\/\/illy Posted April 27, 2003 Report Share Posted April 27, 2003 Has anyone else considered or actually spent to time to convert their CD collection entirely to files? I did this once years ago and converted most of my collection to MP3's. However, I have a pretty discerning ear and I find the quality leaves much to be desired. I've considered doing this again and wondered if anyone else had and what file formats they had considered/used. .SHN isn't bad and I can play them with the SHNAmp add-on for WinAmp but I'm thinking about something like .OOG. Any input? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tungsten Gruvsten Posted April 27, 2003 Report Share Posted April 27, 2003 what mp3 rate and codec did you use? There is a difference in the sound of the various codecs as well as the quality involved with higher bit-rates....the higher the bit-rate the greater the upper-end as well(e.g. 128kbps cuts off around 14kHz) Anyways, find the Radium sourced codec, or the Fraunhaufer one. Use high quality VBR or at least 192kbps...you'll never know the difference.... still the best option in my mind...i'm just too lazy to do my whole collection and add it to the multitude of mp3's already on the ol' HD... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
secondtube Posted April 27, 2003 Report Share Posted April 27, 2003 quote:Anyways, find the Radium sourced codec, or the Fraunhaufer one. Use high quality VBR or at least 192kbps...you'll never know the difference.... Tungsten, give me at quality set of speakers (like my Klipsch) and mp3's (no matter what the codec and bitrate) and i'll tell ya the wav file from the mp3 file every time. Trust me, i did this last year with a kid from my computer class that was all over mp3's. He still couldn't tell the difference, and thought i was cheating.... If you have an ear for music, you can always tell lossy formats, especially if they are coming from a live source where the levels are not as strong.... Will, i convert cd's to shns all the time to listen to them on my computer. Rather than using the CD rom, which adds noice (which is definately audible), i convert them to shn and listen in that format. What i CANT tell is whether the file is in wav format or shn format while listening to them. They are the exact same. I also saw the amount of cd's you have, it doesn't take long to rip them to wav using MKW, but damn does it take a long time to transfer them to shn. Especially if you use your comp while transfering for other things. You will screw up the shn transfer. Even if its a p4. Best bet. Buy a usb 2.0 cd rom drive, and play your cd's from there. You wont add as much noice as running from the PCI slot... I've rambled enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tungsten Gruvsten Posted April 27, 2003 Report Share Posted April 27, 2003 I've got lots of stuff I could fool you with on double blind tests, from every style of music. I will lay this challenge down to anyone on the planet who thinks they have 'golden ears'. In fact, you pick the music, i'll encode it and i'll play you back both versions without you knowing which is which. And I am willing to take wagers on this I've tried this with test with my teacher and mentor(who spent 10 years at Peter Gabriel's Real World studios) through Benchmark DA's and Dynaudio/Westlake/Urei speaker sets that cost more than any house you or I will ever own-and that was 3 years ago. The current batch of LAME encoders have the most accurate VBR encoding available. Although i'm not in favour of mp3's-i'd much rather hear uncompressed material of course, it's a much maligned codec due to people not understanding how to properly encode and not knowing there are different codecs. I mean rip something at 64-128kbps and we can all have a chuckle over how poor it sounds, but over 192 and the obvious bandwidth limiting has dissappeared beyond the range of human hearing. It's the same as the difference between a high quality jpeg and a low quality jpeg-I challenge anyone to tell the difference (without zooming in to the pixel level) between a high quality .jpg and an uncompressed photoshop document. It's all in the codec and the bitrate. If something was recorded digitally(ie DAT)from a live source and it has low levels, then it already has a problem-not all 16 bits were used at the initial analog-to-digital recording stage. If it's 6dB down from full scale, it is 12 bits...lower down it hits 8 bits....This results in graininess and reduced clarity. Do all you want to it later, compress, limit- doesn't matter, you are still working with a reduced range signal. I taught digital theory for a year at Recording Arts Canada, I have tons of notes, documents, links etc as reference if you would like to see any of it. I'll lay down the same challenge to anyone who thinks they can hear the difference between 44.1kHz sampling rates and 48kHz. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tungsten Gruvsten Posted April 27, 2003 Report Share Posted April 27, 2003 quote: What i CANT tell is whether the file is in wav format or shn format while listening to them. They are the exact same. This doesn't apply as all the SHNamp plugin does is convert the SHN file to WAV on the fly so you can listen. There actually is no physical difference upon playback. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
