How to rip my CDs as lossless as possible (gain adjust/clip?)?

[jprip]

Hi everybody,

A friend and I are trying to rip our CDs as lossless as possible. Therefore, we put them into .flac without any compression enabled.

Now we stumbled upon the gain settings/adjust modes in the DSP. If it was up to me, I would leave the tracks absolutly untouched without an DSP options!

But what about the clip warning? What happens if we just rip every track without any gain adjustments and clipping?


Our priority is to keep the dynamic of each track and between them as original as possible!

Any recommendations on what settings we should go for?


Bid thanks in advance for your help!

[mville]

Re: How to rip my CDs as lossless as possible (gain adjust/clip?)?

A friend and I are trying to rip our CDs as lossless as possible. Therefore, we put them into .flac without any compression enabled.

FLAC is lossless.

If you are referring to the FLAC Encoder Settings>Compression setting, this does not relate to audio compression, but data compression. It has no effect on the ripped audio quality, only, the size of the encoded FLAC file and the time it takes your cpu to encode/decode the FLAC.

The default of Compression Level 5 is OK for most users. I have this set to Compression Level 8.

Now we stumbled upon the gain settings/adjust modes in the DSP. If it was up to me, I would leave the tracks absolutly untouched without an DSP options!

Which DSP are you referring to exactly?

[garym]

Re: How to rip my CDs as lossless as possible (gain adjust/clip?)?

FLAC is lossless.

If you are referring to the FLAC Encoder Settings>Compression setting, this does not relate to audio compression, but data compression. It has no effect on the ripped audio quality, only, the size of the encoded FLAC file and the time it takes your cpu to encode/decode the FLAC.

The default of Compression Level 5 is OK for most users. I have this set to Compression Level 8.




Which DSP are you referring to exactly?

I think he is referring to the ReplayGain DSP that has a tick box related to clipping. Using ReplayGain DSP simply adds TAGs to the metadata that contains information that can be used by Players to adjust volume on the fly. This DSP does NOT change the underlying audio so you still have a LOSSLESS audio file. I personally don't 'tick' that box related to clipping in the ReplayGain DSP settings.
EDIT: And even players that will use the info in the ReplayGain tags can be told not to use it, or to use track, or album gain, or a combination (smart gain in squeezeboxes and similar in foobar2000). But again, this info is simply in a TAG (no different from ALBUM name or ARTIST name being in a tag....no effect on the audio bits as they are still lossless)

[mville]

Re: How to rip my CDs as lossless as possible (gain adjust/clip?)?

I think he is referring to the ReplayGain DSP that has a tick box related to clipping.

... or the ReplayGain (Apply) DSP.

[jprip]

Re: How to rip my CDs as lossless as possible (gain adjust/clip?)?

Thanks for your help so far!
And yes, you were right in the matter of what I am referring to....

Just to sum it up:
What you say is that I should enable the album and/or track gain adjustment via ReplayGain DSP wothout ticking the clip box. in the end, my squeezebox is absolutly capable of performing at its best quality!
Hope I got it right...

Thanks guys again. You really helped us out with our final step!

[garym]

Re: How to rip my CDs as lossless as possible (gain adjust/clip?)?

Thanks for your help so far!
And yes, you were right in the matter of what I am referring to....

Just to sum it up:
What you say is that I should enable the album and/or track gain adjustment via ReplayGain DSP wothout ticking the clip box. in the end, my squeezebox is absolutly capable of performing at its best quality!
Hope I got it right...

Thanks guys again. You really helped us out with our final step!

Yes. You are correct. And I too use squeezeboxes (Transporter, Touch Players, Booms, Radios) and LMS. within LMS I really like the setting "Smart Gain". This automatically uses album gain tag when playing entire albums but uses Track gain when playing a mix from different albums. This is set "per player" in LMS > SETTINGS > PLAYER > AUDIO.