I just want a program that will rip maximum quality flac files ( whether they need to be upconverted to 24bit 192khz etc I have no idea ) without any 'disk image' stuff I've been hearing about. I'm going to buy an NAS and I need to start ripping CDs in advance as it will take me a lifetime.
Awesome, thanks. I just tried the trial version of winamp and it was ridiculous, even with the large skin the text font was like size 4 or something. I could barely even read the text in it. EDIT: The full CD in max quality FLAC format was 370mb...I thought the file size reduction would be more than that. I'll rip in WAV to compare. If it's only a 50% reduction in file size reduction then I might just RIP them all in WAV...makes things easier anyway
I wonder, what Is the format online digital music provides?, MP3 a what bitrate?, someone knows if they sell the music in FLAC format?
There is usually a setting for compression on Flac files, set them to compression level 8. that will give you the best sizes. Flac is lossless though so they are much bigger then Mp3. I wouldn't even worry about WAV, as you sacrifice more space with absolutely NO increase in audio quality. I would use an app such as EAC..etc. I don't advise using a player to do your rips use an application made for the task. There are many apps out on the net but try and find apps that have CDDB info downloads, so you pop in the CD and the app finds all the track names.album name..etc This database feature will save you tons of time, if you have a large collection to rip.
dBpowermap is the easiest and provides perfect FLAC files that can be "verified" online through AccurateRip. It's not free, though.
Unfortunatley for the best audio quality both of those format are useless because they are LOSSY. The best results will come with some research. Many programs will require you to add an external Flac encoder, which is very simple. As I may have said in another post I am going to write a procedure for those interested very soon....stay tuned.
