Just to add to Andre's note, if you're archiving your collection to your computer ID3 tags are going to become very important to you. These are attributes held in certain file types that will tell you artist, album, track number, track title, genre and a few more things besides. With uncompressed WAV files you don't get ID3 tags so you will run into issues when you start looking for programs to catalogue your music and when you want to move your music to a portable player.
Using compressed lossless formats is the way to go. Although the file is compressed, the fact that it's lossless means that you do not lose any musical quality at all from the original CD. You saw that a WAV file would be ripped at 1411 kbps but typically, you will find that on average, only 1000 kbps is actually being used to hold the musical content. This is where lossless compression can save you disc space without compromising the quality of your music. I'd recommend WMA lossless as the format to go with, don't get confused with the digital rights management clap-trap that you may have heard, that only applies to music downloaded from the internet. If you rip from CD you won't have any issues with this whatsoever. I'd recommend media player to rip your CD's. Seems to me that the most powerful company in the world with the greatest resources is going to produce the best format, player and ripper and it's longevity is going to be guaranteed. Again, there'll be a few microsoft bashers that will disagree and state their dislike of WMA but lossless WMA is very different to lossy WMA which is obviously designed to get very small file sizes. Even having said that, lossy WMA is still superior to MP3 in my opinion as MP3 is a very old format now and has seen no improvements since it's introduction all those years ago. Regards. Kevin E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Original Message ----- From: "André van Deventer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'PC audio discussion list. '" <pc-audio@pc-audio.org> Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 7:20 AM Subject: RE: Ripping from CD - highest quality > Hi > > I use Windows Media Player with wma lossless. It's the simplest and plays > back with windows media player without any problems. Don't know about > winamp though. > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > On Behalf Of Reed Poynter > Sent: 24 January 2007 12:57 AM > To: 'PC audio discussion list. ' > Subject: Ripping from CD - highest quality > > Hello to the list, > > I would like to rip my cd's to my hard drive. In terms of the best sound > quality alone, Does it matter which software I use; Media Player, WinAmp > or > what ever else is out there? Or, put another way, how can I get the best > rip? > Media Player's highest quality (on my machine) seems to be: > Bit Rate 1411kbps, Audio sample size 16 bit, Channels 2 (stereo), Audio > sample rate 44 kHz, Audio format PCM. > Would this reflect the characteristics of the cd? If the cd had higher > numbers, would Media Player (or the others) recreate the same as the cd? > I > guess I need a quick lesson on this stuff. > > Thanks. > > Reed > > > > > Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... > http://www.pc-audio.org > > To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... > http://www.pc-audio.org > > To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Audio List Help, Guidelines, Archives and more... http://www.pc-audio.org To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
