My Exact Audio Copy Guide

[Christian Otte]

Originally Posted by kornchild2002

I remember those settings, they recommended that you use Lame 3.90.3. That is extremely old and Lame 3.96 proved that it could make quality files. Now the stable version of Lame is up to 3.97 with alpha versions up to 3.98. Lame 3.97 (the final build) is not the officially recommended version to use so it is safe to upgrade. In fact, Lame 3.97 is much more efficient than 3.90.3 so you can get smaller file sizes while still retaining the quality.

LAME 3.97 it is, then!

[shabbs]

Lame 3.97 is the officially recommended version at Hydrogenaudio:

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index....coder_settings

Cheers.

[kornchild2002]

Originally Posted by 1138

I'm still relatively new to this whole "lossless" encoding, so I need some advice. I don't plan on using my music for anything other than my iPod, although I might need it for stuff like Microsoft PowerPoints and some stuff, but I guess I could convert if I need to. Should I use FLAC or Apple Lossless (ALAC .m4a)? And if I use Apple Lossless, should I use the iTunes ripper or use it with EAC, since iTunes doesn't have error/skip protection like EAC, and I'm really paranoid about skipping in my tracks?

And does the EAC guide in the first post cover Apple Lossless? I'm not sure, since AAC uses the same .m4a extension as Lossless. If it doesn't, can anyone help me use EAC with ALAC? Thanks.

Well, if you want to play your lossless files back on a iPod (God knows why anyone would want to do this) you are stuck using one of three formats: WAV, AIFF, and Apple lossless. Apple lossless would really be your best bet as it takes up less space than WAV and AIFF while retaining track tag information. The only way to get EAC to rip to Apple lossless is to use iTunes Encode. Basically, when properly setup, EAC will rip a audio CD track to the WAV format then open up iTunes and use it to encode that WAV file to whatever rip setting you have in iTunes (which would be Apple lossless) and it will also use iTunes to tag your content. This process really isn't seamless especially if your computer isn't up to specs as the whole process uses a lot of processor power.

If you are worried about secure rips then dbpoweramp would be a better choice as it can rip just as secure as EAC (dbpoweramp says it can rip even more secure) and the developers of dbpoweramp have reverse engineered the Apple lossless encoder. So all you have to do is download the ALAC plug-in and dbpoweramp can securely rip to it without opening iTunes.

I don't recommend using lossless for iPod use though as it takes up a lot of space (even a 160GB iPod classic won't hold much in lossless), you won't get the advertised battery life for audio playback, and any type of portable environment won't let you hear the benefit of lossless audio. In all seriousness, the only way to take true advantage of lossless is to use a iPod headphone amp and listen to your iPod using some high end headphones in a completely quite environment. Modern day lossy encoders can do very well and you can get damned good results, even at the 128kbps VBR bitrate. Head on over to hydrogenaudio and take a look at their listening tests. You will see that even 128kbps VBR Lame mp3/iTunes AAC can perform very, very well.

Edit: 5,000th post. It took forever to reach that mark.

[1138]

Originally Posted by kornchild2002

Well, if you want to play your lossless files back on a iPod (God knows why anyone would want to do this) you are stuck using one of three formats: WAV, AIFF, and Apple lossless. Apple lossless would really be your best bet as it takes up less space than WAV and AIFF while retaining track tag information. The only way to get EAC to rip to Apple lossless is to use iTunes Encode. Basically, when properly setup, EAC will rip a audio CD track to the WAV format then open up iTunes and use it to encode that WAV file to whatever rip setting you have in iTunes (which would be Apple lossless) and it will also use iTunes to tag your content. This process really isn't seamless especially if your computer isn't up to specs as the whole process uses a lot of processor power.

If you are worried about secure rips then dbpoweramp would be a better choice as it can rip just as secure as EAC (dbpoweramp says it can rip even more secure) and the developers of dbpoweramp have reverse engineered the Apple lossless encoder. So all you have to do is download the ALAC plug-in and dbpoweramp can securely rip to it without opening iTunes.

I don't recommend using lossless for iPod use though as it takes up a lot of space (even a 160GB iPod classic won't hold much in lossless), you won't get the advertised battery life for audio playback, and any type of portable environment won't let you hear the benefit of lossless audio. In all seriousness, the only way to take true advantage of lossless is to use a iPod headphone amp and listen to your iPod using some high end headphones in a completely quite environment. Modern day lossy encoders can do very well and you can get damned good results, even at the 128kbps VBR bitrate. Head on over to hydrogenaudio and take a look at their listening tests. You will see that even 128kbps VBR Lame mp3/iTunes AAC can perform very, very well.

Edit: 5,000th post. It took forever to reach that mark.

Sorry I didn't make myself clear, I meant I wanted a lossless backup so I can convert to any format without having to re-rip my CD's.

I've become paranoid about secure rips thanks to a particular Van Halen CD that had 8 tracks plagued by skipping. I'll look into dbpoweramp.

