Whether you’re bringing a huge music collection into the 21st century, simply can’t stand the thought of buying all of your music in the digital domain, or just want to listen to some Beatles on your iPod or Zune, at some point or another you’re going to have to rip a CD. Don’t worry, though: lacerative neologisms notwithstanding, ripping your music can be as plain and simple as “Do-Re-Mi,” or it can be as complicated as you want to make it. The choice is yours.
The first thing you do is decide which file format to encode your music to. If you only plan to transfer your music to your iPod, AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) isn’t a bad choice. If you’re a Zune user, or only plan to use a Windows-based media server for music playback, WMA (Windows Media Audio) makes sense. But if you plan to share your music between several devices, and don’t want to rip your discs more than once, you’ll probably end up relying on the old standby MP3 format. The question of which program to use when converting your CDs to MP3 isn’t quite so easily answered, though.
The simplest and most obvious choice for Zune users is Microsoft’s own Zune software or Windows Media Player, which, as far as ripping options go, only allow you to select your bitrate. Bitrates determine not only how much disk space each song will hog, but also how closely the digitally compressed file resembles the CD source, sonically speaking: ostensibly, the bigger the file, the better it’s going to sound. But don’t crank that slider all the way to its highest setting automatically, assuming that anything less is going to be unlistenable. (Conversely, don’t set it to its lowest settings assuming you won’t be able to hear the difference.) A recent informal study at the science blog Cognitive Daily revealed that out of nearly 700 volunteers, only 33 listeners could reliably tell the difference between recordings encoded at 128 kilobits per second (kbps) and 256kbps. But you could well find yourself in that ~5% of listeners, so rip several songs at different bitrates, from 128 all the way up to 320, and see which file size best suits your ears.
For those who feel confined by Microsoft’s simple ripping options Apple’s free iTunes software offers a bit more control over the encoding process. And although some of its parameters sound a bit esoteric, they’re all quite straightforward when you dig beneath the jargon.
Variable Bit Rate Encoding (VBR): Allows your encoding software to use more disk space—hence less compression—for complicated or otherwise hard-to-compress parts of the song. With VBR turned on, your chosen bitrate becomes your minimum bitrate.
Sample Rate and Channels: Should be left on “Auto” in most cases.
Stereo Mode: Allows you to choose between Normal and Joint Stereo. The former encodes the left and right channels of your CD separately, while the latter combines some of the information from the left and right channels. At lower bitrate settings, Joint Stereo can add quite a bit of perceived audio fidelity to your music, at the expense of making it sound flatter.
Smart Encoding Adjustments: Let’s iTunes adjust some of your parameters to ensure higher-quality encoding. This won’t override any of the settings you’ve set yourself—it only affects only those parameters set to “Auto.”
Filter Frequencies Below 10 Hz: Given that the deepest, raunchiest bass in the loudest, hardest-hitting hip hop never gets anywhere near as deep as 10 Hz—not to mention the fact that no home audio system could be expected to reproduce frequencies any lower—there’s really no reason not to check this box.
Believe it or not, but some digital music aficionados even feel that, everything else being equal—bitrate, stereo mode, etc.—the choice of encoding software can affect the audio quality of your MP3s. Among the MP3 illuminati, by far the most revered encoder is LAME, an open-source project of questionable legality. The programs that use it—most notably MediaMonkey and WinAmp—are purported to produce better-sounding MP3s than iTunes or Windows Media Player, so if you have picky ears and don’t mind a bit of extra work, perhaps one of these options is more your speed. Try them out and see. The worst that can happen is that you’ll find yourself a member of a very exclusive—if somewhat dorky—new club.
Thanks a lot!
I also prefer to use MelodyCan CD-Ripper.
MelodyCan CD Ripper tasks are:
* Rip audio CD to MP3 files
* Rip audio CD to AAC files
* Rip audio CD to WAV files
* Convert audio CD
* Encode audio CD
* Convert music from CD
* Grab CD tracks
* Grab CD music
Here is URL - http://www.melodycan.com/rip_cd.html
Great article - thank you! As the digital age grows more and more, this article helps people keep in step.
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I can give simple answers to most of these issues.. See simple answers up front. If you need justification, read below.
FORMAT: mp3 is the only way to go.
SOFTWARE: iTunes is the only way to go.
BIT RATE: just go with 192 bps.
VARIABLE BIT RATE: Use it.
QUALITY ISSUES: Forget about quality issues. Convenience is all that matters.
If you need justification, read on. Better yet, just take the above advice as gospel and go get busy enjoying your music.
FORMAT: Don’t even consider anything other than mp3 unless you have no choice. The article mentions ripping your CDs more than once, that’s a preposterous idea. Quality issues are moot-see below. Other formats lock you in with Microsoft, Apple, or Sony, mp3 does not. Licensing issues are a great evil, mp3 avoids those completely. The CDs we own are not copy protected, this is a great boon to all of us and we should take advantage of it. We bought and paid for that music, we should be able to enjoy it in any convenient way and mp3 is the best thing for that.
SOFTWARE: iTunes does a fine job and is a great, full featured, slick program that doesn’t glitch, it’s a pleasure to use. Forget about LAME, that’s for the command line folks. Forget about Microsoft, their stuff is crap. Quality issues are moot-see below. iTunes is a powerful organizer for your entire music library and your artwork. Nothing else comes close.
BIT RATE: 192 bps is a good compromise between space and quality. It’s a notch better quality than anything you need, yet still provides good compression.
VARIABLE BIT RATE: The only disadvantage is a small sacrifice in disk space, and that’s dirt cheap nowadays, so use it.
QUALITY ISSUES: Forget about quality issues. You enjoyed 8-track, right? LP? AM radio? Ever heard of any ignorant Neanderthal that still maintains that vinyl sounds better? Get a grip-it totally doesn’t matter in any way, shape, or form. What matters is that you get started, and that you have your music in a convenient, flexible format that allows you to enjoy it anytime, anywhere, any way you want. Waffling about sound quality issues just slows you down and keeps you out of the game, thereby decreasing how you are using your music. You don’t have $1000 speakers, you probably have a $30 set. You’re not listening with $500 earphones, you’re probably listening with something that costs closer to ninety-nine cents. You’re ears aren’t an oscilloscope. You aren’t manipulating sound for the Zapruder JFK film, you’re mixing down Nirvana. Besides that, there will be absolutely no difference, not even theoretically audible difference, resulting from most of the quality decisions you would have to make. The difference between LAME and iTunes ripping? Not a bit, and I mean a literal computer bit, as in an eighth of a byte. LAME does two things differently: 1: it tries to rip the CD without one “bit” of error, and 2; it notifies you if it can’t get a clean rip, saving you the trouble of sound checking your rips. Those are useful features, but LAME is a primitive command-line style app that most people won’t be able to use. Also LAME was written long ago by a guy in his basement when ripping was still in the dark ages, by now the big players have more than caught up with it. Ultimately “ripping” CDs is just copying digital files from the CD to your hard drive. Any utility that can do it at all is going to get an essentially perfect copy...that’s the beauty of digital data. There are obscure technical reasons why the copy may not always be 100% perfect like a normal file copy, but it’s going to be essentially identical. The same arguments apply to bit rate and other quality issues. Well if you’re not convinced by now it won’t help that I continue. Just remember, wasting time and mental energy worrying about non-existent quality issues is self-destructive. You really have much better things you need to be doing with that energy.