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[Krazykanuck]

I am new to ripping and encoding and looking for some advice on what formats I should be using.
I would like to make sure that the files are in a high enough quality format so that they sound good when played through my stereo and can then be downconverted later if necessary for loading onto portable devices.
I realize that the answer to the above is very subjective and ultimately is up to me to listen and decide but I was hoping for some guidlines to help me along the process.
The source of the music will be CD's and old LP's that I am currently recording into Wav files. I'm not into downloaded music, at least not yet.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[Alex B]

If you have enough hard drive space the answer is definitely lossless Monkey's Audio.

If you don't have enough hard drive space the answer is definitely lossless Monkey's Audio.

If you don't already know what lossy format you should use (if any) you should convert (and rip) your files to a lossless format now and decide later what to do. (After you have learned more about the other formats.)

[Krazykanuck]

Thanks for the reply.
I have a question regarding the quality setting.
The help file recommends using the normal setting. It seems to indicate that the high and extra high setting only affect the file compression but not the actual musical quality.
Is this correct?

Thanks again.

[Alex B]

Monkey's Audio is lossless. The quality is always identical with the original wave. High and extra high compress files a bit more but they are also slower. This information is from the Monkey's Audio help file:

There are a couple of things to keep in mind when choosing a compression level. First off, higher compression always comes at the cost of speed - this means during compression, decompression, and playback. For this reason, it may not always be the best to simply pick "high" or "extra high." "Normal" is a pretty good trade-off between speed and compression. The jump from "normal" to "high" only saves around 6mb on a full audio CD. This savings may not be worth the extra time involved. The jump from "high" to "extra high" is even bigger, and only saves another few mb's a CD. This mode is only recommended when compression is totally crucial. Also, if you listen to your music while you use your computer, you may want to keep in mind the CPU usage differences between the options.

You can get the help file here: MAC Help File. (Right click to save it on your local HD.) It is for the separate Monkey's Audio software, but the information about the file format is relevant with MC too.

[lee269]

If you have enough hard drive space the answer is definitely lossless Monkey's Audio.

If you don't have enough hard drive space the answer is definitely lossless Monkey's Audio.

Just to add to this excellent advice: by all means use whatever lossy format (eg mp3) sounds good to you to store your library files, but whatever you do make sure you have your master recordings of LPs etc archived and backed up somewhere in a lossless (eg Monkeys - APE, or WAV) format. And make sure your backup procedures are robust.

To my shame, I got burned with this recently - see this thread. Im sure you are too clever to fall for my mistakes...

[Krazykanuck]

Thanks again for the replies.
Ape it is.

Lee269... Sorry to hear about your troubles.

The whole longevity issue with CD's/DVD's has been a concern with me. One of the reasons why I have resisted my wifes demands that I get rid of my LP's as soon as I have them recorded. I also have a large collection of digital photos and again have resisted deleting after copying them to cd's.
Currently I have multiple systems in the house so backups are perfromed on a regular basis between systems. This has served me well recently as I have had some hard drive crashes and have not lost anything yet. Two of my kids are off to university next year so I'll have to look at some changes but I am leaning to just putting a system together as a music/photo/video backup system. I guess I'll still have to figure out how best to back it up but the more layers the better.

Anyways thanks again for the input.

[Alex B]

You should also preserve your LP cover art. Many LP covers were fantastic. That is one thing we have lost in this digital era. A scanner is usually too small for scanning LP cover art in one peace, but you could use your digital camera (preferably with a repro stand to keep the lines straight).

Here is an example how I have my cover art files organized in MC. The example is from a CD album but the principle is the same: http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=22841;start=msg159422#msg159422

[Krazykanuck]

I hadn't really thought about cover art especially from my LP collection. Up until now I have been searching for a good media player with a good set of tools, settled on MC, and I have been more concerned with getting things recorded.
Being from Canada alot of my LP collection is from old canadian bands from the 70's and 80's and finding cover art on the internet can be a pain since alot of the stuff is out of circulation. Scanning all of the albumn material for LP and CD was also something I hadn't really thought about doing. I guess I have alot more work to do now.
I have a scanner and it has an autostitch function I'll need to play with it. I find taking photos don't always give the best results without alot more work.

Thanks again.