dBpoweramp : Optimum Settings?

I rip in wav as it sounds better than flac. Metadata stays intact, even when ripping in wav with dbpoweramp. It really is a great piece of software. Im new to it and still cant work out how to edit metadata on previously ripped cds (with XLD ripper), as this used to lose the metadata.

I rip & download everything to WAV;  metadata editing (if, as,  & when needed) is as easy as any other format,   it very easy to learn if you give it the time;  that said it can get tricky with some classical.     FLAC is a good alternative especially as it takes less disc space,  but it has better SQ when transcoded to WAV.    Never touched the Apple stuff as I don't want to play in that yard

I keep the various boxes set "as source" for ripping    but I do have some DSP effects,  that is a whole load of options I doubt many will use,  but I have three set all the time just incase I overlook something;  RG (Replay Gain)   (not RG Apply)  RG sets ripped album & tracks volume to around the same level.   HDCD will rip to the HDCD 20-bit standard if the disc is encoded,  if you don't have this set an HDCD will get ripped as 16-bit.     Bit Depth I have set for 16-bit Min & 24-bit Max. 

Apart from my first ripping sessions when I ripped 500+ CD's straight into NAS,  I now rip (& download) to my PC,  not to NAS,  where I check & if needed edit whatever & test play in the PC,  then when I'm happy,  I upload to NAS.   That way if something goes wrong as its in a folder in the PC,  the damage is limited.

I rip to flac and transcode to wav on the fly via asset. I have done AB tests of tracks replayed in this way vs tracks ripped to wav and played back as wav - my cloth ears cannot detect a difference.

I do the same as Mike b in terms of ripping to my mac first to check everything is fine - before exporting to the NAS and also to a local hard drive for archive / back up purposes. I have found it much easier to make changes / tweaks to rips on the mac rather than once I've put them on my NAS.

Hi I rip with dbpoweramp directly to my music audio NAS... I used to rip in WAV but know FLAC with the highest compression. I check and correct metadata using the dbpoweramp metadata data source screen prior to the rip files being created. 

My media streamer transcodes to PCM when sending to renderer.

i have found it preferable to use FLAC at highest compression settings as it helps media remain manageable and helps backups etc.. and with tens of thousands of tracks this becomes useful. Clearly there is no SQ loss if transcoding and I undertook some tests some investigations a couple of years back showing a media server reading FLAC files and sending PCM streams can work better at higher definition data rates than reading WAV files as the I/O load, often a bottleneck on smaller devices, is lowered.

Simon

I'm very new to this and like the OP was faced with an array of ripping options. I use a Mac Mini with dBPoweramp CD Ripper set per the installation default. I read somewhere (possibly the Illustrate/dBPoweramp forum) that the Mac installation in particular installs with default values ready to run. I rip to FLAC and as mentioned by HARTY601, can always convert WAV on the fly [I use Asset UPnP] if I want to, although TIDAL delivers FLAC anyway.

My starting point was less than a couple of hundred CDs already ripped in iTunes. I had the opportunity of talking direct with Naim who recommended FLAC for the simple reason that it's generally better supported outside the world of Apple. Possibly more important though, was their recommendation to simply rip CDs at 16bit/44.1kHz since any attempt to rip at a higher resolution will result in the software interpolating, which apart from unnecessarily gobbling up lots of storage, could make matters worse by getting the result wrong! 

I decided to rip all my CDs again with the advantages that (i) most of the album artwork would be automatically found [AFAIK it's not easily retrievable from outside of  iTunes] and (ii) more importantly for AccurateRip verification. In all, less than half a dozen tracks had errors and with the exception of two tracks the errors were easily rectified with a minor CD clean and re-rip. I tried secure ripping the two tracks that still showed AccurateRip errors but quickly decided that life was too short for that so it's Burst ripping for me and I don't mess with DSP either.

One lesson I learned the hard way was I didn't spot soon enough that genre descriptors frequently don't align 100% with CD Ripper default genre descriptors. For example, having both Pop-Rock and Pop/Rock genres showing on the Naim application is too irritating. If I'd spotted that earlier I'd have decided on a subset of CD Ripper genres and saved myself some genre definition rework in dBpoweramp Batch Converter.

