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Posted: |
Mar 27, 2019 - 6:07 AM
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By: |
MusicMad
(Member)
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It does take time to amend/check tags so that the music can be accessed as you want but again there are built in facilities which seek to reduce tagging problems (such as recognising an artist as being the same despite differences in the way the name is presented).
Yeah, fortunately, I have already taken care of the tagging issues and my tag structure is unified, so I don't have to worry about "Rachmaninov, Sergei" and "Sergei Rachmaninoff" and "Rachmaninoff, Sergei (1873-1943)" etc. as it goes.
Me, too ... I don't rely on this facility as it may amend/correct when i don't want it to, such as merging the Melos Ensemble of London with the Melos Quartett which I have tagged as Melos Ensemble and Melos Quartett respectively.
Similarly, I don't use the program facilities of eliminating the definite and indefinite articles, or sorting on surnames ... the multitude of non-English names in my music library makes these functions rather problematical.
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Could somebody explain what the deal is with lossless ripping? Why is this preferred and what is the best way to do it?
I recently purchased a new desk top but I still rip all my CDs on my old laptop that has a CD drive. I use WMP unless their database is unable to locate the album info, then I'll switch over to winamp. Everything is saved to an external hard drive and organized in folders by composer.
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Could somebody explain what the deal is with lossless ripping? Why is this preferred and what is the best way to do it?
The beauty of "lossless ripping" is that while you may debate about what the best way to rip lossless is, one thing there is no debate about is that lossless ripping is preferable to lossy ripping.
The main difference between lossy and lossless formats is this: lossy formats, such as MP3, reduce the file size of audio by eliminating certain information from the recording. And if you change from one lossy format (say MP3), to another lossy format (say AAC), there will again be information lost. This loss is irretrievable and irreversible, you can never re-instate the information that is lost. Lossy formats are the digital equivalent of an analog tape copy. You can make a tape copy, and a copy of that copy, and so on, and each time you do it, you lose some information. That's why by and large it is better to master from first generation tapes than it is from fourth generation tapes.
Lossless formats such as WAV, FLAC, ALAC, AIFF, on the other hand, get the complete set of information that is on a CD. So all the bytes and bits used to store the information on the CD are contained in the lossless file. Also, if you switch from one type of lossless file (say, FLAC) to another type of lossless file (say, ALAC) or vice versa, or back and forth, no information gets lost, it is always the exact same information. That's why if you rip your CD to lossless, you never ever have to re-rip (and re-tag etc.) your collection again, since all the information the CD could provide is also in the lossless file.
Which format you want to use depends on how you want to play the files. WAV and AIFF are uncompressed formats, ALAC and FLAC use compression. But whereas MP3 uses compression by reducing information (like the JPEG format for images), ALAC and FLAC compress without losing information (like the PNG format for images).
So, in the end, lossy audio conversion is preferable when file size is the more important aspect, because with MP3 and AAC you get relatively small files that (especially in case of AAC) can still sound very good. The more you compress, the worse they obviously sound, but a good AAC still sounds darn good.
Lossless conversion then is preferable if audio quality is the more important aspect, because a lossless rip provides the best possible audio quality, always exactly as good as the original source. If sound quality is more important that file size, then you should go for a lossless format. Another advantage of lossless audio files is that you not only can convert losslessly from one lossless format to another, but you can also convert copies into any other format you may want. So if you need MP3s for your car radio, you can just make an MP3 rip directly from your FLAC files, not need to get back to the CDs. So it's much quicker and all your tagging is already there.
There are many ways to do lossless ripping... the easiest is to use something like iTunes to rip to ALAC, the most perfectionist (and recommended if you have scratched or blotched discs) is to use something like EAC (Exact Audio Copy), which is a bit more complicated to set up but has more thorough error correction and proof reading functions.
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