More questions....ripping to WAV

[modman]

I want to convert my 1300+ CD collection to WAV. Lots of good advice from this forum last week (thanks, folks). I have located a cost-effective desktop that will sit beside my rack...it has 1TB and a 7500-rpm DVD-RW drive.

So here are two questions:

1. Is there really a big difference between Windows Media Player and Exact Audio Copy, with regard to what I want to do?

2. Can I set up the process to rip the disks simultaneously to two 1TB hard drives?

Thanks

 

[jinjuku]

I want to convert my 1300+ CD collection to WAV. Lots of good advice from this forum last week (thanks, folks). I have located a cost-effective desktop that will sit beside my rack...it has 1TB and a 7500-rpm DVD-RW drive.

So here are two questions:

1. Is there really a big difference between Windows Media Player and Exact Audio Copy, with regard to what I want to do?

2. Can I set up the process to rip the disks simultaneously to two 1TB hard drives?

Thanks

1. If you are doing a bit perfect rip then no.

2. You would need a computer that supports RAID 1 (disk mirroring) after you are finished you could simply break the mirror.

 

[modman]

I've heard of RAID1....but how does it work? How can I tell if it is on the computer I'm planning to buy? Thanks

 

[jonnythan]

Ripping to WAV is ridiculous. Rip to FLAC or at least WMA Lossless.

 

[its phillip]

I haven't ever tried ripping with WMP, but EAC offers a secure ripping option along with crc checking, which is what I like.

And I would recommend compressing to flac instead of going with wav of course.

 

[sholling]

My advice is to take a step back and think this through. You don't want to be doing this twice.

1. Ripping to WAV wastes space for no gain in quality and tagging support is not universal. You're just creating a headaches for yourself by going with WAV. FLAC is just as accurate, takes up less space, and fully supports tags.
2. Think through your file system before trying to rip 1300 discs. I use Drive:\artist name\album\. For example e:\Music\Diana Krall\Quiet Nights\
3. Think through your naming convention. Some use track-number\song-title, others use artist\album\track-number\song-title. It's important because the entire path is limited to 256 characters.
4. Have a backup scheme in place. You don't want to be half way though when a drive dies.

I would use dbPoweramp Reference ($38). It's fast and accurate. It also allows you to setup a default filing system and naming convention. Once you do that it automatically tags and files the songs to your specification with each rip. Ripping is fast and all you do is feed it discs. There is a 21 day trial and you'll have to add the free FLAC codec. After you finish you'll also be able to run the included batch converter on the original rips to make an additional copy in whatever format your MP3 player or iPod likes and it will file those anyway you want. For example e:\MP3\Diana Krall\Quiet Nights.

 

[avnetguy]

Ripping to WAV is ridiculous. Rip to FLAC or at least WMA Lossless.

I think ridiculous is a bit harsh. Though FLAC is "fashionable" it isn't the end all be all (not yet anyways) format. Ripping to WAV (PCM) does give you maximum compatability albeit at the cost of disk space which is very cheap. The cost of a 2TB drive is what, $20-30 bucks more than a 1TB for double the storage, not really a deal breaker IMO.

You can always convert from WAV to FLAC and back again without any troubles, it's just the time it takes to do it. If ALL of your devices support FLAC then why not but otherwise WAV isn't a bad option.

Steve

 

[modman]

My advice is to take a step back and think this through. You don't want to be doing this twice.

1. Ripping to WAV wastes space for no gain in quality and tagging support is not universal. You're just creating a headaches for yourself by going with WAV. FLAC is just as accurate, takes up less space, and fully supports tags.
2. Think through your file system before trying to rip 1300 discs. I use Drive:\artist name\album\. For example e:\Music\Diana Krall\Quiet Nights\
3. Think through your naming convention. Some use track-number\song-title, others use artist\album\track-number\song-title. It's important because the entire path is limited to 256 characters.
4. Have a backup scheme in place. You don't want to be half way though when a drive dies.

I would use dbPoweramp Reference ($38). It's fast and accurate. It also allows you to setup a default filing system and naming convention. Once you do that it automatically tags and files the songs to your specification with each rip. Ripping is fast and all you do is feed it discs. There is a 21 day trial and you'll have to add the free FLAC codec. After you finish you'll also be able to run the included batch converter on the original rips to make an additional copy in whatever format your MP3 player or iPod likes and it will file those anyway you want. For example e:\MP3\Diana Krall\Quiet Nights.

It seems that the "WAV vs FLAC" issue is one of the great points of audio debate now.

I take it that any of the proposed rippers (Windows Media Player, EAC, dbPoweramp) have access to a database to get album art, artist/album/track info?

In addition to the standard info, do these programs let me add personal category tags (e.g. "sunday morning" or "high nrg" or "old skool")?

Thanks

 

[jonnythan]

Yeah, they can automatically retrieve album info and let you add tags.

I said WAV is ridiculous because there's no real tagging format and it's a waste of space.

