CDex as a MP3 ripper?
Does anyone have any views on CDex as a ripper?
Being quite new to the whole MP3 world, I relied on CD and my NetMD previously, I read lots of you guys' postings. The favoured solution seemed to be EAC then LAME encoding before transferring with EphPod.
The idea of using EAC on my 400 or so CD's then encoding with LAME seemed too much of a chore. CDex uses LAME encoding when ripping and encoding on the fly.
I use VBR set between 96 and 192. Am I missing much?
[503 byte] By [
TheDaddy] at [2007-11-9 11:40:21]
# 1 Re: CDex as a MP3 ripper?
I use CDex and have never EVER had a problem with it. I use the LAME encoding with a 192 kbs 44 stereo sound. It seems to me it is a choice of preference rather than sound quality between LAME and EAC. Personaly I see no difference but of course I might be wrong in which anyone can tell me I would be grateful. But as of now I still use LAME. Oh and the best part about CDex is that it is free.
# 2 Re: CDex as a MP3 ripper?
Sound quality is really a personal preference.
Most people can't tell the difference between 128 and 192, and even less can tell between 192 and 320.
I personally use 192 for all my recent rips, but earlier i used 160 and can tell only a little bit. The reason i use 192 is for the bass response.
I think between 96 and 192 on vbr would be bearable, but i'd go with 128 to 192. Anything below 100 can be scary, even if it is vbr.
# 3 Re: CDex as a MP3 ripper?
Thanks for the advice. Ill re-rip the couple of dozen CD's I've already done at 128-192VBR before ploughing into the others.
Do you know what the "jitter" errors are?
Should I be concerned about a high count?
# 4 Re: CDex as a MP3 ripper?
Well I use CDEX with its built in LAME (the latest stable version--3.92?). However, I recently upgraded from a very slow PC (which ripped CD's at like 0.6-0.8X speed!!!) to a new DELL (2.53 Ghz) thinking wow I'd be ripping CDs with LAME (at good quality) in no time (i.e. 3-5X or 5-10 mins). But boy was I supprised that most tracks still take on avg 60 secs to extract and 60 sec to encode... taking about 20mins or more (2-2.5X?) to rip a CD.
To compound this I'd get so many jitter errors (even with CDEX's native error correction on) for most of my CDs, and trying both my 16X DVD and 48X CD-RW. Some were bad enough you could really hear the "pops" in the resulting mp3. However, I've found if the jitter errors are few and isolated (spread out -- you can see the logs where they occur in the track based on time offset) I could not hear any audible difference. A jitter error results in lost audio data from the CD (I think a sector). I'm not sure how much playback time that equates to...but I gather one jitter error is typically not audible (but don't take my word on that).
I've found that the 3rd party error detection/correction method that you can configure (i.e. using the paranoia full setting), which is apparently slower, usually corrects all jitter errors (and is not really any slower -- at least in my case which is probably already too slow).
I've not tried EAC which is supposedly the best for catching and correcting all jitter errors...but also slower. Also, it does not have the lastest stable LAME built in so you have to configure it as an external encoder. When I first played with that approach on CDEX (over built-in one) I could not get the ID tagging working despite following the intructions on parm passing (which resulting in me having to do super tagging on the mp3s afterwards).
Hope you find what works best for you. I'm still baffled that my CD drives seem subpar and require lots of jitter correction and slower extraction (arrg!). Maybe sometime in the near future, it will be a very painless and quick to rip CDs directly to AAC (on Windows) for the new iPods (and not have to use slow LAME to get audio quality)... :)
# 5 Re: CDex as a MP3 ripper?
I have just downloaded the latest ephPod with support for MP4/AAC.
How do I get CDex to rip in this format?
It offers two AAC formats but both require a codec to be entered in the "path" box.
Where do I get this codec, how do I install it?
I'm kinda thinking I might start ripping files into MP4/AAC ready for the new iTunes for Windows seeing as I'm ripping my entire CD collection for the first time, I don't fancy doing it twice!
# 6 Re: CDex as a MP3 ripper?
Originally posted by iMiKE23
I use CDex and have never EVER had a problem with it. I use the LAME encoding with a 192 kbs 44 stereo sound. Oh and the best part about CDex is that it is free.
ditto !
# 7 Re: CDex as a MP3 ripper?
Before you rip everything to AAC, you should know that the world of AAC encoding is very complicated. There mpeg2, and mpeg4 AAC's, with file extentions including .aac, .mp2, .mp4, etc. I suggest you go to dbpoweramp.com, where they have a music converter and codecs that specifically rip to the correct .mp4 AAC file type, and since they also have a portable device manager that can send AAC's to the ipod, they've made sure it works. I've already tried all of the beta programs they have for ripping and sending AAC's to my ipod, and it works. It's probably fine to stick with ephpod for transfering, because I think you eventually have to pay for the device manager, but the CD ripping program is completely free. Good luck and tell me how it works with Ephpod. I had some wierd problems with Ephpod 2.06f, and I'm hoping I can work these problems out when I get some time, and maybe this new version is a little bit better.
# 8 Re: CDex as a MP3 ripper?
Personally I tend to use both CDex and EAC.
I get EAC ripping wav files from the CD and then whilst EAC is ripping the 2nd CD, I start EAC coding the first set of wav files into mp3s. Speeds up the process a bit.
(I have CDex using the R3Mix setting which is a form of vbr which produces very high quality)
Oh and as mentioned, for AAC make sure you use a codec which generates .mp4 files and NOT .aac .
Gebbly at 2007-11-15 17:30:19 >
# 9 Re: CDex as a MP3 ripper?
Thanks for advice.
Where will I find the MP4 codec and how do I get CDex to use it?
Will the resulting MP4 files play on my 30gb WinPod?
Probably best asked in another forum but is it possible to bulk convert a bunch of MP3 VBR files into lower bitrate MP4 and is any quality lost?
