im using freerip and ripping a cd to my hard drive and was wondering what format should i rip it to mp3 or wav? which is better quality
First of all, the best program to rip cd's to your PC is Exact Audio Copy. It has been proven to be the best. It check every sector of the cd twice and notifies you of any errors. Click here to start up and configure EAC = http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/mydeneaclame.cfm As for deciding between MP3 or WAV I will give you some pointers on both. MP3 is the most popular audio format at the moment. Car stereos, hifi systems and DVD players and of course the majority of portable audio players are all being made to support this format. 2)The filesizes are typically between 5 and 10 MB's. The downsides to MP3 are: 1) It is a lossy format which means some of the information in the music is lost when converted to MP3. You won't notice it much when listening with head phones but you will be able to tell the difference when playing it through speakers. It isn't gapless. This is particualry annoying when listening to a mix cd where the end of one track blends in with the start of another. There is however a way to burn MP3's to cd without any gaps but no way to counter this problem with the files being stored on a hard drive. WAV is an audio file which is uncompressed, lossless (opposite to lossy) and gapless. Sounds good doesn't it. But the file sizes are huge and you'll soon find yourself running out of hard disc space.
so saving files as wavs on my HD is the best quality, which means if i decide to burn it to disc again it would be the better quality
Yes it would. But if you plan to burn it to disc again then you may as well just copy the cd onto a blank cd-r and save yourself the hassle and hard disc space of ripping the cd.
