.mp3 ripper

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Merlin

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Hi all,

For years I have been a fan of CDexOS for ripping music.

The problem has always been that it bombs out after a files, no matter which version or ASPI file I use. It's driving me nuts!

The project stalled and died some time back.

I am pedantic with my music collection. I usually rip to a higher bitrate first (which gets labelled, sorted, etc.) for archival purposes and then use a lower bitrate copy for daily playing as I can fit more music onto a drive with limited capacity.

CDexOS was brilliant at this.

What can I use that will take batches and run them through leaving me with a new 128 bit CBR copy in their original folder and label layout?

Thanks.
 
iTunes is actually great for this. I'm not being sarcastic. 256kbps AAC sounds great - and then they have an option to compress to 128kbps automatically. The tagging and album artwork etc work great.

And yeah I used to be way geeky about this stuff. Used Musepack codec (MPC) and my riper was EAC (exact audio copy). Switched to iTunes years ago - although it was tough - now I'm much happier!
 
Super? Jabberwocky? Got a link perhaps, please?

Syn', I'm not really a fan of Apple products, but I'll give it some consideration, thanks.

I was under the impression that it only worked with an iPod and did some fancy DRM trickery to lock it into the iPod too?

I'm not that clued up when it comes to the rip tech' - MPC, EAC, etc. ;) I just want my nice, clean, sorted archive. Hehe.
 
If you are really pedantic about your ripping then the best software is Exact Audio Copy. It does multiple reads off the CD to ensure that everything has been retrieved accurately, and is even useful for rescuing discs too badly damaged to play normally. You add your own codecs, so you can always have a current version of LAME and can also do flac rips for archival purposes.

The drawbacks are that there is a steep learning curve (the hydrogenaudio wiki can help). It is also not that good at batch processing.

For simple ease of use from free software the iTunes suggestion is a good one (if you have a home network you may want to disable the Bonjour service that it installs to avoid potential interference with the network)
 
Thanks Gary. Very informative post.

I do run a network and batch processing is quite a high priority, but I'll check it out nonetheless.

I really never expected to get iTunes recommendations. :D
 
lol, windows media player is good for most, just rip to mp3 instead of wma.
 
Mikroz said:
Super? Jabberwocky? Got a link perhaps, please?

Syn', I'm not really a fan of Apple products, but I'll give it some consideration, thanks.

I was under the impression that it only worked with an iPod and did some fancy DRM trickery to lock it into the iPod too?

I'm not that clued up when it comes to the rip tech' - MPC, EAC, etc. ;) I just want my nice, clean, sorted archive. Hehe.
Click to expand...

Sorry, didn`t follow the thread

the link is http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

Don`t let the ugly website and interface fool you, This app is a must have
 
One that I liked the most was CDDAE as it gave you a graphical output of how the rip went. Unfortunately, the programmer was gobbled up by Nero, so hasn't worked on it in this century. It had no mp3 out as far as I remember

I tried EAC a couple of times, but always went back to CDDAE as I got frustrated by all the [largely undocumented] options.

For Linux, I like using Rubyripper.
 
:wtf:Complicated suggestions?

Get winamp to rip at a variable bit rate around 320kb/s. That way you have near max possible quality and filesize is highest quality:size ratio.
 
My vote is also for EAC. And you can make it work for batch jobs. For instance, it can put all cd's of 1 artists in its own directory, etc.
Ps. For high quality encoding with Lame, bitrate is not the only important setting. Set the Quality to "0" (-q=0)(highest quality) otherwise it defaults to 3 which is average.

And I must agree that iTunes is not so bad for ripping if you use your own advanced parameters. I wont advise to install it only to do ripping though.
 
Thanks for the tips everyone.

I'm using a small tag editor I found somewhere ages ago and will attempt batch conversion a li'l later. At the moment, it's dropped pretty much off of my priority list. I need more hours, and clones. :/
 
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