Newbie Ripping Questions

[jvenables]

Hiya All...I am pretty new to the CD ripping scene....I am looking for some guidance on format, bitrate to use for ripping my CD's....I would like to be able to play the rips on my PC, Ipod & wifes creative labs MP3 player at a good quality....file size is not an issue....

I appreciate there are a lot of different components that can affect quality....just looking for some rough best practice's that are used that are not dependant on hardware.

Any guidance would be appreciated

[Porcus]

Re: Newbie Ripping Questions

Hiya All...I am pretty new to the CD ripping scene....I am looking for some guidance on format, bitrate to use for ripping my CD's....I would like to be able to play the rips on my PC, Ipod & wifes creative labs MP3 player at a good quality....file size is not an issue....

I appreciate there are a lot of different components that can affect quality....just looking for some rough best practice's that are used that are not dependant on hardware.

Any guidance would be appreciated

Use lossless. .wav is well-supported for playback, but has bad tagging support (that is: many attempts are made to tag, but they are noncompliant and might break).
I use .flac.
Problem: Will not play on Ipod, probably not on the Creative (I haven't checked though).
Solution: Encode on-the-fly when copying. That is: You have the .flac files read-only on your hard drive, and instead of copying them to the portable device, you convert with the portable device as target directory (NOT deleting original file).

[LtData]

Re: Newbie Ripping Questions

If you want one format for both devices, go with mp3, whether stored on the drive or on-the-fly encoded as Porcus recommends. Regarding bitrates, I try to pick one that averages around 192kbps VBR. If you want the best format for each device, either go with mp3 or WMA on the Creative and m4a on the iPod, again around 192kbps VBR.