BleepingComputer.com: What's The Best Way To Rip Music?

The topic says it all. I want quality.
Any particular applications of file formats that are better than "all the others"?

Hi Kim,

I use Windows Media Player to manager my music collections. Do you need a higher quality backup than that?

I know from experience with ripping music, that if you want quaity you need a format that isn't compressed (MP3 is a compressed format, a bit like JPEG/JPG images) you also need a higher bit rate.

Of course if you want music with a higher bit rate you need to be willing to sacrafice disc space.
As the files can be quiet large.

Another option is to import using a lossless format but these files are gigantuous.

Here are some instructions on increasing your file format for importing and the bit rate.

Using Windows Media Player 11
1. Launch WMP
2. Under the Rip tab select the format you would like. (Note: If you really want to use MP3 when you select your bit rate select 320Kbps because it is the best possible quality. Also if you want a lossless format select Windows Media Audio Lossless)
3. If you have selected MP3 or WMA select your bit rate. For MP3 the best quality is 320kbps and for WMA its 192Kbps.
4. Import your music

Using iTunes
1. Open iTunes
2. Select Edit >>> Preferences
3. Click the Advanced tab followed by the Importing tab
4. Next to Import Using click the drop down menu and select MP3 or ACC (note: if you select Apple Lossless Encoder there is no need to continue to step 5)
5. Next to Setting select Custom and increase the bit rate to 320kbps.
6. Click Ok.
7. Now you can import excellent quality music.


Hope these helped

I use EAC (Exact Audio Copy) if I'm looking for perfect copies of CDDA (PCM) (for trading purposes), I rip to a .wav then convert to Flac for storage. IMO, you can't do better that that. As stated above if you want quality, you'll need a lossless format, such as shorten, or Flac, Wav.

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

If it just for the iPod, for example, then I rip with iTunes.

This post has been edited by 12x48y: 08 March 2008 - 09:22 PM

Nice suggestion 12x48y
I might try that myself

EAC will also burn cd's. But I found it's better to install the Flac plugin for Nero, that way you can just drag and drop the Flac files directly to Nero, and Nero will automatically convert Flac to audio cdda. I've ripped and burned hundreds of cd's this way.