434114 | 2006-02-27 21:22:00 | Weird Kid.. have a look at this page www.bobulous.org.uk scroll to the bottom, and read the section titled Update - Evidence that FLAC is lossless This guy takes a wav file, compresses it using FLAC, then decompresses it back to wav. The file size is exactly the same, as is the MD5 checksum. They are the *same*. There is no loss, there is no gain. That is the point. The same applies to .zip if you compressed a word using lossy compression, when you decompressed it, word would refuse to open it as corrupt. However when you pull a word file out of a zip you end up with *exactly* the same data you put in. -Qyiet edit:: actually bardin, that page as a very good summary of the +s and -s of mp3/ogg/flac/monkey/wav |
qyiet (6730) | ||
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