Ripping to HD

Hmmm... yes box it up.

Kidding.

It sounds like you are ripping to MP3 (CBR 320) and FLAC (only one way to do that).

No the quality cannot be improved unless you think 16/44 WAVs are an improvement to FLACs.

The only other thing you could do would be to rip the MP3s to a Variable Bit Rate MP3 (eg V0).

FLAC is to WAV, as VBR is to CBR.

In dBpoweramp there are settings you can use to change the bit rate for MP3. When I start it up the default is VBR. Alternatively you can choose for other bit rate ranges. They are all linked to the slider control include in the settings. There is a little red question symbol which takes you to a web page explaining all the available settings and mentions MP3 bit rate settings up to 640kps.

For FLAC there is a choice of 9 different compression levels to choose from which seems strange since it is a lossless format but a click on the red question mark will lead to an explanation of what they mean and you can play around if you really feel the need but I doubt any audible difference.

I personally rip in wave because I can always convert it 'down' to say MP3 for ipod using dB poweramp converters but obviously you need pleanty of storage for that.

regards
Geoff

quote:

Originally posted by Holty:
Can someone explain to me how to rip to HD? I don't think i'm doing this right?

I've got DB poweramp as a ripper

I'm getting 320Kbits / 44.1Khz on Mp3's and FLACS, can the quality be improved?

am i missing the point completely? should I put my PC back in the box and send it to HP for being too dense?

Holty

I think I have trouble understanding your problem?

Why do you think you're not doing it right?

If you want to rip to mp3 then 320 kb/s is the highest quality in mp3 you can get. It will also still be the largest file size for an mp3. You will have to experiment to see which bitrate suits your wishes for sound quality on you mp3-device vs file size.

If you want to rip lossless files then flac is right and any compression / quality will do. All are lossless. Some people report they find less compression gives them better sound quality. Also here you can try for yourself. All flac-levels are lossless so no information gets ever lost and you can convert from one level to another (or to another lossless format) without any detrimental effects.
You can also convert to WAV which again some report gives them better sound quality than FLAC, the only thing is you might loose the information tags. dBPoweramp can write tags to WAV, but not all players can read tags from WAV and the Naim DAC, when playing the last song on a USB-stick, gives a strong buzz when it encounters tags in a WAV-file.

But all in all I think you are doing fine and don't see any problems. So why the doubt?

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aleg

quote:

You can also convert to WAV which again some report gives them better sound quality than FLAC, the only thing is you might loose the information tags. dBPoweramp can write tags to WAV, but not all players can read tags from WAV and the Naim DAC, when playing the last song on a USB-stick, gives a strong buzz when it encounters tags in a WAV-file.

Probably subconcious but I find FLAC replay seems to take on a slightly hard edge when volume is turned up well, that doesn't creep in with files ripped as WAV. I must admit I stumbled into using dBPoweramp and its sister product 'RipNas Essentials'. Both, lukily for me create proper ID tags when ripping Wave. I then went on to use their 'Asset UPnP' software as a media server which talks very nicely and quickly to the files ripped in dBPoweramp and works great with my ipod touch.

One perhaps insignificant but nice to have thing about dBPoweramp is that if you have a rare album with no album art found in the databases search you can paste in your own and as a last resort use a picture you took as a substitute.

Geoff

Hi all, thanks for the replies.. i'm relatively new to this so i thought i was going along nicely until a colleague of mine remarked that i wasn't ripping my files to the best quality available?!

I was doing a bit of research late last night and was just confusing myself eve more so I'd thought i'd ask you fine people

I've been experimenting with different formats along the way and weirdly i think ALAC sounds awful ??? It's lossless so why i sounds different is beyond me..

Steve

The only thing I might want to add to my previous reply, is that you make sure your ripper is setup for use with AccurateRip. That way your rip is compared with rips from other people that are stored in the AccurateRip database. That way you know that you've don it right.

Setup Guide dBPoweramp Ripper

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aleg

Aleg,

Thanks fo that, much appreciated

Steve