Hi! I just became a member since my friend speaks so highly of your site. Here's the situation. I have about 300+ CD's, and since I listen to every single one of them frequently, I've noticed some of them are damaged. After spending so much $$$ I'm really trying to avoid more losses. I recently bought a 250 GB External HD which I'm planning to use mainly for storing music. With all the new compression formats and applications I'm kinda confused. Could somebody help me decide which audio format should I use to back up my CD's? PS I'm not an audiophile, but I have an above average "ear".
If you have 300 CDs, and an entire 250GB drive to store them on, and you want to be able to use these as backups, I would recommend not ripping and using a compressed format, or even a lossless format at that. If you have that much space, it makes sense just to make images of the CDs, which preserves the entire CD exactly the way it is, and can be burned back to CD anytime. Any burning program like nero can create and burn image files. iso, bin/cue, and nrg are a few image formats. you can also use Daemon Tools to virtually mount the image as a drive in your computer if you want to play a CD in your computer. By virtually mounting the image, it will come up as if you just popped the CD in your drive. If it were me, that would be the route I would take, but unfortunately I have way too many CDs to make images of, and more important things to take up HD space.
I thought about the ISO way, but eventually I'm gonna run out of space because I'm into digital photography too and pictures take space. Other reason for not being fond of ISO is that I like to hook up my laptop to my Home Theatre system (via sound blaster laptop card)to listen to music. If I back up my collection using ISO I won't be able to do so. I also like to have music readily available to make cd complilations. Having said that...What kind of format/encoder/settings do you recomend? MP3, WMA, OGG, or others?
I agree. Taking the ISO route is good if you have a small cd collection but not worth it in the long run if you have a large one. You'd have to keep buying hard drives which is costly and space consuming. So it looks like you're going to have to go digital. It depends if you plan to buy a portable audio player or not. If you are going to buy an MP3 player then MP3 should be your chosen route. Exact Audio Copy with the Lame encoder produce the best sounding MP3's you can get. If you plan to buy an iPod then encode all your cd's to their default format which is AAC/MP4. You can do this in iTunes which comes with the iPod. If you don't plan on getting a digital audio player at all then encode your collection to MPC. This format is the 2nd best thing behind WAV as WAV is too big in file size. MPC sounds near indentical and takes up less space. But the only problem is it it isn't supported by any digital audio players and requires a plugin for what Media Player you use. I recommend using WinAmp to listen to these files. http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/mydeneaclame.cfm (The Exact Audio Copy Guide. This will tell you how to install, setup and configure everything) http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/1912 (This will help you decide what settings you choose to encode to MP3. VBR is the best option.) http://www.musepack.net/ (A very informaive website. Here yoy can find anything relating to MPC. Includes info on Encoders, Decoders, Media Player plugins etc.) http://www.winamp.com/ (Official website for WinAmp. You can download the player from here.) p.s. The .CGF files might not be available in the EAC guide but you can download them from here http://www.ubernet.org/?p=UberTools.
or beside backing them up on your PC just back them up on another CD and use it for everyday use home,in your car etc. since you have only 300 you could backup all of them for under 60 bucks and have a perfect copy of the CD
Blanks cd's are sooo cheap make dupes when you purchase and use copies! Easy. To just listen convert to ra/rm or mp3 then store on CD. I get about 2300 in ra/rm format and maybe 300-1000 in mp3 depending of course on settings. My collection is about 30000 records and 5000 cd's works for me. Cheers.
Can you believe I posted this message in 3 different mp3 usenet groups (twice) and got no response? Thank you all for your support. No wonder my friend speaks so highly of this site.
I've read the info in your recomended links and found it to be very useful. I downloaded EAC and various codecs to experiment with them. After all, my ear is gonna be the only factor that matters. Since my musical taste is pretty broad (Pop, Salsa, Rock, Classical, Metal, and many others), could you tell me what music genre(s) is(are) the hardest one to encode effectively? That way I'd know what to use for my own benchmarking tests.
All genres encode exactly the same. But for music like mellow rap which is soft only a low bitrate is needed where as something like heavy metal which is hard will need a higher bitrate to encode.
you can go the compressed way if you want, just know that they won't be good backups of your original CD. But for just playing on your computer they are fine. yes you can, like I mentioned you can virtually mount the image on your computer, which will show up as a audio CD and you can play it with winamp or WMP through your soundcard to your stereo. As much as I love mp3, if you want to backup to highest quality possible, mp3 probably isn't the way to go. I know diabolos loves MPC for its quality, so that one might be good to check out. Or FLAC for lossless.
So what you want is a middle ground between an archive and an everyday media server. I think you may be a candidate for MPC. If you don't plan on burning your files to a CD then MPC (I feel) will give you the best sound for your space! The ISO method is the best though. Lossless takesup almost the same amount of space on your hard drive. If you really can afford to get another hard drive for your images (photos) it would ease the situation. Have you ever mounted a virtual drive before? Do you understand what a virtual drive is? It really sweet. And it would be the only way I would consider doing what your doing (if I could afford too do it at all . It would be no different than people that have 400 disc CD jukeboxes as a home theater component. Ced
