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Jess31

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Best format for Music?

I want to take my collection of music CDs and put them on a hard drive and listen to them from the HD. I want to have it in the best quality possible, to match the high end sound system it will be listened to.
What is the best format that I should use? And how would I convert the CD to this format?

thanks
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TheGreenMan13
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.Wav files are highest quality, but MP3 at 320bit rate will give you your basic CD-quality sound. dBpoweramp Music Converter is great utility, and windows media player lets you rip music right from the CD.

Cnet.com has many converters, many of which are free. Just make sure they are not simply trial versions.


Easy CD-DA Extractor - Works great for ripping cds!
FreeRIP - Another great music ripping tool.
4Musics Multiformat Converter - converts many sound files.
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Jess31

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Thanks for your reply.
So if I rip a CD to MP3 320 bit will that be the same quality?
I have windows media player - would I be better off with one of the others?
And does it matter which ripper I use, is one better/quicker than another?
Yup, just pop in the CD, and in Windows Media Player you should have the option to choose MP3 as a format to rip from. Give it a shot first! The others are good to, but you might just save some time. I uploaded a picture, please note I have set my Windows to look like 98 cuz I'm oldschool, this is Windows 7 with the current Windows Media Player.
Windows-Media-MP3-Sample.PNG
DBPower Amp is a beast, but it's 40 bucks. My friend is a DJ, "Blackhat Karaoke" and he uses it. If Windows isn't high quality enough for you then that is the bee's knee's. It converts all audio formats and has options even more compressed and better sounding than MP3, but I think once you hear 320bitrate you shouldn't notice a difference.
The speed of your CPU really determines the speed of ripping. It has to process all the data and convert it, so I would say if you have a decent PC then most of the applications will run about the same. Just so you know, to get into the options of windows media player simply right-click at the bottom of the player, it will give you a drop down box, select tools, then options.
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172pilotSteve
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You should consider getting a sound card with an optical connection that will work with your stereo.  That will prevent ground noise problems that you can get if you use copper connections.  Computers are electrically pretty noisy and it can show when you connect them to other equipment.
I don't think it's crazy to purchase a high quality encoder/ripper if you have the money to do so and would like to support the programmers who create such applications, although there are many free tools out there. As far as quality goes, the difference between lossless WAV and standard MP3's at 320bitrate is pretty negligible compared to the size difference.

Getting technical with MP3's can be tricky because there are many formats. Lame, Helix, Fraunhofer IIS. I usually go with LAME, Constant Bit Rate CBR at 320kbps, 44.1 KHz, basically CD quality sound at half the size.

I don't know exactly what Windows encodes and rips at, it's probably either constant or variable which means it may jump around quality-wise, someone here could probably elaborate further on that.

If size is not an issue, Flac is another possibility, but it is large and can become complicated. The sound quality is great though.
I would not go with the stand alon out of the box windows encoder.

Defiinitely the WAV would be the best and most raw format to work with. Space may be an issue as each song can be 50+ MB depending on length. As far as fidelity goes that depends on what type of a system you are blaring. The lower mp3 files of course wont work but anything above 320/Kbps should be sufficient unless you want to blare this to an audience of a big music venue or night club. Even then that compression rate should be OK. not perfect but not distorted.