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Updated the Guide to Ripping & Encoding CD audio today. It was a mess (full of obsolete info). Infested with a bad case of link-rot-itus. I still have some (minor) tweaks I'd like to make, but for now, it's quite useable, and (most importantly) reflects the latest recommended encoder settings [-V 2 --vbr-new, as of November 2005] for use with the currently recommended version of LAME:> v3.97 beta2. Also broke up one of the longer pages into 3 smaller ones, which comprise the following: • Exact Audio Copy (EAC) CD ripper (digital audio extractor) The info on those 3 pages used to be crammed into a single page (yeah, lotsa scrolling). The guide now consists of 10 pages. ••• today's entry continues here ••• And the page where I discuss lossless audio compression can easily be broken into two pages: one dealing with the use of lossless codecs, and another where I compare and contrast lossy with lossless codecs, addressing the advantages & disadvantages of each. To be honest, I probably never woulda wrote this guide had I known (ahead of time) how much work it was gonna be to keep current. It has required far more effort than any other guide. I originally wrote the Guide to Ripping & Encoding CD audio back in April of 2001 .. back when Napster made it seem like your computer contained every song ever recorded. Yeah, the *old* Napster .. you remember (.. momentary pine as we take a nostalgic trip down memory lane.) .. back in the days when file-sharing was considered a good thing. It was a little techie-David vs big corporate-Goliath. And everybody was rooting for the little guy .. praying he wouldn't get mashed like bug. Napster seemed too good to be true (.. and unfortunately was). Wasn't very much technical information about ripping & encoding CD audio back then. Everything was 128-kbps, mostly with a Xing encoder (via AudioCatalyst), which was fast & easy-to-use, but produced the world's worst MP3s, in terms of audio fidelity .. 'til the people could stand it no more. Things changed quickly back then .. but have slowed (thankfully) in recent years. Fun to see how things have developed over the years. One thing has remained constant, tho: a combination of Exact Audio Copy (EAC) and the LAME MP3 encoder is still the best way to get the best-sounding MP3s. LAME is so good, in fact, so well developed, that big companies like Sony are ripping off parts of its source code. Anyway, since the guide is already written, I should probably take the time, periodically, to keep it current. I knew the guide needed updating, cuz I had a type-o in the old revision, where I discussed encoder settings for v3.90.3 (as specified in the ÜberStandard) - I omitted the 'e', by writing xtreme instead of extreme - and I'd get mail from folks telling me so. When that mail stopped coming, I new the community had moved on to an updated codec, which meant it was time to update the guide. Took six months for me to get around to it. Biggest disappointment was to hear that MPC was dead. There was a fast, lossy codec that produced *excellent* quality audio files (*.mpc). But you can't play MPC on an iPod. For more info along these lines, here's a Google search pre-configured for the query: rip encode cd audio music mp3 digital extract |
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