AVR-4306 Ethernet question: how to generate the best sounding .mp3/.wav files?

B

Bernard L

Audioholic Intern
Dear all,

My new Denon AVR-4306 based system is progressing fast, and getting to sound real nice.

I have managed to set up the file server function last night and can now serve music files from my laptop to the Receiver through my LAN.

The question is, what is the best software to generate files from my CDs/SACDs so that the sound quality doesn't suffer too much when serving files compared to what I get when reading the CDs/SACDs with my Denon DVD-3910 player?

- what software should I use?
- what format should I rip the files to (.mp2, .wav?...),
- what parameters should I use?

thank you in advance,

Best regards,
Bernard
 
M

MDS

Audioholic Spartan
The most common response will be Exact Audio Copy (EAC) to rip and LAME (Lame Ain't an MP3 Encoder) to encode the files to mp3. Take it from someone that has over 10 years of experience with digital audio editors and lossy compression formats - EAC is no different than any other program that can rip the digital audio from a CD and LAME is a fine encoder but will not generate files substantially different than any other encoder. EAC generates the EXACT SAME rip as Sound Forge, which I use for everything. You will be hard pressed to tell the difference betweeen the most popular mp3 encoder (Fraunhoffer) used by digital audio editors like Sound Forge or audio players like WinAmp or Windows Media player and LAME.

Pick one and go with it. If you really care about archiving your music collection and may ever have the need to edit and/or transcode to lossy formats other than mp3, save the WAV files on a huge external hard drive. You can then transcode to any lossy compression format you wish without re-ripping the CD.

MP3 is very long in the tooth but is still the most widely supported compression format. I would choose MP3 or WMA for a compression format.
 
B

Bernard L

Audioholic Intern
Thanks a lot for this insightful feedback.

I'll check them out!

Cheers,
Bernard
 
bryantm3

bryantm3

Audioholic
what i think MDS was assuming that you already know, but you might not, is that mp3 is a lossy format, meaning it takes away half the music, ie: takes off all frequencies above a certain amount, and lowers the sampling rate, so if you're sensitive to sound, it'll always sound more muddled than the CD. you can always do a CD vs. mp3 comparison: convert the CD to WAV with EAC of something like that, and keep the WAV file. then, convert the WAV file to mp3. now burn both of those files (the WAV and the MP3) onto an audio disc. you can really hear the difference.
 
B

Bernard L

Audioholic Intern
Hello Bryan,

Thanks a lot for the explanations. I had gathered that the .mp3 was sort of the jpg of audio, but additional explanations are always most welcome.

I guess that the best plan then is to buy a large network RAID 5 HD, and to put thousands of .wav files on it... that's probably what I will do... if I can negociate the cost with my girlfriend. :)

Cheers,
Bernard
 
jcPanny

jcPanny

Audioholic Ninja
Digital audio formats

Bernard,
If you encode your CDs in a lossless format like FLAC, they will be the same CD quality as a WAV file but take roughly half the hard disk space. Check the Denon software first and make sure it can process FLAC before you start ripping your CDs.
 
Hi Ho

Hi Ho

Audioholic Samurai
My choice for ripping is WMA. I cannot tell the difference between the original CD and 192k WMA at all. In a blind test, I'll be most people couldn't. I can hear an audible difference with MP3. With MP3 at the same bit rate, the highs are obviously rolled off and cymbals sound artificial.
 
B

Bernard L

Audioholic Intern
Thank you for the additional feedback.

Cheers,
Bernard
 
B

Bernard L

Audioholic Intern
Dear all,

Some more rookie questions...

I downloaded eac and tried it against a CD, but the files on the .cd are .cda and eac cannot seem to recognize them.

What is the trick?

Thanks,

Cheers,
Bernard
 
M

MDS

Audioholic Spartan
Each track of a CD will appear as a file with a .cda extension if you view them as data in Windows Explorer (or simply do dir d: from a command prompt). Before you can extract a track as audio data, the program must actually read the CD. I haven't used EAC in years so don't recall exactly, but there must be a menu option or something for 'import' or 'extract audio from CD' which would then allow you to select which tracks to import.
 
astrodon

astrodon

Audioholic
Bernard L said:
Dear all,

My new Denon AVR-4306 based system is progressing fast, and getting to sound real nice.

I have managed to set up the file server function last night and can now serve music files from my laptop to the Receiver through my LAN.

The question is, what is the best software to generate files from my CDs/SACDs so that the sound quality doesn't suffer too much when serving files compared to what I get when reading the CDs/SACDs with my Denon DVD-3910 player?

- what software should I use?
- what format should I rip the files to (.mp2, .wav?...),
- what parameters should I use?

thank you in advance,

Best regards,
Bernard
By the way, I don't think it is possible to make copies of SACDs, unless you're copying the CD layer on a hybrid SACD or making the copy through analog lines (that is, using RCA terminated cables and not digital cables such as Denon Link III). At least it used to be that way. Perhaps Sony has relaxed their pirating paranoia since they seem to be letting this fantastic format die. However if you try and are unsuccessful with an SACD transfer, at least you'll know the reason why.
 
D

douglask

Audiophyte
Best PC Sound through the AVR-4306

You will need to save all CDs to the ONLY LOSSLESS FORMAT that the AVR-4306 can recieve, which is WAV (the other file formats the AVR can recieve are lossy MP3 or WMA. While there exists a WMA file format that is NOT lossy, the AVR can not accept this specific format).

I have set up a LAN with a router that transfers the data from my PC to the AVR via Ethernet. I save the files to my hard disk as WAV files, by either Windows Media Player version 11 (beta) or convert them with the program dBPower AMP Music Converter (see link below).

C:\Program Files\Illustrate\dBpowerAMP\Help\dMC\index.html

This yields very good sound!

I have compared this to an old Sony 200 disc changer that is running through a Digital Lens (a discontinued product that upconverts the 16 bit stream to 20 bits & provides time correction- virtually elimnating jitter). The WAV file via Ethernet does not sound as good as that through the Digital Lens, but it comes pretty darn close to it!
 

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