more luddite ramblings - software

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adrian
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#1 more luddite ramblings - software

Post by adrian »

Hi all

I had a bright idea recently - to digitalise my vinyl and rip all CDs to PC. I stripped a laptop, installed Linux (ubuntu) and downloaded Audacity. That was 2 months ago and I may have ripped a couple of tracks now!

Why the delay? Not sure, but I thought I'd ripped CDs in WAV last month to find today that they appear as .ogg. Also, when trying to upsample a track (from 44.1 to 96Khz) it makes it sound as if the singer is on helium, ie sings at c.twice the speed. Having seen in a recent article that iTunes allows CD quality ripping I may just go the Apple route in order to simplify what has become an annoying process.

Unless of course anyone can recommend an idiot-proof software that will allow highest quality ripping and storage as FLAC.

I have both laptop (which could be reconverted to Windows) and a Mac Book

Ta

Adrian
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Greg
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#2

Post by Greg »

See my reply on WD.
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The Stratmangler
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#3

Post by The Stratmangler »

The best free ripping software that will securely rip CDs is ExactAudioCopy (or EAC), and that runs on Windows only.
The only caveat is that you need to set the software up properly to provide the results you want, but there is a Wizard and it does give you the options of speed or accuracy.
When you have your ripped wav file you have the option of automatically following the rip up with an external processing engine, so you could set it up to compress to FLAC or convert to MP3 - it's up to you to decide.
You can also use EAC to find the CD artwork.
EAC is a bit hair shirt, but you've installed one of the Linux distros on a laptop, so perhaps hair shirt appeals?
The price is right too.

I use dbPoweramp, which has a far nicer user interface.
It's also more flexible, as you can add a whole host of DSP options (I have mine set up to scan for Replaygain and add tags, and also detect HDCD content and rip appropriately (HDCD uses an additional 4 bits of data per word which is only read when a HDCD decoder sees it. So HDCD ripsend up as 24/44.1).
dbPoweramp is free to trial, but ultimately you have to pay for it - I think it's worth the cost.

A very powerful media player is Foobar2000, and it will perform secure rips too.
Foobar is powerful and can support a large number of plugins that give DSP capabilities.
I like and use Foobar, but again it's a bit hair shirt, and it occasionally takes some fathoming out.
The price is my favourite £0.00

JRiver is good too, although I trialled it, and decided that I couldn't do anything audio with it that I couldn't do with Foobar.
I couldn't hear any sound improvement over Foobar either, so I didn't buy the program at the end of the trial period.
I will add that I use a Squeezebox Touch to deliver files on my network, so nice interfaces on computer media players are a waste of time for me.
Chris :happy3:
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Ray P
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#4

Post by Ray P »

DbPoweramp gets my vote; I've tried a number of others but always come back to it.

Ray
Neal
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#5

Post by Neal »

On the Mac you can rip to WAV in iTunes and then batch convert to FLAC with XLD or just rip directly to AAC or MP3. I find the iTunes interface work well enough. For recording vinyl I'd use Audacity, it has some inbuilt tools for noise and click removal and it will take time to master but recording from vinyl is alway going to be a laborious task.

EAC is a dinosaur IMHO, other rippers inc iTunes do just as good a job...however as always YMMV...
Only the Sith deal in absolutes.
PeteC
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#6

Post by PeteC »

Hi

If you have a stripped down old laptop you could install Vortexbox on it and rip CDs directly from the CD drawer to your storage, or copy across home network.

I did exactly this with an old Thinkpad and it works great on my home network
and responds to Squeezebox too.

I copied a c. 90000 track library across from home network to Vortexbox machine in about 36 hours and it worked a charm. FLAC and Mp3 mirrors of all tracks.

worth a go. plenty of step by step guidance on VB site.

cheers
Pete
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Neal
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#7

Post by Neal »

That reminds me, I must try to get Vortbox working, I failed miserably last time...
Only the Sith deal in absolutes.
adrian
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#8 Re: more luddite ramblings - software

Post by adrian »

Thanks to all. Hope to make progress over the summer. Will report anything interesting

Adrian
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