Best ripping method

[Big Wheel]

Since I got an mp3 player for my birthday, I've been ripping a lot of CDs to mp3 and toting them around with me. It's mostly a great little gadget, with one problem: some of the mp3s come out with sonic problems. Occasionally a few of the tracks will be completely unlistenable, with a regular, rhythmic "skipping"; more frequently there are brief bursts of static/fuzzy noise that definitely don't occur on the original CDs.

Is the problem that:

1) my sound card is crappy (I'm ripping from a Dell notebook--obviously great sound isn't a priority with the overwhelming majority of notebook sound setups);

2) the sampling rate isn't high enough (I think right now it's at 128 KBps);

3) something else entirely? I've tried to be better about not doing anything on the computer while tracks are ripping, in the event that running lots of tasks does weird things to the reading from the CD or the writing to the hard drive.

Thanks for the help!

[Epithet]

The rhythmic skipping and static noises are to do with the ripping only and not the encoding: they're read errors most likely due to dirt and scratches on the CD.

There's two separate stages: ripping the CD into a WAV file, and compressing ('encoding') that WAV file into an MP3.

The 128kbps refers to the bitrate of the encoding, not the sampling rate. The sampling rate is probably going to be that of the CD: 44KHz. The bitrate refers to how much information is used to describe each sample, and the sampling rate refers to how often the samples are taken.

I use Exact Audio Copy to rip. I'm not aware of any other program that goes to such lengths to give you error-free results: in 'secure mode' it will keep reading the same spot on the CD until it gets consistent results (or gives up).

LAME is the encoder I use. You can setup EAC to work with LAME quite easily. (If you plan on using LAME I can direct you to resources that may help you decide what bitrate and other options to use.)

Both these programs are free, but they may take a while to install and configure.

Edited February 26, 2005 by Epithet

[Jim Dye]

Epithet speaks the truth! EAC and LAME are the way to go.

[AfricaBrass]

Epithet speaks the truth! EAC and LAME are the way to go.

Daniel A recently brought me up to speed on this stuff.

I'm now using EAC, the LAME encoder and I have "--alt-preset standard" in my command line.

I was doing 192/kps fixed rate, but now I'm using variable bit rate. My mp3s sound really good with this setting.

[Big Wheel]

Thanks for the tip! I now have EAC and LAME going as well and am listening to a nice clean rip of UNITY right now. I do have a couple of questions:

What does that "alt--preset--standard" line do? I sort of sped through the LAME installation and don't really have a good handle on how it works.

If the dust and dirt on my CDs causes read errors when ripping, why don't I have similar audible problems when I play the CDs on a CD player?

Is there any way to optimize speed without sacrificing too much accuracy? The first CD took about a half hour. At that rate it'll take forever to rip all my discs.

[AfricaBrass]

Thanks for the tip! I now have EAC and LAME going as well and am listening to a nice clean rip of UNITY right now. I do have a couple of questions:

What does that  "alt--preset--standard" line do? I sort of sped through the LAME installation and don't really have a good handle on how it works.

If the dust and dirt on my CDs causes read errors when ripping, why don't I have similar audible problems when I play the CDs on a CD player?

Is there any way to optimize speed without sacrificing too much accuracy? The first CD took about a half hour. At that rate it'll take forever to rip all my discs.

I'm new to this too.

The alt preset standard setting is what Daniel A suggested I use.

Check out the boards at the EAC site. I'm slowly learning about this stuff.

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

Here's what a poster said about the alt preset standard:

EAC-->Compression Options--> choose "user definded encoder" and write "--alt-preset standard %s %d" (without the " of course) into Additional command line options.

that gives you vbr from 128 to 320; with an average of around 200kbps

There are some other alt preset schemes, but most seem to recommend the standard setting. It seems as if these are "high performance" setups. That's how it seems to me.

All I know is that my mp3s sound REALLY GOOD. I've been A/B-ing them against my 192 constant bit rate ones and these are better.

As for speed, I can't help you. I know there will be people who know MUCH MORE than I do.

Good luck!

Edited February 27, 2005 by AfricaBrass

[Big Wheel]

Cool! Thanks. Right now it's running with "%l--alt-preset 128%l%h--alt-preset standard%h %s %d" in the command line. Is that similar? It looks like UNITY didn't rip at one bitrate, so I'm assuming it's also on variable bitrate right now.

[AfricaBrass]

Cool! Thanks. Right now it's running with "%l--alt-preset 128%l%h--alt-preset standard%h %s %d" in the command line. Is that similar? It looks like UNITY didn't rip at one bitrate, so I'm assuming it's also on variable bitrate right now.

I think I have my encoder option set to LAME and then in the command line I have

--alt-preset standard

When I play my tracks back in Winamp, I'm seeing the bitrate change from 128-320, with the average seeming to be around 192.