Oh and I rip at the default level of Encoder lossless level 5. I note with interest that Simon-in-Suffolk uses a higher compression level and may try that sometime although he's got at least an order of magnitude more tracks than I'm ever likely to have so it's not so critical in my situation.

That's my 2 cents.

Hello Newnaim16, yes your point is well made.. It pays to be consistent when ripping and assigning metadata.. When or if you get to the 'advanced' state of streaming and managing your music content, some media server applications like MinimServer allow you to remap metadata to present and search on it more consistently. Asset only has very rudimentary capabilities in this regard... But yes better to get right from the start.

Simon

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Hello Newnaim16, yes your point is well made.. It pays to be consistent when ripping and assigning metadata.. When or if you get to the 'advanced' state of streaming and managing your music content, some media server applications like MinimServer allow you to remap metadata to present and search on it more consistently. Asset only has very rudimentary capabilities in this regard... But yes better to get right from the start.

Simon

Greetings Simon-in Suffolk - You summed up my learning experience exactly! A lesson learnt the hard way is the one that is remembered ;-)  I was struggling a bit with metadata editing capabilities in dBpoweramp Batch Converter now I know why!

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Hello Newnaim16, yes your point is well made.. It pays to be consistent when ripping and assigning metadata.. When or if you get to the 'advanced' state of streaming and managing your music content, some media server applications like MinimServer allow you to remap metadata to present and search on it more consistently. Asset only has very rudimentary capabilities in this regard... But yes better to get right from the start.

Simon

i was also new to this a couple of year ago, advise from my dealer was rip once rip right a few mins spent at the start will pay dividends but soon got into the swing

i'm with SImon rip FLAC losses - some 800 albums only used 33% on 2tb mirrored, but rip as Mike B does to PC and then to NAS

OH ps - please back up everthing on to seperate drive! and keep safe

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

Hi ...

My media streamer transcodes to PCM when sending to renderer.

...

Simon

Not to hijack this thread but as a quick side comment, I just tried a more thorough investigation into the impact of transcoding my FLAC files to WAV on the fly using Asset UPnP and to my hears, I have a preference for the PCM approach. I know this has been discussed a lot in the past but thanks for highlighting this Simon. Now to get back on topic ...

Oops, that would be ears and not hears  as in "... and to my hears, I have a ..." ;-)

Hi folks,

A huge thanks for sharing your experience and outlining the settings you are using. Very much appreciated indeed.

Well, I’ve been experimenting with settings and formats this afternoon and things are going quite well - getting to grips with the software slowly as many of the details are new to me. So far, i’ve been ripping to FLAC and AIFF with the following settings...

For AIFF... CD Ripper Options: Secure.   Bit Depth: As Source.   Sample Rate: As Source.   Channels: As Source.   DSP: Replay Gain.

For FLAC... CD Ripper Options: Secure.   Lossless Uncompressed.   DSP: Replay Gain.

I’ll also have a play reducing the FLAC Lossless level to the default size 5 to compare file sizes too - getting there!

With FLAC its OK to compress & save space,  the normal is default level 5.    It is replayed uncompressed & with no effect on SQ. 

Also, just curious, what pixel size are you folks setting your artwork to? I'm currently playing with 1000 x 1000px. Is this large enough for current / future pixel dense phone & tablet screens I wonder. If not, is it easy to change it at a later date in dBpoweramp, if so, how?

I believe some UPnP media servers might have limitations,  however I have 600px  up to 1400px & I've tried over 2000px.   It doesn't make that much difference on a small screen, better on a full size tablet.  Its very easy to change in dBpoweramp,  & the same with any other tag editor - I also use AudioShell, a very simple & easy to use open source prog.

I tend to use 750x750 at least artwork if I can find it..but I don't put art work in the file.. I have had issues with FLAC embedded artwork before with some software... If I encode WAV files, which is rare now, I ensure the metadata is encoded as ListInfo and ID3 formats. The ListInfo is the official formal WAV metadata construct, but some consumer software can't read them..the ID3 metadata, an unofficial WAV extension matches the paramers as used in MP3 files and is quite close to the Vorbis Comments constructs used for metadata in FLAC files. 

As far as FLAC compression assuming you are using a reasonably modern and a moderately powerful ripping computer you might as well compress at the max setting.. The difference in encode time when ripping  will be minimal.. The encode algorithms are the same, it's just the compression coefficients are more efficient and accurate on the higher compression levels, thereby reducing file size with no loss of entropy or information. On decode of course the compression level (other than not compressed) is immaterial.

