Ripping Music to MP3

Clocker

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I have a couple new music CDs I got as gifts. What's the latest preferred method/app/settings that you audiophiles use to rip your music to MP3?

Thanks,
Clocker
 

LiamC

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+1 for EAC/lame. I've had EAC generate a rip (or even a new CD) from horribly scratched CD's.
 

Clocker

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I'm going to do EAC/Lame but I think I'll also rip the tracks to WMA-Lossless for comparison. WMP seems to make it pretty easy to try that.
 

Stereodude

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Uh... If you're going to do lossless use EAC + FLAC. I can't fathom why you'd use a proprietary closed format like WMA.
 

Clocker

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Because my car will play WMA but I doubt it will play FLAC.
 

LunarMist

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Things that don't play FLAC are not worthy of consideration as useful audio devices.

So something is wrong with a CD player now and a FLAC is better? Where do you buy the FLAC songs?
 

Stereodude

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Because my car will play WMA but I doubt it will play FLAC.
If you think you can tell the difference between a well encoded MP3 or AAC file and a lossless WMA in your car you're delusional. I'd also be surprised if your car will play lossless WMA files. Most things that play WMA files wont play them.
 

Clocker

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If you think you can tell the difference between a well encoded MP3 or AAC file and a lossless WMA in your car you're delusional. I'd also be surprised if your car will play lossless WMA files. Most things that play WMA files wont play them.

Thank you, Captain Obvious. I am not delusional. Yes, I am well aware that you would be unable to hear the difference unless you had high end audio equipment and were in a very good environment, with a trained ear. The thought was that if I could find a lossless format that would work in my car, why not? It would be better than having two copies of the same file (MP3 & FLAC).

Incidentally, a quick google search didn't give me any OEM car stereo's that play FLAC.
 

fb

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CougTek

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I've stopped listening to the NIN album about in the middle. Not that it was bad, but, maybe because I've watched the entire Fringe TV shows lately, I feared there were subliminal messages hidden in the songs. With my permanent state of mind, I really wouldn't need much subliminal messaging before starting destroying things and hurting people (in case such a message was in the songs).

Although blaming hidden messages in songs in case I start a killing spree could be a good defense...
 

fb

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OK...... :erm: Now I would feel at least partly responsible if you ever start a killing spree.

By the way, you should probably avoid listening to the album Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.
 

Handruin

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It would be better than having two copies of the same file (MP3 & FLAC).

Incidentally, a quick google search didn't give me any OEM car stereo's that play FLAC.

I guess it depends how much music you are looking to rip. Years ago I went down the path of MP3 ripping and regretted not doing lossless/FLAC instead. I've since gone through my hundreds of CDs and re-ripped into FLAC. In another thread somewhere on the forum I asked if there was a decent way to automatically convert the FLAC to MP3 and foobar 2000 was the answer. My point is, if you decide to us a more-open format such as FLAC rather than going with WMA lossless, you could save those for any kind of critical listening (if you do that sort of thing) at home, and then make good quality MP3 versions from the FLAC files to use in your car. It's still a small amount of work and a little extra storage space, but it might work better in the long run. Then if another format becomes popular, you can convert the FLAC files over to that format.

Still, it would be nicer if there was a more-popular acceptance of a lossless codec just like there is with devices supporting MP3 as a kind of default standard. It would be seemingly suicide for a device to not support MP3...that's what I would like to say about a device and support for a lossless codec.
 

chardri

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I ripped my music with the windows audio player. I'm not sure how this program did that, but it worked easy and automatically o_o This was so comfy! I'm not sure if this works now with Win 7.
But of course it depends on the CD, some of them have crazy copy protection and it's more difficult to rip :)
 

Mercutio

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Windows Media Player has or at least used to have some pretty bad drawbacks. It used to not support ripping directly to MP3 without purchase of a Windows Plus pack and would instead rip to .WMA, a format that isn't very compatible with much of anything outside the Windows ecosystem. While I think that Windows 7's version of Media Player finally does rip to .MP3 by default, as I recall the quality settings are less than optimal.

You're right that Media Player is pretty easy to handle. I suspect that's a lot more important for most people than perfect audio fidelity.
 

Bozo

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I have used Win7 Media Player. It will rip directly to MP3s now, but the settings are very basic.
 
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