Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

[Mirko88]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

After the advice on this and other forums and testing myself, I found that AIFF was more flexible for me. You can always convert to wave later.
As Spoon mentioned, wave tags only show is specific players, so most players will not support the tags and album art.
I found that I have more options with AIFF. But in the end it is also a personal choice, because I use iTunes a lot to synch my iPod/Pad.
Perhaps your player of preference does support wave tags.

[lobisimo]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

indeed Mirko, my players (Akurate and Squeezebox) work perfect with wave and flac tags.

[Green269]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

Hello,
I am wondering if someone can help me. I am using the multi-encoder to rip cds in WAV and ALAC. And I know ALAC is capable of 1411 bitrate, and wav IS 1411, but i notice when I use the multi-encoder, or just convert a WAV cd to ALAC, the bitrate is NOT 1411. Is there any way to manually change a setting to get ALAC in dbpoweramp to be 1411 bitrate?

Thank you!!

[Spoon]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

ALAC is a compressed format, so the bitrate might show half the actual, when ALAC decompressed it is the same as Wave (1411)

[Green269]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

Thank you Spoon! Another question for you. Does your batch ripper support Acronova Nimbie USB DVD/CD Duplicators? I wouldn't want to buy one and not have it supported by dbpoweramp. Didn't want to start a whole new thread...Thank you!!

[Spoon]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

It is not supported.

[boogieman]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

I use AIFF with tag and album art.

[Sugar Magnolia]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

I did a test though on a Sonos system and really can hear the difference. I am certainly not an expert or a tachnical person, but my assumption is that it has got to do with the uncompressing process. So not talking about quality of the data, but the sound itself.

I believe that flac is the only format that Sonos supports replay gain (track only) with. I do not think that you can toggle this on or off. If there is a replay tag, the Sonos will obey it. Perhaps the difference you hear is a level difference, caused by the Sonos adjusting playback level.

I personally prefer flac for this reason, Sonos replay gain. I do not like that it uses Track Replay gain instead of Album replay gain. I get around this limitation by copying the album values to the track fields.

[currter]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

Hello,

I am struggling with this similar issue as I already invested about a week
back Late March to early April to rip 1300 CDs to .WAV using iTunes on an iMac
(even to the point of having 6 to 7 CD drives running , ripping CDs in parallel
to store on a hard drive (rotational ).
So far the collection is just under 800 GBs and I have made back ups of the master
copy and from there I copy, distribute songs to various USB flash drives (alphabetizing).

Now that my new Pioneer (even Sony) car stereo(s) can have a benefit of displaying album
art and metadata information, I want to take advantage of that feature.
Now I have to re-rip all those CDs onto another Master hard drive using flac format for its
metadata capabilities, but I am struggling to get the right setting.... like should I store the
files uncompressed (close to the size of the .wav files with metadata added) or should I
rip them compressed lossless (those levels of 1 to 8 even 0) using perhaps free software like
Exact Audio Copy (EAC). It seems as if the uncompressed lossless mode is proprietary to
dbpoweramp software so I will have to purchase it soon for either Mac or Windows* platform.

So, can .WAV files be tagged at all and show on the display the album art and metadata ?
Which flac form is the best to use if disk space is not of concern?
So far I am ripping using the dbpoweramp special feature uncompressed lossless...
Is there any advantage to using that like to lessen the CPU processing when it comes to decoding
the "compressed" flac file... more CPU usage or work it has to do if the files are compressed to those
levels of 1 to 8?
When the CPU has to work harder to decompress or decode the compressed files, does that or can
that affect audio? Like sometimes I hear a small buzzing sound but that is usually when the car stereo
is still reading files on the hard drive while the song is playing... I would listen to the first song it can find
after the initial read, and then I see 10%.. 20%... 60% ... 90% .. 100% as it continues to load
all the let us say 10,800 songs on a 480GB hard drive attached.

So for this project I want to switch to flac but want to make sure I am using the correct form of it
so I do not have to do this again.... However, I am thinking that I could rip using the maximum size
fiac files (uncompressed lossless that is similar to size of .wav) and later on compress those to one of
the sublevel (0, 1 to 8) flac formats if ever I want to save space and since all compressed levels are
still lossless and perhaps I could get back the original uncompressed lossless file since it is similar
to .wav.

Decisions,decisions..

[Dat Ei]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

Decisions,decisions..

You worry too much! As long as your audio files are lossless, you can convert those files back and forth into any other lossless audio format without problems and any loss of audio data.

Nevertheless it is a good idea and practice to rip the music as flac, because flac is a common standard that supports ID3 tags. The use of tags in wave files is not that common. So my tip: use flac.

The compression rate of flac doesn't matter too much and has no(!) effect on the audio quality. Todays players are capable enough to handle all compression rates without any glitches. I've kept the dBpa standard compression of 5. Higher compression rates only need more cpu time for their calculation and save only a little disk space.

