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Hugh

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 9, 2003
840
5
Erie, PA
This might be in the wrong thread, but this is my dumb question.

What are you guys picking for you import encoding? Which gives you the best sound value for the buck? Space is not a problem, but I don't want to go too high. :D

Hugh
 

tsice19

macrumors 6502a
Feb 16, 2008
703
0
If by importing you mean ripping a CD to your Hard Drive, I am almost positive that the default setting is fine.

Unless you wanted it all in *.mp3 for compatibility reasons, that is.
 

Gray-Wolf

macrumors 68030
Apr 19, 2008
2,603
2
Pandora, Home Tree
Here's what I use.
 

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richard.mac

macrumors 603
Feb 2, 2007
6,292
4
51.50024, -0.12662
WAV is raw and uncompressed and is pretty much the closest to the original CD quality AIFF but is still quite large, about 20 meg per song. my DJ friend uses WAV for all of his CDs and as a concequence has a HUGE library size but it is CD quality.

Apple Lossless is lossless (obviously) and takes up about 40% to 60% of the original.

AAC (MP4) is newer than MP3 and anything over 192kb/s should sound good if encoded from the original.
 

Hugh

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 9, 2003
840
5
Erie, PA
Thanks!

Yes I mean ripping the CD. I've been using MP3 192k, but thought there was something better. I think I will try ACC which seems what Apple is using.

Thanks for the help guys! :D

Hugh
 

spacepower7

macrumors 68000
May 6, 2004
1,509
1
Music

WAV and AIFF are Both the raw cd data. Both are the same sized with WAV being a PC preferred format, and AIFF being a Mac originated format, compatible with most professional PC audio apps. WAV and AIFF take up about 10MB a minute for stereo files, exactly the same as a cd.

Apple Lossless which iTunes supports, takes up 40-60% of WAV/AIFF size. Think of Apple Lossless as a zip file for audio, even though it is smaller than the original RAW (WAV/AIFF) file, you get exactly out of it as your put into it with no degradation of quality, unlike aac or mp3.
Apple Lossless can be converted back to WAV/AIFF with no loss of quality.

But Apple Lossless takes up alot of space on an iPod.

FLAC (Free Audio Lossless Codec) is a great open source codec but is not supported by iTunes so it probably isn't useful here.

Depending on how OCD your are, and how much space "really doesn't matter"?

When I ripped alot of my cds, Apple Lossless didn't exist, FLAC was barely supported on the Mac, and a 20GB hard Drive was big (and $400). Even later, when a 200GB hard drive was big (and $200), it wasn't big enough for my cds to be Lossless.

So here's what I would do now: (as someone who has ripped over 1000 cds in the past and hates the idea of doing it again)(and is slowly doing it again)

What is your time and effort worth? I say rip at the very best quality, put your cds in storage, and never worry about ripping again. Rip only once and save yourself time and sanity.

Suck it up, buy a 1TB external hard drive (and maybe an extra one for backing up all of your hard work) online for $120-140USD
That's abt alittle over 900GB formated which is more than 2000 cds in Apple Lossless. If you don't need that much space then consider a 500GB drive.

Hard drives are huge now compared to the past but we will have 4TB drives by 2009/Early 2010. There is no reason not to rip at the best quality. Either spend the money now (on a large hard drive) or the time later. FYI cds will not rip any faster in the future bc the cpu's have caught up with the cd-drive speeds, and if the drives go any faster then they are unstable and can cause inaccurate reads.

Also, in my experience, CD rips to Apple Lossless are actually faster than CD rips to aac or MP3 because iTunes doesn't have to analyze which audio info to discard, it saves it all.

OK, here it the Kicker:
iTunes (or 3rd party apps, like Max) can convert your Apple Lossless files (while keeping the originals) to many different formats, including aac and MP3 at any bitrate. So you can have archive quality copies (so you never have to rip again) on an external hard drive and have smaller lossy copies on the internal hard drive of your laptop/desktop and to put on your iPod.


I hope someone finds this useful
 
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