To WAV or not to WAV?

[Godzilla]

I can't wait to get my imac up and running later this week. It is a slot load machine and i think it may have a firewire connection on the side. I will have to see if i can get the battered and beaten browser - i think it's an old version of Netscape - to work long enough to download iCab. Then do i have to upgrade the OS before downloading iTunes? Do wav files work in iTunes? Flac?

I have to go lossless.

Thanks,
Godzilla

 

[b-square]

WAV and Apple Lossless are your options in iTunes. There are players for every interesting lossless format for OSX, as well.

 

[error401]

We have had a lot of issues with data & USB drives (i work part time at a 'puter shop, legacy of 23 years in the business) -- to the point where we aren't selling them anymore, and i read an article on some technical site last week ref the problem (no i can't find it). Non of the photograhers or videographers that are clients would ever think of using USB drives (not that some of them haven't tried)

dave

PS: with M$ continuing to implode and Apple's growth rate running at something like 5x the industry average we may well see the tide turn -- besides a new Intel Mac makes the best windoz platform

BTW this one is an interesting slant on the above
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/02/21/lessons-from-the-death-of-hd-dvd/

I find it rather difficult to believe that any sort of failures you've experienced can be attributed to USB itself. The interface is actually (much) simpler to implement than IEEE-1394, and is well understood thanks to its huge market penetration. If the USB->SATA/ATA hardware failed on anywhere near the rate you suggest, it was either poorly implemented (ie. you bought a cheap enclosure) or you abused or used it improperly. IC designers definitely cannot get away with designing parts that don't 'just work', and any that did will have fixed their designs long ago. This isn't exactly a new (or uncompetitive) field where bugs are expected. I think your anecdotal sample size is just too small for a reasonable assessment to be made.

1394 is a better interface, due mostly to the aforementioned increased complexity. While on paper it is not as fast as USB2, much more of the work is done in the interface chip, where USB has a fairly heavy CPU burden. As a result Firewire performs better with less overhead. Personally I don't think it's worth the trouble and cost for most users. One of the main advantages of external drives is their portability, and 1394 penetration is pretty dismal in comparison. For most users I think USB is a better choice due to its universal compatibility; it's still fast enough for most uses.

That said, I agree that for this OP, Firewire is probably a better choice for his old Mac. It's pretty likely that the Mac has only USB1.1, which is definitely unusable for removable storage. The Firewire port is going to be the only reasonable way to attach external storage. If it's not your only machine, you might think about just setting up a network share instead. Less investment and less trouble keeping things in sync. Not sure about OS9's networking interop though, never have been an Apple fan.

Could also think about trying a PowerPC Linux distribution (Debian seems to be the only one currently support Old World Macs) or a BSD on the machine as well. Will get you a modern OS that should be a lot more usable than the trash that is OS9, but there are lots of quirks getting it set up.

 

[PrecisionAudio]

If you can find a Firewire800 drive and, have the proper PC I/O to match, go for it. Regarding USB 2.0 and Firewire400, both transfer protocols will provide only 1/2 of the data throughput that a decent hard disk in an external case can achieve which is around 80 MB/sec. And, if you're using the external drive for a lot of random I/O's (reading and writing), that throughput problem will be greatened.

Joe

 

[planet10]

or a BSD on the machine as well. Will get you a modern OS that should be a lot more usable

OS X is a BSD. And iTunes is pretty good music server software.

dave

 

[Godzilla]

I was able to download iCab just fine and browse websites I couldn’t for years on my old iMac running OS 9.1. After downloading the OS 10.3.9 update and double clicking on it I get this error.

Could not find the application or program that created the document MacOSXupdate

Crap! I feel like I am working with a Windows PC.

 

[ecdesigns]

I was able to download iCab just fine and browse websites I couldn’t for years on my old iMac running OS 9.1. After downloading the OS 10.3.9 update and double clicking on it I get this error.

If you want to run mac OSX 10.3.9 on your old imac, you first need to perform a firmware upgrade while running under mac OS 9.1, download required application from the Apple website and follow instructions.

You can't update mac OSX 9.1 to OSX 10.3.9, this requires a new install with appropriate installation disc.

You also might need to increase system RAM to 256Mb.

 

[EC8010]

OK, so I've just ordered a 1Tb external HDD and intend to copy my CDs uncompressed. This is going to take a while, so is there anything I ought to know? I'll be playing them using a DACmagic from USB.

 

[mako1138]

I would do lossless compression, FLAC or APE, rather than completely uncompressed. (Or is that what you meant?)

 

[Westerp]

You also might need to increase system RAM to 256Mb.

Trust me, running any Mac os higher than 9x on your old iMac will frustrate
you no end. 256Mb will just about make it boot and give you a desktop but
applications will be slooooooooow (from experience). Even when upped to
512Mb it's still a slow cpu and any cheap intel +1Ghz laptop with a decent media
player will do better. For compression I started using flac and never switched.
Even on my iPhone I use flac as I hate any form of lossy compression.