secondtube Posted April 27, 2003 Report Share Posted April 27, 2003 i guess that is why i CAN'T tell the difference with the shnAmp plugin...because there is no difference... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
show---whore Posted April 27, 2003 Report Share Posted April 27, 2003 I've been using a new format called flac. FLAC files are a little smaller then shn and the encoding/decoding is alot fast then shn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
secondtube Posted April 27, 2003 Report Share Posted April 27, 2003 flac is great. you can also add track titles to the files, so your not see gd1994-04-15, but grateful dead, then the song title. finally, you can't NOT append the skt file, so you can always skip into the track.... Flac is great...also you can compress 24 bit data, not just 16 bit, like shn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shainhouse Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 I recommend FLAC. Karl raves about them;. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tungsten Gruvsten Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Realistically though, with a compression of 1/3, what's the point in either FLAC or SHN? Willy is talking about doing his whole CD collection, even with a small collection that's gonna take mucho gig-o's... 100 cd's x 600MB each = 60GB with SHN or FLAC that's around 40GB....and that's only 100 CD's. High VBR mp3's would allow 400-600 albums to take up the same amount of space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bradm Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 quote:Originally posted by \/\/illy: something like .OOG. Any input?Do you mean "OGG"? From the website: "Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source." It seems really popular in the geek commuity, as it's an open-source alternative to MP3 (which has a patented codec, IIRC). As near as I can tell, it's lossy like MP3, but (from the FAQ: quote: I'm a music fan. Why should I be interested? Because Vorbis provides a high-quality format for you to listen to your music. For a given file size, Vorbis sounds better than MP3. This means: - You can keep your music collection at about the same quality level, but it'll take up less space -or you can have your music collection take up about the same amount of space, but have it sound better.Vorbis already enjoys widespread player support and work is underway to play Vorbis files on portable hardware.I believe WinAmp supports it (either as part of the install or as a downloadable extension like ShnAmp). Aloha, Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
headygouda Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Always avoid lossy digital formats like mp3/MD's! As far as 'archival/bkup' purposes go, you'd much rather spend your time & money backing up your favorite shows in SHN or FLAC, simply because you don't listen to these formats on the road in your discman & such. And when/if you ever jump into the DVD format, you can just dump all the SHNs for one show (and more) onto a single DVD. I think for 16bit files, SHN is adequate. Flac is only really necessary for 24bit recordings, the extra compression vs SHN is minimal, maybe 25 megs on 1 show... One thing I don't like about FLAC is that since there is no .md5 file, you don't know if you d/l'd ALL the files or not...although a quick glance at the setlist/info file should give you an idea! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tungsten Gruvsten Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 -sigh- uh. yeah. but he's simply putting his already existing CD collection on his computer. The backup is the original CD. This is a matter of convenience, not of purism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bradm Posted April 28, 2003 Report Share Posted April 28, 2003 Actually, if you go with MP3, and happen to have an AK-47 lying around, you might want to look into this... Aloha, Brad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
\/\/illy Posted April 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 29, 2003 Wow, thanks for all the great input. The reason that I'm thinking about converting my whole collection is for portability. Moving around 700 cd's or whatever the hell I have is a major pain in the ass. I've can get two 60GB drives into a laptop (probably more by now) and hopefully carry my entire collection with me. Having the entire collection on a computer would also free up shelf space in my living room and prevent disks from "growing legs and walking away" at after-parties (which I like to have). I've been using the VBR setting of MusicMatch to encode MP3's. I haven't done the listen test yet (I have really nice Paradigm Monitor series speakers) but I have been thinking that I should. Incidentally, a friend of mine who has a PhD is Music and is now a professor at MAC was telling me that it has now been proven that sounds "beyond the range of most people's hearing" actually affect the "feel" of the sounds within their hearing range. In other words, if a tone exists a such a high frequency that you can't hear it on it's own, it doesn't mean that it won't affect the way other tones played simultaneously sound to you. .SHN's are beautiful but they do seen too large. I'd need so many GB's of disk space that I'd need to build a server and a disk array into my VW (where I want to be able to bring all my music). That's just not a practical idea. That's why I was thinking vorbis. It sounds like it's pretty cool. Since I can do my job from a laptop, having all my music on a laptop means that I can grab my guitar, and my laptop, and climb into my VW and disappear into the unknown with everything that I need close at hand. (With the exception of a beautiful soul to share it with). So, the debate continues in my mind... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
