High Priority Questions: [Planning to buy program in the future instead of using cracks]
[1] What's the absolute BEST [Highest Quality] CD Ripping program?
A. I'd like to know what you guys/girls nominate for best program.
B. I'd like to know whether I should use EAC or dBpoweramp
Either will be fine and in fact you can use any program to rip. Despite all the hype, EAC will produce a result that is absolutely identical to everything else.
[2] What's the absolute BEST [Highest Quality] encoder for MP3 320-Kbps-CBR, Lame or FhG?
A. I know a lot of expert audiophiles choose Lame, but I thought FhG was the codec the original mp3 developers use.
B. What is so bad about FhG?
The Fraunhoffer encoder is the first and created by the inventors of the MP3 format. An encoder makes a tradeoff between time resolution and frequency resolution and only LAME let's you vary those choices via command line switches. So use either one - it will be next to impossible in most cases to tell any difference between the two.
[3] What's the absolute BEST [Highest Quality] Lossless to 320-CBR encoding program?
See above.
I use Sound Forge for everything - rip, encoding, editing.
[4] Does dBpoweramp's multicore encoding degrade the "higher" quality of mp3?
If that means it uses multiple threads on multiple processors, then No - it will just be slightly faster.
[5] Does slow computer speed interrupt the encoding of a Flac into mp3 like a scratched CD or an earthquake does during the CD Ripping process?
By the way, my mp3's skip during playback but that's because the computer is a Vista memory hog, but not because it was ripped with a skip.
If you are encoding to FLAC on the fly (as in real-time as the bits are read off a disc) then any interruption can potentially cause a drop out. If you are encoding after the fact, then no.
[6] Is there a quality difference between m4a, flac, wav, and ape format?
m4a is a lossy compression scheme. WAV is uncompressed PCM samples. FLAC and APE are lossles encoding schemes that just reduce the size of the file - an ape or flac will be identical to the WAV after decoding.
[7] How do you rip a vinyl record?
You don't 'rip' vinyl. You have to 'record' it. You play it on your turntable and pipe the signal into a sound card on your computer and the sound card, in conjunction with whatever audio editor you are using, converts the analog to digital and saves the result as a WAV. Some programs will do the encoding to another format like MP3 or FLAC on the fly but it is far better to save the raw recording in WAV then edit it as necessary before converting to another format.
[8] I know a vinyl recreate sounds that digital doesn't duplicate as well as a vinyl record but doesn't a vinyl record have those annoying/inevitable mechanical/vinyl sounds?
[9] Doesn't that mean degraded quality?
[10] Are you sure vinyl records are better than digital?
Vinyl vs digital is a personal preference. Some people prefer the 'warmth' (inaccuracy) of vinyl but it is not superior to digital in any way...and yes you will encounter clicks and pops that are hard to clean up but some people just prefer that sound.