I have only been using this method today, but I have ripped over 20 albums and they sound great. Good luck with this. I'm off to bed.

[Jim Dye]

Read this thread at Hydrogen Audio to learn more about the --alt presets. There is probably more information there than you'll ever want to read!

[AfricaBrass]

Read this thread at Hydrogen Audio to learn more about the --alt presets. There is probably more information there than you'll ever want to read!

Thanks Jim!

[Daniel A]

Jeff, I'm happy to hear that you think it's an improvement!

One additional note about mono encoding, which is one of the few aspects of MP3 encoding which gets scant coverage at the Hydrogen Audio forum. If you've settled for the commandline "--alt-preset standard" I'd recommend this setting for mono encoding:

--alt-preset standard -mm -b 80

The "-mm" sets the encoding to mono. The "-b 80" sets the lowest bitrate for any frame to 80 kbps. If you've noticed that the VBR alt-preset standard stereo setting has 128 kbps as minimum bitrate you'll perhaps wonder "why not 64 kbps for mono, since half the space should be needed compared to stereo?".

My answer is this:

The VBR system is designed to use the amount of bits needed at every instance for maintaining a given sound quality level. Because the way the encoding algorithms are set up, there is a small risk that the encoder would use a slightly too low a bitrate for the frames which are assigned the very lowest possible bitrates, given the setting. Therefore a bottom limit is set up; 128 kbps. The encoder then won't need to bother with deciding - it can't go lower than 128 kbps anyway.

The obvious choice for mono, which would only seem to need half the bitrate, would be 64 kbps. But the default setting (and which is also recommended) for stereo encoding is a mode called joint stereo. In short, it's able to save some space when the two channels are similar, by processing on one hand the information which is the same, on the other hand the differences between the channels. The bits which are saved by this procedure can be used for improving the overall quality instead.

When the information is already mono, there are no bits to save by looking at similarities between two channels, because there is only one channel. Thus, slightly more than half the stereo bitrate will typically be needed for mono. 64 kbs mono will consequently give very, very slightly lesser quality than 128 kbps joint stereo. So while the difference will probably be inaudible, I'm using "-b 80" rather than "-b 64" just to be sure that I will never risk getting less good results for mono.

[AfricaBrass]

Thanks Daniel!

It really has been a big improvement. I'll save that setting for mono recordings. Thanks!

[Daniel A]

When we're at it, I could as well recommend a setting for encoding recordings from stereo FM radio as well, which would be:

--alt-preset standard --lowpass 15

This setting will only encode information up to 15 kHz. Because of the way the FM stereo system is designed (with something which I think is called a pilot tone at 19 kHz for separating the two audio channels) nothing but noise will be found over 15 kHz. By letting the encoder concentrate on the audio information some bits may be saved, and the quality may even be somewhat better because it won't be distracted by disturbing, useless noise which is typically hard to encode.

[Daniel A]

Thanks Daniel!

It really has been a big improvement.

[Jim Dye]

Great tips Daniel! I was using the -mm flag, but now will add the bit rate flag as well for my mono rips.

[Daniel A]

If the dust and dirt on my CDs causes read errors when ripping, why don't I have similar audible problems when I play the CDs on a CD player?

A CD player and a computer CD-ROM driver work somewhat differently. While the CD player has built-in error correction, the computer drive has to take help of the ripping software, which sometimes has no other choice than re-reading the data several times, often with dubious results. It's all up to the combination of software, CD-ROM drive and the CD itself. The EAC software has a setting which is calles "burst mode". For hopeless cases it can be a last solution. The drive is forced to continue, how erroneous the data stream may seem. Sometimes the disruption in the stream is small enough not to be heard.

Is there any way to optimize speed without sacrificing too much accuracy? The first CD took about a half hour. At that rate it'll take forever to rip all my discs.

It takes some processing to compress audio without too much loss of quality. Quicker compression unfortunately often equals worse results. There are completely different compression formats (like MPC) which because the way they are designed both gives bette quality per bit, and work much faster. However, hardware support is mostly nonexistent, even though the OGG format looked like it might break through for a while.

[White Lightning]

Try This URL for all things MPC, inc. encoder, decoder and Winamp Plugin.

[jazzman4133]

There's two separate stages: ripping the CD into a WAV file, and compressing ('encoding') that WAV file into an MP3.

Epithet.......If you rip to wav. why convert to mp3 if the CD you are burning is going to be played in a home player? Why not leave it as a wav. and copy it that way?

Edited February 27, 2005 by jazzman4133

[Epithet]

There's two separate stages: ripping the CD into a WAV file, and compressing ('encoding') that WAV file into an MP3.

Epithet.......If you rip to wav. why convert to mp3 if the CD you are burning is going to be played in a home player? Why not leave it as a wav. and copy it that way?