So don't worry about the compression rate - use flac and the compression rate you like (you can change it any time, if you feel any need to do so). Spend more time in the quality of the tags instead of thinking about the compression rate of a lossless codec.


Dat Ei

[currter]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

I did notice the default compression level seemed to be 5 or 6...
I was wondering if setting it to 1 could obviously generate larger files but
require less CPU to decode. And if that is the case, one could just use the free
EAC software which seems to do the same thing , rips to .flac files and adds metadata.

The advantage of dbpoweramp or what stands out is the special feature
of uncompressed lossless ripping to flac files that are same size as .wav....
There must have been a reason the developers may have modified the
open source flac software to allow this special feature.
Kind of like having the .wav file (its size) and just adding the metadata
(to the point I was thinking of taking a wav file and renaming it with .flac extension
to see if that could be processed with the metadata).

I think that will be my decision to proceed with dbpoweramp.

[Dat Ei]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

And if that is the case, one could just use the free
EAC software which seems to do the same thing , rips to .flac files and adds metadata.

There are plenty of reasons to use dBpa, but I can't see a reason why one wants to use a mixed workflow of dBpa and EAC or a workflow of EAC alone. Again: bigger files have no(!) advantages from the audio point of view.

The advantage of dbpoweramp or what stands out is the special feature
of uncompressed lossless ripping to flac files that are same size as .wav....

And what is the advantage of the same size?!? For me there are three aspects:

1.) audio quality
2.) quality of meta data
3.) common standard of the file format

There must have been a reason the developers may have modified the
open source flac software to allow this special feature.
Kind of like having the .wav file (its size) and just adding the metadata
(to the point I was thinking of taking a wav file and renaming it with .flac extension
to see if that could be processed with the metadata).

Why do you insist on wave? I don't get it. wave has the same audio quality as flac, but wave players that can handle wave files with meta data are not so common. Beside that the wave files are bigger than flac files - this is on top a disadvantage if you have huge collections, even if disk space is cheap.


Dat Ei

[mville]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

The advantage of dbpoweramp or what stands out is the special feature
of uncompressed lossless ripping to flac files that are same size as .wav....
There must have been a reason the developers may have modified the
open source flac software to allow this special feature.
Kind of like having the .wav file (its size) and just adding the metadata
(to the point I was thinking of taking a wav file and renaming it with .flac extension
to see if that could be processed with the metadata).

What makes you think uncompressed lossless is a special feature, rather than just another feature?

The compression levels are 0 thru 8 plus the uncompressed option. The decoded flac file (encoded at any level or the uncompressed option) will always be the same.

If you are unsure, just rip to flac at the default level.

[garym]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

Wav = FLAC = ALAC = lossless!

compression in FLAC doesn't change the above. My suspicion is that the uncompressed FLAC is just something to appease the audiophools that never could understand that lossless = lossless.

I like dbpa better than eac because of its ease of use, metadata sources, conversion tools, etc.
ps. I use FLAC at default -5.

[currter]

Re: Best uncompressed lossless format to rip CD and have tags + cover art

[QUOTE=Dat Ei;167925]There are plenty of reasons to use dBpa, but I can't see a reason why one wants to use a mixed workflow of dBpa and EAC or a workflow of EAC alone. Again: bigger files have no(!) advantages from the audio point of view.

That is why I want to do the research to figure out which software would be best (or better) to use
so I can start with it and finish the entire project using the same application like I did when I ripped
the 1300 CDs using iTunes on the Mac. A few months ago I did not have the foresight or even thought
about metadata issues because I had not upgraded the car stereos until June.
I was aware of flac in the past but was more comfortable with wav (and .aiff may not have been
compatible in all players like .wav and .flac are ).

I see some advantages of dbpoweramp and some advantages of EAC (like one CD, I could not get
the full metadata using dba but EAC and WMP pulled the information in better... one of those discs
from Unidisc Canada).

You also question, why am I so hung up on .wav files since they are large? Then why does dbpoweramp
allow uncompressed lossless which generate files just as large or slightly larger than .wav?
I am trying to get from you what is the advantage of having that special feature to tease the customer?
This seems to be the only major feature where dba software differs from EAC which is free.

I am trying to see why should I pay for DBA that offers the same compression levels as EAC
with the exception of no compression. Why would DBA offer a special feature to generate a similarly
.wav file and not promote it or have disparaging comments about it? Why offer that feature at all
if it is not considered beneficial?

EAC even tells me where there are suspicious reads on the disc giving the track's minute: second position
so I can perhaps play the CD to see if I hear any anomalies at that point (which I did not really, good
error correction I guess ).


Well who knows

Thank you for the input.