secondtube Posted April 29, 2003 Report Share Posted April 29, 2003 quote: Since I can do my job from a laptop, having all my music on a laptop means that I can grab my guitar, and my laptop, and climb into my VW and disappear into the unknown with everything that I need close at hand. Rough Life How much networking can you possibly do from a laptop? Or do u do programming as well? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irie Guy Posted April 29, 2003 Report Share Posted April 29, 2003 Why not get yourself one of the new 30gb iPods. Apple is claiming to use some new aac compression format which is smaller than MP3 but has greater fidelity. The new iPods come complete with a docking station with line outs to connect directly into your stereo. The 30gb holds up to 7500 songs that would be close to 600 CDs worth. Looks like fun to me too bad I don't have $800 laying around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tungsten Gruvsten Posted April 29, 2003 Report Share Posted April 29, 2003 Hey willy- Just don't use Music Match for encoding-use EAC as it lets you choose the codec you wish to use....get the new LAME codec here: http://home.pi.be/~mk442837/ ...use 192 CBR or high VBR on a couple CD's and test them out on yer paradigm's.... Also for portability-USB drives...plug and play, and you can put any size drive you want in the enclosure....plug it in at home, into the laptop, take your entire CD collection over to a friends without worrying about him/her stepping on the cases or spilling beer on the covers... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
\/\/illy Posted April 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 29, 2003 Hey Tungsten, just one question about all this. Is the process basically: Drop in an audio CD; Use EAC to extract the tracks to .WAV; Use LAME to encode the .WAV into .MP3; Play and enjoy! Is that right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tungsten Gruvsten Posted April 29, 2003 Report Share Posted April 29, 2003 oh it's not that hard at all-you can do it on the fly in EAC. download the lame codec-i think you'll get an .exe file out of it on your computer-remember where it is or put it somewhere related to EAC. Open EAC, press F11 for Compression options. Under 'External Compression' check "Use external program for compression" and browse till you find the LAME.exe file. Now at the bottom of that same setup tab you'll see the ripping options for the mp3's....try 192kbps high quality. That command line thing...hmmm i didn't enter this but this is what mine says: %l--alt-preset 128%l%h--alt-preset standard%h %s ...i think that showed up when i found the lame file... to grab the files and auto convert to mp3 highlight whatever you wanna grab and hit SHIFT-F5 -then it's all done for ya. There are other options in EAC to create a directory using the artist and album name, use that stuff to your advantage(as well as freedb for the lookup services) and you shouldn't have to do anything besides flip discs every 5-10 mins....so at 700 CD's thats..a long time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Weirdness Posted April 29, 2003 Report Share Posted April 29, 2003 In the future, you will have a port in your skull that will allow the transferral of all music, your brain acting as a player for this information. Apparently they are working on it at MIT, should be out in the next year or so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
headygouda Posted April 30, 2003 Report Share Posted April 30, 2003 Hmm...sure sounds like the matrix to me. Are you giving away deep dark secrets to the sequel?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
\/\/illy Posted April 30, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 30, 2003 Okay, it looks like that's the case so, could I bother you for a recommended command line with LAME? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
\/\/illy Posted May 1, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 1, 2003 Okay, I'm going to sit down and do a test with a friend of mine this weekend. I've been ripping a coupld of CD's using LAME which leads me to the question: If there was one album or song that you would expect to be able to identify the difference in, what would it be? Presumably something very high fidelity. Any suggestions? So far I've ripped some 'Dead and some 'Floyd. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
secondtube Posted May 1, 2003 Report Share Posted May 1, 2003 something with highs and lows. check for clear crisp bass, not muddy sounding...and for the highs, check for the 'fullness' of the high, not tinny sounding... should be interesting... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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