Because it's not going to be played with a CD player?

Encoding using a constant bitrate will improve the speed, right?

Daniel A: if one encodes at 320kbps CBR joint-stereo, what would be the equivalent for mono?

[Daniel A]

Encoding using a constant bitrate will improve the speed, right?

Yes, it will. As long as you're happy with the results, that's one way to go. But I recommend anyone who's about to do large scale MP3ing to do some A/B testing before the final settings are decided upon.

Daniel A: if one encodes at 320kbps CBR joint-stereo, what would be the equivalent for mono?

I think the issue I mentioned gets less important with higher bitrates. I'm only using VBR, but if would be pressed to come up with a mono equivalent for 320 kbps joint stereo, I'd say 160 kbps mono anyway. 192 kbps mono would in my opinion be overkill, especially since mono recordings typically are not as demanding (older recordings - more limited acoustical bandwidth).

I would still say 80 kbps CBR mono as alternative to 128 kbps CBR stereo, though.

Another thing on mono encoding: while an album may indicate "Mono" in the liners, sometimes the two channels are not identical. I have not encountered this myself, but others have (presumably this is more common for non-jazz recordings, which were more often still done in mono in the 60s). The album may be mastered with different EQ between the channels, and downmixing to mono during encoding might give strange (and bad-sounding) results. In these cases plain joint stereo would be the best bet. But as I said, this problem does not seem very common for jazz recordings.

When encoding mono LPs, using one of the channels (I suppose most of you have got stereo turntables) would give the best results. Check both channels separately and choose the best one.

[Big Wheel]

Arggghhh....I'm trying to rip Jessica Williams's Live at Maybeck disc right now and it's taking FOREVER with EAC--about an hour per track. At this rate I'll burn out my notebook's CD drive before long. Has anyone experimented with higher speeds and tested for quality? Or should I just suck it up and clean the disc as best I can before copying?

[AfricaBrass]

Arggghhh....I'm trying to rip Jessica Williams's Live at Maybeck disc right now and it's taking FOREVER with EAC--about an hour per track. At this rate I'll burn out my notebook's CD drive before long. Has anyone experimented with higher speeds and tested for quality? Or should I just suck it up and clean the disc as best I can before copying?

If I was in your situation, I'd just rip THAT DISC with some other software. I'd also be afraid of burning out your drive. If I run across a disc that's not in the best condition, that's what I'm going to do. I'll just rip it at a high quality VBR.

Since I'm on a notebook also, I purchased a separate external CD drive so I wouldn't burn out the one on my laptop. I knew I was going to be ripping a few thousand CDs, so I bought the drive.

[Big Wheel]

Since I'm on a notebook also, I purchased a separate external CD drive so I wouldn't burn out the one on my laptop. I knew I was going to be ripping a few thousand CDs, so I bought the drive.

That thought just occurred to me also. How much did yours run you?

Fortunately, EAC has a "cool down drive" feature, so I've set it to cool down for 15 minutes after every hour of ripping. But it's still an awful amount of use for the drive.

Edited February 28, 2005 by Big Wheel

[AfricaBrass]

Since I'm on a notebook also, I purchased a separate external CD drive so I wouldn't burn out the one on my laptop. I knew I was going to be ripping a few thousand CDs, so I bought the drive.

That thought just occurred to me also. How much did yours run you?

Fortunately, EAC has a "cool down drive" feature, so I've set it to cool down for 15 minutes after every hour of ripping. But it's still an awful amount of use for the drive.

I paid around $70 for a CD burner drive. I couldn't find any that only played CD ROMs; only burners. It's worked fine for me so far. I figure I've ripped about 1000 CDs in the last couple of months.

[Daniel A]

Arggghhh....I'm trying to rip Jessica Williams's Live at Maybeck disc right now and it's taking FOREVER with EAC--about an hour per track.  At this rate I'll burn out my notebook's CD drive before long.  Has anyone experimented with higher speeds and tested for quality? Or should I just suck it up and clean the disc as best I can before copying?

If it's only that disc which is causing problems, try the extraction method called "Burst mode". Go to the menu EAC, choose Extraction Method and then select"Burst mode". Because this will just let the drive rip at maximum speed you'll perhaps want to limit the maximum extraction speed somewhat. Go to EAC>Offet/Speed and change "Speed selection" to, say, 8.0 X.

This will speed up the general extaction, while sometimes producing OK results, if scratches are not major. Because this disables the error correction, be sure to turn back to "Secure mode" after having finished the problematic disc, though. While it may seem tempting, I wouldn't set Burst mode as default, because then you'll perhaps end up with click sounds here and there, and will have to re-rip everything.

When restoring the Secure mode, also be sure change "Speed selection" back to top speed again.

Edited February 28, 2005 by Daniel A