MP3 recording

[grepin]

Wondering what program people are using to record MP3 files. I am using Nero however seem to have breaks in the music when on disc that arnt on the computer when played.

Thanks

[oofoofoo]

i am using Nero too. Have not had any problems yet when i tested head unit in shop (just bought it and have not installed yet). I think often the quality of the CD you burn onto causes problems.

[JR]

Kodak Silver gold cd's are very good for mp3 / vcd burning. Nero is very good for mp3 application. What player do you have? I have the same prob burning ripped vcd clips, some work fine, others are a bit scratchy. sometimes it can be blammed on what speed they were ripped at origionally, and how you computer decodes them.

[hippy]

it shouldn't matter what program u use to record mp3 .. as long as it follows the right format .. or am i getting the topic wrong?? if u're really worried about quality ... then u should burn at the slowest prossible speed ... when listening to mp3 its very very noticeable when a disc is scratched .. the errors are very obvious and not easy to hide ..

[Torrens]

The biggest problem with car mp3 is when you have a mixed CD to play. Between the mixed songs is a pause that is very frustrating and bad to listen to.

When making the mp3 (if you guys do this) - make sure to rip the mixed cd into *one* file - EAC (exact audio copy) is brilliant for this because it also rips *digitally* ensuring highest possible quality. Use the copy range function. If you don't use EAC currently, after using it and hearing the difference you won't go back and you won't accept 'popping' in you rips.

Be sure also to use LAME mp3 encoder with VBR (variable bit rate) to encode a cd with exact quality as original (according to our human hearing). EAC will automatically set you up with the correct LAME settings to achieve this.

Here's a bunch or URL's to get you started:

Lame d'load

http://home.pi.be/~mk442837/

EAC d'load

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

A little bit of information about the combination

http://www.afterdawn.com/articles/archive/...ydeneaclame.cfm

[Nav2k]

cd audio can be played right after each other, but mp3's cannnot due to their file system

no matter what program u use, an mp3 will not play directly after each other.

i also have the problem, mixes that go onto the next song i burn on audio cd.

[hippy]

variable bit rate?? be better just to leave it on a high setting??

[Guest RedLineGTR]

yah high setting...but try to different ones some work better for somepeople

[Craved]

I just use a program call DB poweramp, very handy!! all you have to do is right click on the .cda file and select convert -- away it goes!! take about 10 seconds a file!!!

[hippy]

so how do u guys manage the cd? with about 150 songs it gets pretty messy ... and with my deck its can take a long time if its not organised into files ... hehehe ... another thing annoying is when u listen to chinese music or something similar the deck can't display chinese characters ... annoying ..

[halz]

Depending on the player you can get a crossfade plugin. This fades the previous tracks last few seconds and the next tracks few seconds together and creates a much nicer transition than the usual harsh stop/start.

Not sure about car based mp3 head units, but certainly winamp (used to use it when i ran windows) and xmms (using this at the moment) have the plugins availability.

I'm not sure about xbox media player, but I'm sure its been done and thats what ill be running...

[halz]

I forgot to ask..

I've been using cdparanoia and lame with the highest quality VBR mode for ages - works very well. How does cdparanoia compare to this EAC - Torrens?

I have found that cdparanoia is EXCELLENT for ripping less than perfect audio cd's. It has many many options and can be set to attempt to rip a track indefinitely until it succeeds.. it will retry and retry to read the scratched part of the disk - and most of the time it eventually gets there - though it used to take quite a while on the old 2 and 4 speed drives.... It has been around for a very long time..

From the man page (yes it is linux based EDIT: though apparently its multiplatform - I've only used it in Linux and maybe some of the BSD's - dont remember):

CDPARANOIA(1)                                                    CDPARANOIA(1)

NAME

      cdparanoia  (Paranoia  release III) - an audio CD reading utility which

      includes extra data verification features

DATE

      version III release alpha 9.8 (02 Mar 2001)

SYNOPSIS

      cdparanoia [options] span [outfile]

DESCRIPTION

      cdparanoia retrieves audio tracks from CDDA capable CDROM drives.   The

      data  can  be  saved  to  a file or directed to standard output in WAV,

      AIFF, AIFF-C or raw format.  Most ATAPI, SCSI and  several  proprietary

      CDROM drive makes are supported; cdparanoia can determine if the target

      drive is CDDA capable.

      In addition to simple reading, cdparanoia adds extra-robust data  veri-

      fication,  synchronization,  error  handling and scratch reconstruction

      capability.

More Info: http://www.xiph.org/paranoia/

I use GRIP to tie these both together and do all the CDDB fancy stuff - ends up being really easy. I found it was much harder trying to sort out the shareware and stuff in windows..

[Torrens]

I've been using cdparanoia and lame with the highest quality VBR mode for ages - works very well. How does cdparanoia compare to this EAC - Torrens?

I haven't seen (or should that be heard?) paranoia in action so its difficult to make a comment.

EAC is the ripper of choice for Win32 - as it does rip digitally unlike all other rippers.

Seriously people, your simple rippers might seem easy and quick, but you're really missing out on some quality rips - I mean like perfect quality rips. If the source rip is imperfect, the final mp3 is going to imperfect and worse too. You will find the pops and clicks unacceptable. Yes, you can notice the difference.

Also VBR is the best for sound reproduction, which is more important for those who are looking for quality over the 10% or so filesize difference.

I recommend using it for yourself, and doing a comparison - you won't turn back, and you won't accept inferior rips again.

For those who use winamp / media player and have pissy little speakers (i.e. non hi-fi type equipment), try DFX (digital sound processor) - great enahancment in sound.

fxsound.com

[halz]

Yeah, I did some research on cdparanoia - looked at their website etc.

Seems the latest stable release is some years old.. some things just dont need to be improved

According to their site, it does a direct digital copy and even talks about Exact Audio Copy in some very technical discussion regarding the way it attempts to read the data off the disc.

Seems cdparanoia is still the way to go on linux and EAC seems ace for windows

[halz]

What sort of VBR settings are you using? VBR is still pretty new to me.. haven't really encoded a lot of MP3's in the last few years.

It still amazes me how quick you can create MP3's now days. Back when I was really into it, I would have to encode an album overnight to get really good quality.. go the latest and greatest pentium 150..

I use the following lame settings:

-q 0 or -q 2 -> highest quality algorithms .. not sure of a huge difference here

-V 0 -> highest VBR quality

Be interested in finding out what other people use..

By the way - file size does not concern me at all.. I'm actually interested in playing with flac (lossless compression - ie. exact reproduction)- hdd is so cheap nowdays, who cares

[hippy]

i don't understand why variable bit rate is better ... i'm assuming that it means when the song gets encoded, a higher bitrate is used when it is needed and lower bitrate when its not needed .. now if u use a high bit rate all the time then it doesn't matter right?? am i correct??

[stooj]

i would suggest the good ol windows media player, convert 2 wma files and use somethin like goldwave to convert them 2 wav format ... they are smaller files when decompressed therefore u can fit more on a cd

[hippy]

u've just converted file formats twice .. thats alot of lost data ... it will sound bad ...

[stooj]

well , where did mp3's come from???? they r mostly off cd's ripped to mp3 format .... then u download them off kazaa and u convert them 2 wav burn 2 cd there is 2 conversions , i only do that when the cd is write protected , which alot of cd's r these days