You'd better do the cd copying on another machine depending on the size
of your collection if you want to be done before the end of the year

 

[EC8010]

Actually, I really did mean completely uncompressed, not even lossless. The HDD is big enough not to worry about size so I don't feel any need to compress.

I have until the end of the year for this job.

 

[blueskynis]

I would go for FLAC, it is a free lossless audio codec and uses less space than WAV file with the same quality.

Quote:
FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player (or your car or home stereo, see supported devices) just like you would an MP3 file.

FLAC stands out as the fastest and most widely supported lossless audio codec, and the only one that at once is non-proprietary, is unencumbered by patents, has an open-source reference implementation...

 

[Netlist]

Buy a good quality second 'backup' drive and take your time to configure EAC properly.

You will have your reason not to use flac but if you do, the tagging options are endless, unlike wav files.
Very handy if you use a software player like Mediamonkey or Media Jukebox.
Oh, and EAC can rip directly to flac, include all tagging options you could dream of so there’s no need to convert afterwards.

 

[Boris Bilinsky]

I have ripped my cd collection to AIFF format, used WAV first but realized that it lacks tag support. I use itunes for playback, though I have not checked if it has bit to bit playback capability (used foobar in xp before) but it seem to do that when using the digital output.

 

[dangus]

DBPoweramp is another powerful ripper. There's a batch mode (or version) which supports Accuraterip, and will do a series of CDs without keyboard or mouse input. Just wait until it ejects, and stick another CD in. You can chew through a big stack of CDs while doing something else. It can also be configured to use several separate CD/DVDROM drives, so if you've got a big old server case and enough IDE ports, you could fit it with a dog's breakfast of spare drives and have a bunch of CDs ripping while you are sleeping or working or whatever.

I'd suggest burning backups to DVD-R, if you don't go with a redundant hard drive arrangement. Although, when I think about it, it's not that much more expensive to just have a second drive, and less work. ($45 for 2x470 gigs of DVD-R, vs. a 1 TB drive for about $100)

By the way, some retailers offer an extended warranty on hard drives which will replace them with an equivalent cost (not size) unit. Hypothetically, if your drive was still running fine before the warranty was up, wrapping it in insulation and running a burn-in test on it 24-7 might hasten its demise.

 

[gainphile]

Rip CDs using windows media player to lossless WMA (just because ms has the most reliable tagging).

Then convert WMA lossless to .FLAC

Never resample !.... If ripping fron LPs stay at 24/192kHz or 24/96kHz minimum.

Hardisk are so cheap anyway

Why .FLAC?

- It's open, not proprieatry -> never lose standards
- It supports up to very high sample rate. 24/192kHz is easy
- More and more appliance support it.
- Great size compression.

You need good gold-plated audiophile hardisk though

Of course if that's not good enough, keep them as wav, and those 24/358kHz files at 1GB/song

 

[Westerp]

You need good gold-plated audiophile hardisk though

Joking aside, you would need a reliable disk with a decent throughput
and seek speed for quick indexing, ripping and searching.

Any old disk will be fast enough for playing music but you will see quite
a difference between a good disk setup and some cheap external drive
when your collection grows.

And then a cd player which is able to rip audio at good speeds without
dropping bits. Buying a new cd player with better dae features is worth
the money.

And when you don't want to start ripping cd's all over in case of a crash
you need a raid setup as well.

Atm I'm running two 500Gb western digital disks on a 3ware escalade sata
raid controller for the music I don't want to lose and in the heater cupboard
there is a fileserver doing software raid on a bunch of old 250Gb disks for
elevator music

Burned to cd and played through my trusted/modded tda1541A players
when I want to sit down and listen, piped through GeeXboX outputting the
data into a Usb Box when I'm in elevator mood and choosing music
from my lazy chair in front of my computer screen.

 

[analog_sa]

Rip CDs using windows media player to lossless WMA

Ripping with WMP is good only if you don't mind doing the job again with a better ripper or your system/ears don't know any better.

Atm I'm running two 500Gb western digital disks on a 3ware escalade sata
raid controller for the music I don't want to lose

You appear to be insured against hdd failure but not against raid controller failure which can be just as deadly.


I archive all rips as flac because of the tagging but convert to wav for critical listening.

 

[Westerp]

You appear to be insured against hdd failure but not against
raid controller failure which can be just as deadly.

That's why I have a spare controller Indeed a controller can fail just as
onboard controllers can fail and write garbage to the disk but that's a risk
I take. And same as you I burn to cd to listen and I stream to pro-ject box
for background muzak. And the cd's I love are all original ones.

Now to play with my new cyrus one which I bought yesterday evening and
to iron out some hum originating from the cable tv ground which in turn
connects to the media player which goes through the dac and humzzzzzz...

 

[analog_sa]

And same as you I burn to cd to listen

Actually i don't. Sold my transport last month as it didn't see any use over the last two years. USB dac works vastly superior for me.