Ripping FLAC for streaming from Synology NAS to Arcan AV Receiver

[rwatking]

Hi

Apologies if the answers have been posted previously but I'm having trouble condensing them to solve my issue. I'm a newbie to all of this!

I want to rip my CD collection to FLAC and have purchased dBpoweramp for the purpose.

I intend to store the resultant output onto a Synology DS214Play NAS and am planning on playing them across a network on an Arcam AVR380 AV receiver. The DS214Play is a DLNA media server and the AVR380 is DLNA compliant and both are uPnP compliant. On the face of it both support the FLAC format.

Given the various options in dBpoweramp, I need to know what settings will give me the best chance of ripping FLAC files from my CDs so that they will play back on the above devices.

I tend to like to play albums as whole entities rather than individual tracks but would like the option of compiling playlists of individual tracks occasionally.

Specifically, what are the best dBpoweramp settings to achieve playback by album (most of the time) and CD quality (HiFi) output under the circumstances that I've described above?

Many thanks in anticipation.

Roger

[garym]

Re: Ripping FLAC for streaming from Synology NAS to Arcan AV Receiver

You don't need to do anything special with regard to the FLAC files. Just rip to regular FLAC files (any compression is fine)** If a player will play FLAC, it will play any FLAC file (I suppose their might be rare exceptions to this but I've never seen them).

**You may already know this, but if not, note that the "compression" in FLAC files is NOT the same as compression done with "lossy" files (such as mp3). compression with regard to FLAC just relates to file size. Once decoded by the player, the FLAC file is bit perfect back to the original CD. Plus FLAC file rips are automatically gapless (if the album is gapless).

I've ripped thousands of my CDs. I use the default FLAC compression of "5" and add only one DSP (ReplayGain). This simply adds the ReplayGain album and track tags to the track (and these tags can be used by some players to normalize volume on the fly). But the RG tags do NOT change the actual audio itself (i.e., adding the RG tags does not change the lossless nature of the rip).

You should play around with dynamic naming string to get the file/directory naming set to suit you. Particularly play around with different type cds (compilations, mulit disc, etc.) You can either set up different ripping profiles for each, or in my own case I use the following string to handle all types automactically. Click on SET next to "naming' in lower left panel on the ripping screen and copy and paste this string into appropriate box. You can then see how it handles things based on the Madonna example.

[IFCOMP]Compilations\[album] [IFMULTI] \Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title]-[artist][][IF!COMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][]\[album][IFMULTI] \Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title][]

You'll also want to think about which metadata tags you want to use. There are the basics (album, artist, track, genre, etc.), but there are lots of possible tags (publisher, label, composer, etc.). If you're doing classical music, expect to do lots of manual tag editing to get things just as you want them (the online databases are mostly only good with pop music). See here for some tips on classical tagging:

http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/Beginners_Guide_To_Classical

In terms of setting up dbpa, I use the "ultra secure" setting (which first tries to use accuraterip and if it doesn't match does a couple of rips and compares them as a test). See:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/cd-ripper-setup-guide.htm

[rwatking]

Re: Ripping FLAC for streaming from Synology NAS to Arcan AV Receiver

Many thanks garym. Lots there for me to consider. I'll try out your suggestions over the next few days.

Cheers for now

Roger