Rip at Maximum Quality

Ok, this is a question with no right answer.

But, if you want to maximize the MC9 ripper/encoder, and don't want to fool around with anything else, I'll give you some suggestions:

First of all, with regard to the ripper, this is really easy--just change the default setting of the ripper to "digital secure". The default is "digital burst", you'll need to the ripping options and change this.

Now encoding is a little bit different. For encoding, you'll want to use MC9's LAME encoder; I'd recommend choosing the MP3 VBR encooder (this is the LAME encoder), and for quality, click on 'custom', then click on advanced, and type (or copy and paste this preset) into the command line:

--alt-preset standard

It has to be EXACLTY in this syntax or it won't work. This preset is the "standard" by which all the other presets are measured. You'll get an average of about 192 KB/s with this. The "best" quality preset is going to be CBR 320 (you can type this in the command line if you desire).. That's as good as it's going to get. But, it will be a relatively large file size, and I've spent alot of time playing around with these things, and I can't tell a difference between CBR 320 and --alt-preset standard. This link gives a list of all the presets:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/show.php/act/ST/f/15/t/203

So, bottom line, for the absolute best, use the ripper in "digital secure", which I'd recommend, and the LAME encoder with CBR 320, which I think is overkill--I'd recommend the --alt-preset standard setting instead.

Now, if you're interested in how I rip/encode (I do something a little bit different than what I've described), you can check this thread out:

http://www.xsorbit1.com/users/dennx/index.cgi?board=mediajukebox&action=display&num=1044032009

The reason I use the EAC/LAME LAME encoder for my encoding, the reason being that MC9 LAME encoder is a later version of LAME--version 3.93, whereas the EAC/LAME encoder is an earlier version, 3.90.2, which is felt to be the best version of the LAME encoder, and was the last encoder where the presets were optimized to the encoder. The presets will work on the later versions of the LAME encoder, but they've never been optimized or tested with it. It probably doesn't make that much of a practical difference, but I went for what I truly thought was the "best".

Doc,

You can use your 3.90.2 LAME encoder through MC9 as an external encoder (Check the link out in my previous post), and rip/encode through MC9 (which is what I do).

You don't have to bother with importing then, but better yet, and this only applies if you're into this sort of thing, when ripping/encoding through MC9, it will analyze your audio automatically for intensity and BPM's--which you can then use to make some pretty cool smartlists.

It's not a huge deal to rip/encode and then import, I just like the way I mentioned above a little better...