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[GHammer]

I have started re-ripping all my CDs into a lossless format. I had been using APE but since WMA 9 has a lossless mode, I decided to try that. It works well and the files sizes are good, for lossless anyway.

For example the CD Dire Straits by Dire Straits takes the following disk space for a total time of 41:47

MP3 320 k CBR- 76.6 Mb
Ogg Quality 7.00- 66.3 Mb
APE (Extra High)- 254.3 Mb (average 3.7X speed)
WMA 9 Lossless- 258 Mb (average 6X speed)

Since I have mainly MP3s at 320 and have 15 Gb on my system, it looks like an 80Gb hard drive will be in order.

The downside is the re-ripping and the installation of a new drive for music and one for backup of the music.

The upside is clean sound when at home and the ability to convert the lossless to whatever format and bitrate I want for portables.

Any favorites for lossless before I get started? And I'm not interested in why Microsoft is evil. I am interested in quality lossless at the smallest file size.

Thanks!

[Eiffel]

hmmm... tough decisions...

APE is a great format, and can generate an exact copy of the file you ripped (same file size, etc.)... unfortunately it is not supported by too many applications (as long as you stick to MC9, this is the format to use, IMO).

WMA Pro lossless is supposedly lossless ('mathematically lossless' per Microsoft's employees)... but it won't generate an exact copy of the file you ripped (size is different)... so this makes me a little bit suspicious that I may be damaging precious bits and bytes (i.e., what if there is a bug, like the one in the k-mixer today that messes up audio unless you bypass it with ASIO drivers?..). On the other hand, I can't hear a difference, and the format is more widely supported.

[Matt]

It's lossless, so you won't go wrong with either.  Just make sure you keep the tools to decompress / convert around.

If you use APE, don't bother with 'extra high' -- lots slower for little space savings.

[rocketsauce]

Also, Media Center will ultimatley have better support for APE format, since Matt is also the developer of Monkey's Audio, in case you didn't know that already.

And I'm not interested in why Microsoft is evil.

I don't think MS is evil, but I think you do need to take into account the DRM issues that are built into any of the Windows Media formats and the (probably slight) possibility that future updates/versions of Windows could disallow the use of files that weren't ripped with DRM enabled.

it looks like an 80Gb hard drive will be in order.

80Gb sounds like a lot, but it will fill up fast if you're using lossless. I would recommend the biggest drives you can afford.

Rob

[iCamp]

I experimented with WMA lossless before I found MediaCenter.  After that enlightenment I swapped to APE and haven't looked back.

APE encodes faster and seems to have slightly better compression performance (though does 2MB really matter when you're talking about 200MB for an album?).

Ultimately, I selected APE because I like the way MC tags them.  Album art cannot be stored inside WMA lossless and WMP 9 seems to have it's own way of tagging.  If I were using WMP 9 as my media player WMA lossless would have been great...but MC blows it away.

The only real benefit I liked with WMA lossless was that *most* media players that can play regular WMA can also play the lossless version.  

[GHammer]

Everyone had good points to consider. Thanks!
But this one actually made my decision.

Which format is likely to be around 2-3 years from now?

Of course, I could convert to a different lossless if that became an issue. But why have to go through that?

I will use APE for my lossless format.

Any other tips for its use?

Thanks again to everyone, points all taken and used.

I think I will also change my naming scheme.
Currently I use Artist/Album/Artist - Track name.ext

Just to be safe on losing tags from stupidity or the rare program error maybe this is better.

Artist/Album/Track # - Album - Artist - Track name.ext

I should be able to recover most tag info from that if I ever have to.

It's lossless, so you won't go wrong with either.  Just make sure you keep the tools to decompress / convert around.

If you use APE, don't bother with 'extra high' -- lots slower for little space savings.

[dragyn]

I use ape and apl files. I know of a couple others here that do the same thing. You have a .ape file for the entire cd and .apl files for each individual track based off of a cue sheet.

As for naming, I use:

Arist\Album\Artist - Album - Track# - Name

and

Various\Album\Album - Track# - Artist - Name

[dobon]

As for naming, I use:

Artist\Album\Artist - Album - Track# - Name

Dragyn,

"Artist - Album - Track# - Name" sometimes exceeds the 64 character limit. How do you handle that?

[xen-uno]

What 64 char limit? (although total pathname+filename length limit of 256 may apply***)

See this

10^-27

***After further research, I don't think there is a limit. The 256 I mentioned may refer to the max length of the string in the path= variable

[DougHamm]

I use Windows Media Lossless; someone touched on the main reason, and that's that these files are 99% compatible with existing applications that support WMA.

When I want to make a really professional mix, I do all my crossfading and leveling in Vegas 4 (I do video/audio editing on the side and it's my NLE of choice).  I love the fact that I can drag any song in my library onto the timeline and not have to convert it into a .wav file first.

I like using high-res 200dpi cover art scans and I don't want to include the art within each file, so whatever limitations MC9 has with embedding covert art doesn't bother me.

Anyway, that's my $.02.  Whatever the outcome in a couple of years, I'm content knowing that I can simply transcode into whatever the best format of the time is without having to re-rip my entire library.  This applies to any lossless format so hey, no loss!  

-Doug

[GHammer]

That's true. A big part of my decision to do this was due to the format wars. "My codec is bigger than your codec". I will soon have the luxury of playing with this and that and hearing for myself.

For now I am using LAME with --alt-preset cbr 256 --scale 1 for my iRiver and car player. Why the -- scale 1? So I can run them through MP3Gain and have better results.

I am happy to be in China right now. With the virtual standstill of business from SARS, I got a GREAT deal on hard drives today. I now have 4 100 Gb drives. Bring on the CDs! Bring a new power supply too<g>.

Whatever the outcome in a couple of years, I'm content knowing that I can simply transcode into whatever the best format of the time is without having to re-rip my entire library.  This applies to any lossless format so hey, no loss!  

-Doug

[zevele10]

I do not rip mes cds.
But i do rip all the cds i got from friends.

I use now Windows 9 lossless format. Nothing to do with APE no good ,far far from it.
Just i am waiting for a kind of Ipod reading lossless format.
If one out one day ,i bet that it would not be APE ,but Windows 9 the format to use with such a player..

If i am wrong i would be so happy for Matt ,that i may not mind to re-rip to APE