Question for anyone who is overflowing with knowledge on HDD STORAGE

[CRIMSON PEARL]

I am loading music cd's into my HDD with itunes in WAV. Should I let the program set the bit rate and sample rate automatically or should I set it for the MAX.

Edit, never mind. Found the answer. :T

[David Meek]

What did you decide to go with?

[Kevin D]

If he's saving them as WAV's, he's limited to 44.1khz 16bit.

Kevin D.

[CRIMSON PEARL]

If he's saving them as WAV's, he's limited to 44.1khz 16bit.

Kevin D.

Is there something better to save them as? :B

[impala454]

Yeah ripping reg old red book CDs I don't think you'll get much better than that

[David Meek]

iTunes won't let you output FLAC files, will it?

[Hdale85]

Nope just apple Lossless AAC or something like that. FLAC is DRMless so a lot of people don't like to support it. Use EAC to convert CD's to FLAC.

[CRIMSON PEARL]

Nope just apple Lossless AAC or something like that. FLAC is DRMless so a lot of people don't like to support it. Use EAC to convert CD's to FLAC.

I am using EAC for some discs for it's error correction, itunes for the ones that don't need correcting. Converting everything to lossless WAV on an external hard drive. I've got less than 400 cd's at this point. What is the advantage of FLAC for me? :B

[James63]

The problem with WAV is you can not tag the songs. At least I had trouble... might have been me. I use only Apple computers these days and I chose Apples lossless for my conversions.

I did a good bit of blind testing between WAV and Lossless on my system (mac mini>toslink>Arcam 350>B&W 703) and I was unable to tell the difference (blind testing).

The advantage is the files are 1/2 the size of WAV, I can tag everything and get album art work. AIFF is also uncompressed like WAV but will support tags.

[pichonCalavera]

With FLAC or Apple Lossless is easier to tag, you could have tags with WAV, but it involves using CUE files, which are separate text files that describe the song/album information on the WAV file.

Let's say you have aprox 400 CD's, on average I guess each CD would be like 600MB - 700MB in WAV format, that sums up to aprox. 240 GB - 280 GB. With FLAC you could acomplish the same using less HD space.

Not sure if you are tagging your music right now, or if it's important to you, but if you are just starting to rip your entire music collection, I recommend that you take tagging measures right now, because ripping and ordering your entire collection is a thing you only want to do once (it takes a lot of time).

[CRIMSON PEARL]

When you guys say "tag" do you mean naming of all songs and albums. Because Itunes does this automatically. EAC doesn't seam to. So I only use EAC for it's remarkable error correction on certain discs.

This is probably the third time ripping all my discs (and the last), I've had hard drive crashing problems in the past. BUT all the old rips were mpeg (all for the best then). This time everything goes into my PC then copied to a WD hard drive that is connected with USB streight to my reciever (which has on screen display of all music stored within). After everything is on the primary hard drive it will be backed up again and stored in a safe place. :T

I have no interest in album art 99% of the time.

I don't expect to ever "need" FLAK because terabyts of memery are SO cheap now. :B

Thanks everyone for the input.

[sirbogey]

what receiver is that?

[Crimson]

Just an FYI: neither XP or Vista provide for bit-perfect playback. Only ASIO for Windows and CoreAudio for Macs provide this feature.

How is your computer connected to your system? Toslink, coax, USB, fire wire, ethernet, wifi?

PS: WAV supports 24/192 if the original source material was recorded as such.

[Crimson]

Nope just apple Lossless AAC or something like that. FLAC is DRMless so a lot of people don't like to support it. Use EAC to convert CD's to FLAC.

iTunes supports WAV, AIFF, ALAC, AAC, MP3, MP4A and a host of other formats. No FLAC support, though. Also, ALAC is not a DRM'd format, but supports DRM tags if attached.

[PewterTA]

My EAC automatically fills in the track/artist/album name for me. It's a setting in the option I believe for it to do it automatically vs. having to press the CD button on the top. It accesses freedb which is a pretty decent database. About 98% of what I've ran through it (of over 1000 CDs) it has found...of those about 90% were correct.

Everyone should use ASIO... ASIO4ALL baby! (Search it if you want ASIO for just about any audio card).

[CRIMSON PEARL]

Just an FYI: neither XP or Vista provide for bit-perfect playback. Only ASIO for Windows and CoreAudio for Macs provide this feature.

How is your computer connected to your system? Toslink, coax, USB, fire wire, ethernet, wifi?

PS: WAV supports 24/192 if the original source material was recorded as such.

Yamaha 2700 connected to an external HDD with the USB on the front panel. Has onscreen display also. Big step up from my old Sony cd jukeboxes if you ask me :B