Is WAV still the best Lossless format?

[Cooldaddy66]

Hello everyone from a diyAudio newbie

Through the years I've built up almost 75gig of music on my PC (all 320k mp3's) but as now live in an age where a 1Tb drive can be purchased cheaply, I want to restart ripping my CD collection into a lossless format.

I apologize if this has been asked a zillion times before, but as space isn't really an issue, is it worth ripping my music into Wav or should I think about the alternatives like Flac which on the plus side, has music tags like MP3?

I'm currently using Winamp as a ripper, although a friend has recently told me that he has had issues with distorted Wav's from Winamp before. Should I use this if I go down the Wav route? What are the better alternatives (free if possible )?

I'm also currently using Ashampoo Burning Studio 2009 to make compilations from my CD Collection. Are there any good burners out there which support CD Text?

I really appreciate any help offered.

Many Thanks

[FairfaxStu]

I use WMA (Windows Media Audio) Lossless and have been very pleased with both the quality of the sound and the tagging abilities. If you are using a Windows PC, you can use Windows Media Player to rip your CD's. There is no additional software or CODECs to install. The vast majority of my collection (94,000 songs) is ripped into this format and I have the metadata tags for most all of them (that part was a PITA). Of course, be sure to either run a RAID setup or keep a copy of your music archive on a backup disk. You don't want to have to rip and setup metadata twice.

[ScottTracy]

Q:Is WAV still the best Lossless format?
A: In short, only if you have unlimited space.

You can have all the quality of WAV but compressed to take up half or less the hard-drive space. WMA lossless is one option but my personal favourite is FLAC which is fast to encode, fast to decode, has good compression and is widely supported.

Don't forget to use good CD ripping software. CDex is pretty good but perfectionists seem to adore exact audio copy (EAC), for bit-perfect rips.

Good luck, hope it's worth it

[binspaul]

Hi,

You can use various formats like FLAC, .APE, .WV etc to store the audio in a lossless format. FLAC seems to be the most popular. Also if you want to have HiFi quality, then go for professional softwares like WaveLab, Adobe Audition etc. EAC is also seems pretty fine.

Best regards,
Bins.

Originally Posted by Cooldaddy66

Hello everyone from a diyAudio newbie

Through the years I've built up almost 75gig of music on my PC (all 320k mp3's) but as now live in an age where a 1Tb drive can be purchased cheaply, I want to restart ripping my CD collection into a lossless format.

I apologize if this has been asked a zillion times before, but as space isn't really an issue, is it worth ripping my music into Wav or should I think about the alternatives like Flac which on the plus side, has music tags like MP3?

I'm currently using Winamp as a ripper, although a friend has recently told me that he has had issues with distorted Wav's from Winamp before. Should I use this if I go down the Wav route? What are the better alternatives (free if possible )?

I'm also currently using Ashampoo Burning Studio 2009 to make compilations from my CD Collection. Are there any good burners out there which support CD Text?

I really appreciate any help offered.

Many Thanks

[SoNic_real_one]

FLAC format is identical with WAV, except the compression ratio.
I even have HDCD discs backed-up on HDD and played back via SPDIF connection there are still decoded as HDCD on my DAC (receiver).

[abraxalito]

Originally Posted by Cooldaddy66

Hello everyone from a diyAudio newbie

Welcome to the party

Through the years I've built up almost 75gig of music on my PC (all 320k mp3's) but as now live in an age where a 1Tb drive can be purchased cheaply, I want to restart ripping my CD collection into a lossless format.

I'd go for a 1.5T drive (have good experience with WD 'green' series, slightly lower power) as that's the sweet spot for cost per Gb at the moment.

I apologize if this has been asked a zillion times before, but as space isn't really an issue, is it worth ripping my music into Wav or should I think about the alternatives like Flac which on the plus side, has music tags like MP3?

Space is always an issue, just less of one over time. So don't waste your money with WAV, it has no advantages over FLAC, just costs more.

I'm also currently using Ashampoo Burning Studio 2009 to make compilations from my CD Collection. Are there any good burners out there which support CD Text?

I'm using Ubuntu Linux and K3b supports CD text direct from CDDB. Free of course

[ssmith]

.wav indeed has a disadvantage over .flac in that there is no standard tagging mechanism. That's a real pain. Flac decoding is really fast and resource light, unlike for example .ape which gives better higher compression rates but can be slow to encode/decode.

Unless you are a mac user, FLAC is a great option.
For managing large libraries on windows, I'd recommend you check out J River Media Center.

abraxalito is right -- 1.5TB is the sweet spot for HDD capacity/$ at the moment.
Buy two. One as a back up!

[ANADIGIT]

FLAC 24/192 is the best choice :-)

[abraxalito]

Originally Posted by ANADIGIT

FLAC 24/192 is the best choice :-)

Certainly FLAC exhibits far better compression ratios at these higher sample rates - I guess because there's so little additional information to encode. WAV would be an even greater waste of money for fans of high rate audio.

[wakibaki]

There are still reasons for using .wav

It was here in the beginning, it ain't going away.

It's the closest to universal.

It requires no manipulation to render it in an editable form.

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