Making the move to .ogg

Nadius

Established Member
I'm making the big move!

I want to convert my CDs to .ogg, and I've got a couple of questions:

What's an ogg bitrate comparable to an .mp3@192kbps ?

What ripper should I use to rip CD's? I'm currently using CD-DA X-tractor, but found that there's a clipping noise that starts off almost each song/file.

edit: I'm running XP, btw

I'd also appreciate any additional advice if you have any. Thanks.
 
Okay, after reading up a little, I think I might encode to FLAC, which i hear is lossless or MPC which I hear ain't too shabby at high bitrates. It'll probably be MPC.

Anyone have any preferences?

edit:flac not flak
 
I've heard good thing about Monkey Audio for lossless.

You can then convert easily to ogg or MP3 for lower sized stuff for players and such
 
Thanks for the help, guys.

here's what i'm settling with:

EAC to extract audio.

Musepack, using mppenc.exe at quality 5 to make .mpc audio files.

They sound rather good to me; you can really tell when you actually compare the files. I can't go back to making 160kb mp3s now, so this means I'm gonna have to get a bigger hard drive... I guess I'll sift through the "building teh computar" topics for recommendations.

Here are some links I refered to, in case anyone is interested:

Hydrogenaudio

Musepack

Exact Audio Copy

well that's all i can remember right now... time to rip some cds.
 
You'd be seriously hard pressed to tell an ogg @ 160K (quality 5)from the CD original. I encode all my CDs at this rate and I'm a picky bastard when it comes to audio. CDex is an easy way to encode + it'll do the CDDB track listing for you.
 
I got a question here in regard to CD ripping programs... why are they still so popular?

In the early days I tried a few of these and couldn't get any satisfactory results no matter what settings I tried. There'd always be glitches. Then, one day, I extracted some audio tracks through Easy CD Creator. It doesn't use any fancy tricks, just tells the CD drive "give me this track" and actually lets the drive worry about how to read it properly! And the rips turned out perfect.

Since then I've used nothing but ISObuster to extract audio tracks (which admittedly has the drawback of saving .wav files as "Track xx" all the time). On both my HP 8x4x32x and my Sony 48x12x48x drives, audio always rips perfectly, even from scratched CDs.

So I guess I just don't get it. Why these elaborate ripping programs with all their various modes of extracting and doublechecking sectors if CD drives can get it right all by themselves?
 
Originally posted by Taelon@Nov 2, 2003 @ 02:44 PM

I got a question here in regard to CD ripping programs... why are they still so popular?

In the early days I tried a few of these and couldn't get any satisfactory results no matter what settings I tried. There'd always be glitches. Then, one day, I extracted some audio tracks through Easy CD Creator. It doesn't use any fancy tricks, just tells the CD drive "give me this track" and actually lets the drive worry about how to read it properly! And the rips turned out perfect.

Since then I've used nothing but ISObuster to extract audio tracks (which admittedly has the drawback of saving .wav files as "Track xx" all the time). On both my HP 8x4x32x and my Sony 48x12x48x drives, audio always rips perfectly, even from scratched CDs.

So I guess I just don't get it. Why these elaborate ripping programs with all their various modes of extracting and doublechecking sectors if CD drives can get it right all by themselves?

Try CDex.

People tend to like them because they can also access CDDB and name tracks for you, and give you all the options you could ever need to get good quality settings.
 
You didn't read a single word of my post, did you? :rolleyes:

I actually wouldn't mind a simple ripping program just like ISObuster but with CDDB support. Nothing fancy like in CDEx & Co. ...
 
i dump the image to iso on my hdd then mount it and rip, faster than waiting for slow ass dae in secure mode
 
Originally posted by Taelon@Nov 2, 2003 @ 04:14 PM

You didn't read a single word of my post, did you? :rolleyes:

I actually wouldn't mind a simple ripping program just like ISObuster but with CDDB support. Nothing fancy like in CDEx & Co. ...

You obviously didn't read mine, because I answered your question why people might like to have a separate programme.

Does EZCD let you configure bit rate and quality level for your ripping? Does it even let you choose a format? Or an encoder to use?
 
And again, it's you who didn't read my post :p because that's not exactly what my question was, or at least not the essential one. I wanted to know what the POINT of all these rippers is when CDRW drives are perfectly capable of reading audio tracks correctly on their own and the software just has to ask for a track and receive the data in turn.

And no, of course Easy CD Creator doesn't let me choose stuff like that, only to a rudimentary degree. But that's not the point here. It's something I used long ago, now I rip audio with ISObuster because it's as straightforward as it gets. I prefer saving as .wav files, then compressing them to mp3 later (if at all) anyhow.
 
I thought he answered your question... :blink:

The point of rippers is to simplify the process of ripping and encoding the tracks you've ripped. Why go to the bother of using two seperate applications to rip and encode when you can click "rip and encode ma' tracks, beatch" in cdEx. That's the point. I don't understand the myriad ripping options, but I would ASSume that it's the usual case of speed versus quality.

I can rip and encode an entire CD in 15mins with a single button press - two if I want CDDB. Does there need to be any more point to apps like cdEx?
 
UUNGGHHH!!!!!!! :damn:

I don't CARE if CDEx or whatever can rip and encode and do your dishes and laundry all in one mouse click.

I'm ONLY talking about all these elaborate ripping schemes with their double and triple checking and sector overlapping and double buffer mechanims and so on etc. etc. - I want to know WHY all these exist if they're apparently not NECESSARY at all.

Have I made myself clear yet or do I have to start bashing you guys over your heads!? :rant
 
I don't know why they have those "double checking" features. Maybe having more features sells more freeware. ;)
 
I would guess that they are there to deal with the cases in which the disc is scratched, or readability is otherwise compromised. I don't know why exactly they are necessary, but they are always included in those apps. You can get a bad audio rip (without using particular ripping tools like you do) if the CD is bad enough, maybe these features help reduce the instances or severity of the errors.

You'd need to do a back-to-back test of a disc that doesn't rip properly in something like ISO Buster with a cdEx rip to find out for sure.
 
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