Windows Music Collection Ripping - Formats & Player

I'm now in the business of re-ripping my entire CD collection, and this time I'd like to get it done properly. In a previous, ignorant, life, I ripped bits in 320kb/s, some in 190kb/s, and all in AAC. That's just not doing some of the audio gear justice, so I was thinking it was about time I got everything done in lossless. At the moment, I run iTunes (i'M an iPod and iPhone owner), and if I'm honest I quite like the layout. To change from that to another player wouldn't be a disaster but it would have to handle all the same features as iTunes - lyrics, album covers, subdivisions of artist etc, automatic importing, file and folder creation, deletion, naming etc. It would also have to be able to put them on my iPod.

So, a few questions;

1. What format should I rip to? The two I'm considering are FLAC and ALAC, the former because it's prevalent, and the latter because iTunes supports it. Is ALAC widely accepted? If I rip to ALAC, will those files be compatible with smarty-pants stuff like streaming music around the house to amps, or even with other 'MP3' players I might get to replace the iPod?
2. Can my iPod (current-gen 80GB Classic) and iTunes handle FLAC at all?
3. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the two formats? Do the individual files hold all the information (album cover, lyrics etc) or not?
4. If ALAC's compatible with non-Apple MP3 players, and with programs other than iTunes - i.e., future-proofed - is it worth ripping to FLAC at all? If they aren't, is the best thing to do to rip to FLAC and transcode an ALAC library to actually listen to?
5. What players do you recommend? What do you use?
6. What have you done?

Looking forward to some informed answers!

 

1. I'm a FLAC lover all the way. Being a member of a now deceased pork flavoured torrent community, I always favoured quality above all. The best program for ripping is EAC using the FLAC codec, which is more like a mission to set up but a guide can be found here -http://hiphopiscoolagain.com/secure-cd-ripping-with-exact-audio-copy/#toflac

I don't know anything about ALAC, so can't advise

2. The iPod's can't play FLAC (well they never used to be able to), so I had to put rockbox on mine, then your good to go. iTunes can't handle FLAC at all, again I've not used it in donkies years but never used to.
Having never owned the shiney jesus phone I have no idea about FLAC. I wonder if 'theres an app for that'

3. The file can hold as much as you want. If you use a program like FooBar as a media player, or even just a media organiser, you can write as many custom tag fields to your audio as you want.

4. I've never heard of a format FooBar *cant* play so I assume ALAC's in the list. WinAmp and MediaMonkey also have pretty vast file compatability to worth checking. As for the transcoding, don't do it man! Transcoding down like FLAC -> MP3 is okay, but transcoding sideways won't have any benefits. Only negatives really. When transcoding from FLAC always take the FLAC's back to WAV's first and reencode from there.

5. FooBar! Love it to bits, so customisable, wouldn't be without it. About 2-3 years ago I used WinAmp, but when AOL bought it, it got really crap, really quick. Plus the original Winamp developer now makes FooBar so I kinda followed him .
MediaMonkey might be worth a shout for you though. Very user friendly, seamless iPod support, but much better than iTunes. Your not jumping off the edge straight into FooBar, it might be a nice middle step
I'm also a Spotify pro subscriber, but thats neither here nor there.

6. My current library is in Ogg, as its finally hitting the mainstream. It's better than MP3 but was always a bit obscure, however with HTML5 now using it it's going from strength to strength. My Nexus One's audio player supports Ogg natively too so s'all good.


Essentially I want a perfect library, but not wasting space. So I now only download FLAC and transcode to Ogg in Q10 (~500Kb/s) or rip my own CD's.

 

1. I would advise going with FLAC. ALAC, being that it's made by Apple is unlikely to be compatible with anything but Apple products, but your results may vary. That being said, FLAC isn't likely going to be compatible with any sort of stand-alone media center, but it is compatible with a number of 3rd party media players.

2. iPods have not, do not, and will not, ever support FLAC.

3. FLAC, just like an MP3 can hold metadata and can be readily edited by most media players. Lossless formats are good because they replicate the CD track exactly, rather than interpreting it like an MP3 does. The only disadvantage is they take a little more processing horsepower than other formats as well as hard drive space, but most modern computers will be able to accommodate FLAC just fine.

4. I'm not a fan of transcoding, personally. I would stick to one format or another.

5. What I do is I rip a CD as an MP3 for iTunes and then as a FLAC file for Songbird. This is done very easily by asking Songbird to watch the folder that you keep your FLAC files in and ripping it via CDex. It's very easy to set up and Songbird looks and behaves almost identically as iTunes.

6. I started out with a bunch of MP3s and I wanted something better for listening at home, so I re-ripped all of my 700 or CDs to FLAC and I haven't regretted it one bit.

 

OK, I'm in the same boat as yourself (or I was - I've recently finished ripping my collection).

I've ripped in FLAC, which is the only format I would recommend because:

1) No single corporation owns the rights to FLAC, hence my music collection will never become obsolete.
2) FLAC can handle a variety of sample rates, everything from 128k through 16/44.1 and to studio master level (which is becoming more popular and accessible by the week).
3) I can tag and edit the tags in a FLAC file simply.
4) It is truly lossless - quality was my primary concern.
5) Storage is cheap, hence compression isn't a consideration.

Apple and MS portable devices don't play FLAC as far as I'm aware. Some portable devices do (Cowan springs to mind, and is regarded as being the best-performing portable player).

If you rip a large FLAC library, you can easily run a batch conversion to create spin-off MP3 or AAC files for playback on a portable device. I do this - I play my FLAC library at home through my hifi, and occasionally sync my MP3 library for portable devices and the car.

For ripping and transcoding I recommend DBPowerAmp (www.dbpoweramp.com). It rips, encodes, transcodes and generally does everything you need. The paid for version includes an AMG license which provides very accurate metadata when ripping. It also performs AcurateRIP to guarantee your rip is of the highest quality. I've also used EAC (exact audio copy), however this is too "powerful" for normal use and doesn't offer me any advantages.

For playback in the house I use a Linn Klimax DS into a Linn Aktiv system (www.linn.co.uk). It's simply the best digital source available, destroys all CD players and streamers, and plays back studio master recordings. The Beatles released their entire back catalogue last year in studio master resolution. Jaw-dropping! I also have ripped the 24/96 layer of many DVDA's, which sound much better than the 16/44.1 CD.

All my music was ripped with DBPowerAmp onto a Netgear NAS drive running Twonky Media Server. I control my music using an app called "PlugPlayer" which runs on an iPhone. Linn also provide control software which runs under Windows, and they're working on MAC and web-based systems.

This is a true "DLNA and UPnP" system, hence I can scale it around the house. I also have ripped my DVD collection in the same way and watch them through a WDTV Live.

Please let me know if you need any more help - I work in this field and would be happy to assist.

 

Thanks for the help! Looks to me like I'll be ripping to FLAC and then transcoding an MP3 library for portable use... Which is effort but looks worth it. Consider yourselves +repped!