All my FLACs have been encoded at max compression for a few years now..

Simon

Ah, so if I'm using 1000px sq, should be more than sufficient for our iPad Air. 

Simon, so what number setting for ripping FLAC would you recommend? Default is 5, but I can accommodate the 'uncompressed' setting pretty easily. 

Hi, no I set to max, can't remember the specific number.. 8 or 9 or something like that. If you are going uncompressed you might as well use WAV PCM in my opinion.. If using dbpoweramp.

I have been using uncompressed, however I also have a flacs ripped with 5 (saves quite a lot of space) & when doing flac to wav in nas I could not hear the difference (quick check). Wondering if someone can?

If we enable on the fly transcoding of FLAC to WAV thru Asset UPnP on the Mac Mini, then yes we can hear the difference. It's subtle and having only just got our new Naim streaming system up and running, we only properly checked it yesterday but it's definitely detectable. My preference is for streaming WAV but my wife would class it more as being just different - YMMV.

Yetizone posted:

Also, just curious, what pixel size are you folks setting your artwork to? I'm currently playing with 1000 x 1000px. Is this large enough for current / future pixel dense phone & tablet screens I wonder. If not, is it easy to change it at a later date in dBpoweramp, if so, how?

I try to use 600 by 600 or 800 by 800. This is the size that dbpoweramp seems to find, and it more than adequate for an iPad. If what it  finds is no good, you can remove the art and search for something better. Dbpoweramp can search the web, or upload from a stored file. 

I rip to FLAC and then transfer to the NAS. Generally I now do max compression, although I still have a lot of albums at 5. The joy of lossless is that I can change that if I like - Dbpoweramp in batch mode. 

I spent one afternoon testing FLAC at different levels of compression,  and WAV, and transcoding, and Asset versus Minimserver. I made a note of everything. It was 'blind' for me but not the person making the selection.

My conclusion was that I could tell between FLAC and WAV (transcoded or native) - although not reliably at all - and couldn't tell between any of the other options. It may be that people with more revealing kit would get a different result, but that was my experience. Hence now using FLAC with max compression and transcoding to WAV.

NewNaim16 posted:

If we enable on the fly transcoding of FLAC to WAV thru Asset UPnP on the Mac Mini, then yes we can hear the difference. It's subtle and having only just got our new Naim streaming system up and running, we only properly checked it yesterday but it's definitely detectable. My preference is for streaming WAV but my wife would class it more as being just different - YMMV.

Hi I guess you mean if on the fly transcoding is NOT set through Asset you can hear the subtle difference.

If transcoding is enabled the FLAC transcoded to linear PCM and and the original PCM are sample by sample identical unless you have a fault.

Remember with streaming - the files are not sent to the renderer - its the media data in its data encoding type  that is sent. 

However OS and library types invite different ways (patterns and timing of sequence of packets ) of  transferring  the data to the renderer - and these methods can be heard subtle heard to be different  -although these differences are subject to Naim firmware releases. This is why some media servers sound better than others for the identical data type. Transcoding libraries on some media servers cause different timing behaviours - therefore for example Asset transcoded sounds better than MinimServer transcoded on my system - although I can reduce the difference by changing which libraries are used by Minimstreamer.

Simon

Simon-in-Suffolk posted:

NewNaim16 posted:

If we enable on the fly transcoding of FLAC to WAV thru Asset UPnP on the Mac Mini, then yes we can hear the difference. It's subtle and having only just got our new Naim streaming system up and running, we only properly checked it yesterday but it's definitely detectable. My preference is for streaming WAV but my wife would class it more as being just different - YMMV.

Hi I guess you mean if on the fly transcoding is NOT set through Asset you can hear the subtle difference.

...

Simon

Er, yes indeed, you could look at it that way which is more precise.

Gandalf_fi posted:

I have been using uncompressed, however I also have a flacs ripped with 5 (saves quite a lot of space) & when doing flac to wav in nas I could not hear the difference (quick check). Wondering if someone can?

To be more accurate... Meaning flac to wav I can hear difference but not if flac was lossless or 5 when transcoded to wav in nas.

Hmm you follow up post confuses me - what are you saying you can hear the difference of - FLAC replay?

S