What format should I rip my music CDs to?

[EJG1980]

Due to a huge slice of bad luck, I've lost my entire MP3 collection (MP3 player hard disk and my external backup hard disk both failed at the same time ) and am going to have to re-rip all my CDs... not a fun prospect but it's gotta be done!

In the past I just ripped everything to 256 kbps MP3 files, but now I've gotta re-rip everything I'm wondering if there's a better format I should rip to? WMA? Something else? Something compatible with streaming to the Xbox 360 is a must. Quality wise I was happy with 256 kps MP3 files, and they sounded good even when the volume was turned way up.

I also need a new portable MP3 player (had a Creative Zen Xtra 40GB before it kicked the bucket). Any recommendations for a new equivalent? Cheers in advance for any advice.

[gizmo1990]

I'm currently ripping my collection at 192kbps VBR using EAC. Strikes a good balance between quality and size I think. Plus I'm keeping the wavs as backups.

[EJG1980]

Actually, I was toying with the idea of getting one of those 320GB external hard disks from PC World for ?79.99 and storing WAVs on that. That'd hold... 600-700 or so CDs in WAV format? Then I wouldn't have to re-rip the original cds whenever a new file format comes out, just re-encode the original WAVS.

By the way, EAC is Exact Audio Copy, right? I used to use CDex to rip all my CDs in the past, is EAC much better?

[gizmo1990]

Heh, what you're thinking about I'm actually doing!
I'm copying all my wavs to a backup drive so I can store my cd collection away.

AFAIK, eac is the best audio ripper bar none, its been that way for years. I'd certainly give it a try if I was you.

[charlesr]

Use EAC with the FLAC plugin to rip your CDs as FLAC. This is an opensource lossless gapless codec and supported decent music streamers like the squeezebox. Since it's lossless like a zip file (but takes around half the space of wav files or less) you can recreate a CD from it if you need to. You can then rerip everything to mp3 or whatever. Music stores are also starting to offer FLAC files to download, so it's the lossless codec of choice.

The reason you use EAC is because it's a bit-by-bit ripper, so you are guaranteed an exact copy. It's much slower, but better.

[EJG1980]

Cheers for the advice, I've downloaded EAC and the FLAC plugin and I'll probably have a proper look at it at the weekend.

Any ideas for a good portable music player to get? I had a Creative Nomad Zen Xtra before, which I really liked despite the terrible Creative software that came with it. It was straightfoward, huge hard disk, good quality sound. All the newer music players these days don't seem to have very big hard disks, and those that do have loads of video and photo features that I don't really want.

Shame these expenses have to come up now, when spare money will soon be needed to pay for my 360 HD DVD player pre-order!

[charlesr]

Not sure about portables sorry.

If you want to listen to music in an office and they let you listen to streaming music, then set up slimserver (free) with the LAME encoder on your PC. This will encode your FLAC music to mp3 on the fly so it fits up your broadband pipe and let you listen to your entire CD collection wherever you are that has an internet connection, e.g. work, friends' houses, internet cafe, mobile phone etc.

[amorenod]

Really? Can't wait to try. Thanks a lot

[EJG1980]

Not sure about portables sorry.

If you want to listen to music in an office and they let you listen to streaming music, then set up slimserver (free) with the LAME encoder on your PC. This will encode your FLAC music to mp3 on the fly so it fits up your broadband pipe and let you listen to your entire CD collection wherever you are that has an internet connection, e.g. work, friends' houses, internet cafe, mobile phone etc.

No probs, I'll probably just end up getting a refurbished 60GB Creative Nomad Xtra, but I'll ditch the Creative software and use Notmad Explorer instead!

I actually work from a home office so I go for the highly technical route of having my music on a shared folder on my laptop upstairs which I then load straight into WinAmp on the office PC

Might have to have a go with the slimserver idea though, just for the fun of trying to get it to work!

[huxley]

Take a look at the Zen Vision M, just got one of these to replace my buggy ipod photo.
Plays back lots of file types inc avi and recorded media centre tv programmes.
?179 for the 30 gig at play.com

doesnt need any software as it works with windows media player or you can just drag and drop.

[charlesr]

Might have to have a go with the slimserver idea though, just for the fun of trying to get it to work!

Get a squeezebox3. You know you want to.

[kernow]

one thing to consider is VBR isnt fond of light battery usage, the CPU gets used more, so obviously so does the battery.

[charlesr]

Agreed on that. Constant bitrate all the way for mp3.

[EJG1980]

Get a squeezebox3. You know you want to.

Nooo, don't tempt me! Luckily I'll have time to look into all these different things at my leisure, what with the mammoth re-ripping and encoding task that awaits me. I'm gonna rip with EAC and encode to FLAC as my high quality backup. I'll probably stick with 256 kbps MP3 files for streaming to the 360 and loading onto whatever portable device I end up getting.

Take a look at the Zen Vision M, just got one of these to replace my buggy ipod photo.
Plays back lots of file types inc avi and recorded media centre tv programmes.
?179 for the 30 gig at play.com

doesnt need any software as it works with windows media player or you can just drag and drop.

Hmm, might take a look into that, although I'm a hard disk space whore so I'd probably wanna take a look at the 60GB version I much prefer the idea of drag and drop and not being tied into any proprietary playback software like Itunes (which is what's putting me off the otherwise lovely looking black 80GB Ipod Video).

[gizmo1990]

Hmm, I'll still stick with my vbr 192 kbps! Constant may use less juice but it's far inferior quality wise.

192 with vbr manages to keep files sizes down while giving me plenty of audio fidelity.