I am looking to completely digitalize my music collection. I have been ripping everything to mp3 via windows media player. Is there another type of file which is similar in size but is more lossless? If anyone has any suggestions please let me know. This is a huge undertaking and I am sure I will be having numerous other questions for the almighty obner.

ogg & flac are pretty good formats, but i've barely dabbled in each. file size is still huge with flac and neither are really widely-supported yet, flac probably never.

i rip everything as max-quality vbr mp3s via cdex.

good luck on the digitizing. i did the same about a year ago for about 1000cds-worth, minus about240-ish i already ripped onto mp3. takes a while...

Mp3 is the most ubiquitous

Make sure you use a good bitrate, though. The higher, the better.

Should I go with the absolute highest bit rate?

well, if youre gonna go with mp3, you need to go with lame, and forget about windows media player. since lame isnt really a program, youll need a lame front end, which just means a program that uses lame but takes all the command line stuff out of it, making it easier for the regular schmo. heres one, but its for windows, so i dont know how good it is, but as long as its a lame front end, youll be fine. if you really want to get technical, you can use exact audio copy, but thats for mainly advanced users. if you dont want to use mp3, you can use wma (windows media audio), aac (what itunes uses) or ogg (an open source encoder). wma and aac would be considered the next generation. they allow the same audio quality of mp3, but at lower bitrates, saving you hard drive space. theres really no right answer, but if hard drive space is at a premium, go with wma or aac. and if hard drive space really is a premium, dont even think about going lossless. lossless just means that you compress the file without losing any information, whereas mp3, wma or aac compress by getting rid of information. that means you dont lose any sound quality in the encoding process. you can use flac or shorten (shn), or, if you want to use itunes, apple lossless is also available. my experience with apple lossless is that it cuts it down to about a 1/3 of the memory, whereas mp3, wma, or aac can cut it down to about 1/10. hope this helps.

edit: heres some more mp3 help. lame settings can be found here. --alt-preset standard is the setting you probably want to use most often, which encodes it to between 180 to 220 kbps, although ive done it where its gotten down to about 160. take a look at the page, theres lots more information there.

This is going to be far more difficult than I had originally thought. This LAME thing is quite confusing.

I do everything in WMA Lossless and I'm quite pleased.

<---- stores everything pressed into thin discs of vinyl or shiny metal foil.

Bill,

What is that icon? It looks like He-Man if he got strung out on coke and then became a ringleader.

all right, tell you what. you tell me how many cds you want to store, and how much hard drive space you can spare for it, ill tell you what to do, and if you need it, how to do it. ok? i dont have anything to do this afternoon anyway, so i dont mind.

My WMP says I can create MP3s up to 320 kbps. I think I am going to use this method for ease of use. But I do not think I will use 320 b/c of size issues.

no, dont go that big. at that size your just wasting memory. you should probably be looking to make them between 160 and 192 kbps. you could probably get away with 128 kbps if you wanted though.

Probably the most fitting description ever--do an AMG search on The Sensational Alex Harvey Band.

Keep at it; it's worth it. Here is another link that may be able to simplify the process a bit.

yes, most definately. educate yourself a little bit, and you will reap the benifits when you finish and get to listen to it.

192 is the best compromise between sound quality and file size.

My mp3s are 192, and I can't tell the difference between them and the CD, at least on my equipment. But 128 sounds much poorer.

I just use the built-in ripper in Winamp5. If you use the free version, you can only rip to 128 bit... but for $20 you can have the full version, which can rip to just about any bitrate/codex you would want.

no, these are windows media audio files. you can skimp on them more than you can mp3s. if it were mp3s, id say no question, at least 192 (or alt preset standard in lame) and i cant stress enough people, if youre gonna go mp3, you gotta go with lame.

edit: hey post #100! finally.

He-Man on the Scott Weiland diet.

Sketch that link you posted shoudl be sticky noted. That shit at least got me part to where I could do what I wanted to do. Now I will work on understanding it.

Listening to these eac files and they are immaculate. HIGHLY RECCOMENDED TO ALL WHO HAVE USED OTHER RIPPERS IN THE PAST. THESE ALMOST SOUND BETTER THAN CDS.

Yay! Another convert. I <3 lame!

Glad to hear you like them, Pagoda! If you're interested in sharing, have a look at this.

Yeah I plan on using that ubernet once I get some stuff ripped. I just got to get an external hard drive to save all my new stuff on so it does not get mixed in with my old crappy mp3s

Obner is breaking me. So I went out at lunch and picked a 120 gb external hard drive. Also bought a disc doctor to fix my cds with scratch problems (oh misspent youth). Now I am working on figuring out the once again fairly confusing ubernet. Gotta go hom and get ripping. MUST LEAVE WORK!!!