 

[jinjuku]

My advice is to take a step back and think this through. You don't want to be doing this twice.

1. Ripping to WAV wastes space for no gain in quality and tagging support is not universal. You're just creating a headaches for yourself by going with WAV. FLAC is just as accurate, takes up less space, and fully supports tags.

1. 
   
   Wav's have tag support
   
   

   [*]Think through your file system before trying to rip 1300 discs. I use Drive:\artist name\album\. For example e:\Music\Diana Krall\Quiet Nights\
   [*]Think through your naming convention. Some use track-number\song-title, others use artist\album\track-number\song-title. It's important because the entire path is limited to 256 characters.

   WMP creates the needed path automatically

 

[jinjuku]

I think ridiculous is a bit harsh. Though FLAC is "fashionable" it isn't the end all be all (not yet anyways) format. Ripping to WAV (PCM) does give you maximum compatability albeit at the cost of disk space which is very cheap. The cost of a 2TB drive is what, $20-30 bucks more than a 1TB for double the storage, not really a deal breaker IMO.

You can always convert from WAV to FLAC and back again without any troubles, it's just the time it takes to do it. If ALL of your devices support FLAC then why not but otherwise WAV isn't a bad option.

Steve

That is exactly my point. You can take the full blown wav and transcode to any other format you need out there. It's simply an issue of flexibility. Either format gets the job done. It's simply a trade off of feature sets. I like the feature set that gives me the most compatibility and the ability to transcode into another format easily.

The 'save' space argument is a bit of a red herring. I still have yet to see a reasonable argument made for the space issue with 2TB drives now available for $60. Trust me I get the Newegg newsletter everyday

 

[its phillip]

I guess it depends on how much data you have. My music folder on my WHS box is 2.2 TB (I think ~1.4TB is flac) and I have it duplicated so that's another 2.2TB. If they were all in wav, it would be considerably larger.

 

[jinjuku]

I guess it depends on how much data you have. My music folder on my WHS box is 2.2 TB (I think ~1.4TB is flac) and I have it duplicated so that's another 2.2TB. If they were all in wav, it would be considerably larger.

Then your scenario calls for FLAC...

 

[jonnythan]

That is exactly my point. You can take the full blown wav and transcode to any other format you need out there. It's simply an issue of flexibility. Either format gets the job done. It's simply a trade off of feature sets. I like the feature set that gives me the most compatibility and the ability to transcode into another format easily.

The 'save' space argument is a bit of a red herring. I still have yet to see a reasonable argument made for the space issue with 2TB drives now available for $60. Trust me I get the Newegg newsletter everyday

Transcoding from FLAC to any other format is as trivial as from WAV.

 

[bikemig]

Lossless is lossless and you can go back and forth between the various formats without losing any information. sholling had it right; think this through carefully so you don't need to it twice. I did it wrong the first time (I used the default setting in itunes which is 128 kbps MP3 I believe) and it was a pain to rip all my CDs a 2d time.

 

[sholling]

Wav's have tag support

They have kludgy tag support. There is simply no advantage to WAV. There hasn't been since FLAC became popular and you can buy FLACs directly and you can transcode FLACs to anything you like - they're lossless just like WAV. Sorry but WAV is ancient tech now.

 

[GoFastr]

In addition to the standard info, do these programs let me add personal category tags (e.g. "sunday morning" or "high nrg" or "old skool")?

Thanks

I would create "Playlists" for those personal type tags. You can just drag and drop songs/albums into various named playlists once you've got all your rmusic ripped. Then as you add more music you can add to your existing playlists or create new ones too.

From what I've experienced, if ALL of your music is coming from store bought cd's that you are ripping yourself then your music library/folders have a better chance of following some type of orderly fashion with Artist Name-Album Name-Track-etc. Trying to keep this orderly over several years is very hard to do. I get music given to me from friends on various cd's of music that they have burned themselves and it's not always in the same format. Some people don't even bother to get all the info and it comes out with no artist, no album and as track01, track02, etc. After painful attempts at trying to keep the music library pristine, I gave up and just use playlists to organize everything now. I know it sounds like a cop out but trust me, it will be a full time job trying to keep up with it once you get started collecting music electronically.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Yeah, WAV is like LPCM and FLAC is like Dolby TrueHD & DTS-HD MA.

Same quality, much less space, so why waste space?

It's like wasting money.

 

[avnetguy]

There is simply no advantage to WAV.

What if you want to play the files on your PS3 or XBox360 ..... sorry, no flac support there.

Sounds like an advantage for WAV to me.

Steve

 

[sholling]

What if you want to play the files on your PS3 or XBox360 ..... sorry, no flac support there.

Sounds like an advantage for WAV to me.

Steve

Okay I'll give you the fact that Sony and Micro$oft stubborbly refuse to support the defacto standard. Sony wants to sell you CDs and M$ wants to rule the world. But I have no desire to use either as a music player. On the other hand I do like having 24bit music which is readily available as FLAC. Advantage FLAC.