About 4 years ago, I ripped my entire CD collection to compressed WMA files for portability. I never saw HDD stored music as anything other than convenient.
Times have changed a little. I've had heavily modded squeeze boxes for about 2 years now and the latest change to the set up uses a modified Touch into my Audio Aero CDP (which also has several digital inputs). This has lead to me re creating my HDD library. After some tests and reading, I decided on WAV. So far as I can tell the main issue is that you need to get the metadata right 1st time as unlike MP3, its not easy to change the info once on the drive.
Last time I created the library, WMP used CDDB for its metadata which was mostly correct except for some obscure compilation albums. There was also the option to change the database you used based on personal preference.
Due to the technological advances and improvements now offered by Microsoft, they now use their own database which is mostly wrong (95%)at best. About 65% have a close stab but don't get the covers and definitely are nowhere near any use and about 20% are totally wrong. Some even come up with Chinese characters. Whats worse it that you can no longer point the software to one of the long standing and mostly correct databases. 😡
I thought windows media would be most convenient as there is little to configure. EAC seems overly complicated.
Whats everyone using. I want highest quality and I have no concerns over storage space?
Got to say, I cant believe anyone at MS actually ran WMP with a CD in the drive otherwise they would have realised how much of a step back to 1998 they have made! This really isn't a subtle c0ck up!!!!
Times have changed a little. I've had heavily modded squeeze boxes for about 2 years now and the latest change to the set up uses a modified Touch into my Audio Aero CDP (which also has several digital inputs). This has lead to me re creating my HDD library. After some tests and reading, I decided on WAV. So far as I can tell the main issue is that you need to get the metadata right 1st time as unlike MP3, its not easy to change the info once on the drive.
Last time I created the library, WMP used CDDB for its metadata which was mostly correct except for some obscure compilation albums. There was also the option to change the database you used based on personal preference.
Due to the technological advances and improvements now offered by Microsoft, they now use their own database which is mostly wrong (95%)at best. About 65% have a close stab but don't get the covers and definitely are nowhere near any use and about 20% are totally wrong. Some even come up with Chinese characters. Whats worse it that you can no longer point the software to one of the long standing and mostly correct databases. 😡
I thought windows media would be most convenient as there is little to configure. EAC seems overly complicated.
Whats everyone using. I want highest quality and I have no concerns over storage space?
Got to say, I cant believe anyone at MS actually ran WMP with a CD in the drive otherwise they would have realised how much of a step back to 1998 they have made! This really isn't a subtle c0ck up!!!!
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Why WAV? FLAC is a much better format for storage and usage, and compatibility has exponentially increased. There are many guides that simplify EAC and I'll try finding the ones I have and post them later(if someone else can post them faster, please do so 😉)
+1 for FLAC files ripped in EAC. Super high quality, and I believe you can choose from a long list of databases to pull meta tags from. Otherwise, you can use Mp3Tag, a freeware tag editing app- and with that I'm positive you can choose from a number of databases.
Does FLAC use some form of compression? The file is definitely smaller even set to best quality? EAC is also a bit more clunky. I thought it would be a little more slick by now. Would be interested in any guides that people have used with success. Thanks ;-)
FLAC is lossless compression. You can think of it as similar to the old ZIP files.
I'm not really the one to provide experienced advice for you (I use minimal automation), but EAC will let you tag artist and album when you rip a CD. Then software will match your files with database files. That's my understanding.
I'm not really the one to provide experienced advice for you (I use minimal automation), but EAC will let you tag artist and album when you rip a CD. Then software will match your files with database files. That's my understanding.
FLAC is compressed, but lossless. WAV files have no metadata. EAC is clunky, but set up properly will give excellent rips.
Guide -
EAC Configuration Wizard - Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase
I use JRiver, costs a few $, some prefer dbpoweramp.
You can use a program like audiochecker to be sure your setup is correct.
Good luck...
Guide -
EAC Configuration Wizard - Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase
I use JRiver, costs a few $, some prefer dbpoweramp.
You can use a program like audiochecker to be sure your setup is correct.
Good luck...
Thanks guys, That knowledgebase looks good and I've downloaded JRiver to have a look at. I dont mind paying for good software. I'm not fussed either way WAV or FLAC. Still trying to understand why MS broke it for win7 users especially as 7 features a full blown windows media centre!
Did anybody try OGG Vorbis encoding? I believe that it preforms pretty fine, much better than MP3.
I've tried it with my very old mp3 player and found that if the files are encoded at a high quality the player lagged and skipped. I suspect it takes more computing power to decode, but I'm not sure. It's also a lossy format, albeit better than mp3.
Does anyone know what the likes of NAIM use on their digital systems. Cant see that its proprietary but I've no experience.
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