I currently rip at 192 kbps mp3, so I'm debating whether to go with AAC. Having a lossless backup of my music would allow me to go with AAC should it become the popular format that mp3 is today.

And congrats on your 5000th post.

EDIT: Would I be able to edit information, such as artists, albums, lyrics, etc. with dbpoweramp, or will I have to import into iTunes first?

[1138]

One more question: Since I'm backing up my music, what do you think is the best lossless encoder to use with dbpoweramp in terms of versatility and usability in the future? FLAC or Apple Lossless?

[kornchild2002]

Ah, I understand now. It is a good decision to have a lossless backup of your music. I thought you wanted to carry around your lossless collection on your iPod.

It all depends on what lossy audio format you want to encode to. If you want to use the Lame mp3 encoder then FLAC would be the best lossless encoder as you can use it with Foobar2000, EAC, dbpoweramp, etc. If you want to use the AAC format then Apple lossless would be better as you can convert the ALAC files straight with iTunes. It doesn't matter which lossless format you pick in terms of future use as both lossless formats will be around for quite a bit of time. FLAC has the advantage in that more programs support it while ALAC has an advantage in that it can be used straight with iTunes.

If you are going to rip to FLAC then you can use EAC to do so. If you are going to rip to ALAC then I suggest that you use dbpoweramp. dbpoweramp operates very similarly to EAC in that you can edit CD information right within the program and it can retrieve it off of the internet automatically for you.

[1138]

All right, I gotcha.

Just in general, if I were ripping CD's straight into iTunes, would you suggest the 192 kbps AAC encoder over mp3, especially if I were to plan on purchasing a few tracks from the iTunes Music Store? I'm guessing AAC because it's easier to keep one lossy format on the computer, and tracks from iTunes come in AAC, and converting from AAC to mp3 would be a no-no.

One more thing: I recall a post in this forum saying dbpoweramp doesn't wear on the CD drive as much as EAC because of the way it does error correction. Is this correct?

[kornchild2002]

Well, if you were using iTunes to do all your ripping then yes, I would use the iTunes AAC encoder. The bitrate is entirely up to you but given that storage space is only going to increase and the mindset of some people (including me so it is not an insult), I would pick 192kbps VBR AAC. Always, always enable the VBR option in iTunes as you get more use out of the iTunes AAC encoder. The iTunes mp3 encoder is not the best, I think Apple did this to push people to use their AAC encoder. That is alright though as their AAC encoder is of high quality.

If you were going to use other programs then I would use the Lame mp3 encoder as it provides quality that is pretty damn close to the iTunes AAC encoder (and probably the same quality once you get up to bitrates of 192kbps and higher) and the mp3 format has the advantage of having universal compatibility. If you plan on living in a iPod/iTunes world then AAC is alright.

The developers claim that dbpoweramp puts leas stress on your optical drive. I don't know if this is true or not but I think it is. The reason I agree is because of the error correction method. See, with EAC, once it encounters an error, it will go back and re-read those bad sectors immediately. This means that your optical drive is going forward at a certain speed then it is slowed down so the laser can re-read a certain sector. dbpoweramp works in that it will rip a track once and compare the results with a online database of secure rips. It will then go back and re-read the entire track if it encounters another error then compare to the online database. It will then go back and re-read certain sectors if need be. The point is that dbpoweramp does not jitter your drive every time it comes across an error. It will plow through things and read the track again.

[1138]

For sample rate and channels in iTunes AAC, should I just leave them as auto?

[kornchild2002]

Yes. That means that iTunes will match the source audio sample rate (which will be 44.1KHz) and the source channels (either stereo or mono but if you are ripping from a CD or encoding a lossless file ripped from a CD then the files will always come out as stereo).

[1138]

All right, I think I'm set. I don't plan on ripping to lossless yet since I have neither an external hard drive or such a huge library that I can't do it some time in the future, so I'll be sticking with 192 kbps vbr from iTunes. Thanks a lot for your help!

Oh, and should I be concerned about the "Profile" that says "Low Complexity"?

[kornchild2002]

You want it to say Low Complexity. There are three major types of AAC audio files: HE-AACv1, HE-AACv2, and LC-AAC. As you guess, LC-AAC stands for low complexity AAC while HE stands for high efficiency. HE-AAC is very similar to mp3plus in that you only use HE-AAC if you are encoding at bitrates lower than 96kbps. LC-AAC is used for bitrates of 96kbps and higher.

So yeah, you want the profile to say low complexity.

[1138]

Thanks again!

[MattPaintballer]

Just wanted to say thanks again for this, it is an amazing guide.

Right now I don't have it set to encode after extraction yet but I will set that up soon. When I get the time I will convert my WAVs to FLAC and then encode those to MP3. So I will have FLAC for backup and MP3 for my iPod.

[kornchild2002]

Just keep in mind that your WAV files won't have any track tag information. This means that you will have to use a program such as foobar2000 to manually add track tag information to your FLAC files before you encode them to mp3. It would be better to stop what you are doing now and setup EAC with FLAC. That way you won't have to worry about manually tagging 100+ files as that can take quite a bit of time.