Efficiency of Music Ripping Tools/Formats

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Shotokan101
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Post by Shotokan101 » Wed May 17, 2006 12:15 am

Cheers Neil - I'll check it out :thumb:
Jim

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Post by SyBorg » Wed May 17, 2006 4:14 pm

neilius wrote:Hi Jim,

I forgot to mention - a great CD ripper is CDex, available at http://kent.dl.sourceforge.net/sourcefo ... ex_151.exe. You can drop in a more up to date lame encoder (lame_enc.dll) from http://www.free-codecs.com/Lame_Encoder_download.htm if you like. I'm using 3.96.

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Post by Shotokan101 » Wed May 17, 2006 4:28 pm

Thanks Sy - I noticed that and Googled for it - strangely enough it found CNET or similar first and not sourceforge :cry:
Jim

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Post by Shotokan101 » Wed May 17, 2006 11:47 pm

Righty-Ho !

Anyone know where I can find the two files linked to here :-

SPECIAL NOTE: There are now compiles of the above lame version which ONLY will encode properly with APS no matter what settings are passed to it. This requires little configuration and is a fool proof way to encode properly. No way you can go wrong with this. You can obtain them from here:

http://www.rarewares.org/files/mp3/lame ... .3_MOD.zip for the APS only lame.exe or
http://www.rarewares.org/files/mp3/lame ... .3_MOD.zip for the APS only lame.dll

REMINDER: PLEASE NOTE THE ABOVE 2 COMPILES ARE SPECIAL VERSIONS OF THE ORGINAL 3.90.3 MODIFIED


Seeing as the links seem broken and for some reason Google isn't finding alternates..... :?
Jim

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Post by biro » Thu May 18, 2006 12:18 am

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Post by Shotokan101 » Thu May 18, 2006 12:22 am

Thanks Steve - that's great :D

...now embarrass me - what search terms did you use ? :wink:
Jim

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Post by biro » Thu May 18, 2006 12:46 am

just searched for "lameexe3.90.3_MOD.zip"

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid ... FMOD%2Ezip
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Post by Shotokan101 » Thu May 18, 2006 12:55 am

Ahh !

... I only looked for "3.90.3_MOD.zip" as wasn't being as specific so thought it would match easier :x
Jim

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Post by Shotokan101 » Thu May 18, 2006 10:21 pm

HI GUys - I'm now messing around with MPR encoding using LAME in VBR mode - has anyone out ther (?Nei?) and experiemce with this ?

I'm seeing REALLY slow (compared to CBR with my normal CReative Util) so I'm looking for some indication of whether VBR on a reasonable spec PC should be taking about twice as long as cbr ? (will try LAME in CBR later)
Jim

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Post by neilius » Thu May 18, 2006 10:35 pm

Hey Jim,

I've only ever used LAME 3.69.1 to encode in CBR - 128kbps, q=0, joint stereo for my music/CD ripping on my PC and 64/32kbps, q=0, mono for podcasts I encode for streaming over the web. At q=0 (the highest quality setting), LAME takes ages to encode, 1.5 - 2x slower than real-time, but the results are pretty good, very close to the original audio/CD. I keep it at CBR mainly to ensure compatability with everything else (other platforms/players etc).

Rgds,

Neil.
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Post by Shotokan101 » Thu May 18, 2006 10:44 pm

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the quick reply.

Just a bit surprised that it's manageing to max out my cpu (3200+ Athlon - 1GB Memory) but at least its only about half real time :wink:

Guess I'll play around a bit more - I'm trying out the MOD'ed Lame Encoder DLL fromn the HA link you posted as it seems to be recognised as the "best" size/quality copromise and you shouldn't need to mess around with the VBR settings/switches ..... :?

Are there known compatibility problems with VBR then ? from what I've read VBR has always been part of tye MP3 spec. so all players should support it ....... :?
Jim

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Post by neilius » Thu May 18, 2006 10:58 pm

I seem to remember some media players having issues back in the day but I'm sure it's all cleared up now. I guess I'm just a die hard CBR person! The one thing I do like about CBR is that I can know the exact file size when I'm encoding. I did try the 3.97 beta but it sounded noticeably poorer in quality when using those CBR settings I use, and encoding time was much quicker so I think it wasn't doing as much work as it should have been. I went back to 3.96.1 anyway, but as is the case with all this stuff, whatever works for you is always best!
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Post by Shotokan101 » Thu May 18, 2006 11:08 pm

Hio Neil,

I suppose at the end of the day it's YOUR ears that matter :wink:

...II'm quite ggetting in to this at the moment so I'll let you know how I get on - I've posted off to a couple of the ripper tools I'm testing to see about getting the MOD'ed LAME dlld's activated so I'll see how it goes - still not comvinced that LAME should be as slow on my pc :?

What spec. PC are you ripping on at CBR ? I can understand VBR being a bit slower as I expect the algorithy to be quite a lot more sophisticated.... but I can rip an 50 MIn. CD (NON-LAME Enc. I suspect) at 128kbs in under 5 Minutes givin pretty acceptable quality for "on the move" listening.

Big problem ough at the moment - as Im now getting quite critical o the listening test - my home headphones are now showing up as prettty poor - so more expense there I guess.... :?
Jim

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Post by neilius » Thu May 18, 2006 11:21 pm

Yeah the thing about trying to do accurate listening tests means you need accurate hardware, a sound card with accurate A/D and D/A converters, accurate, flat monitoring, if using speakers, a room with acoustics designed to be as neutral as possible etc etc - in short, a recording studio environment really. So many other things play a part in what you hear as well as the mp3 encoding itself. It's a whole minefield out there with a lot of bullshit running rife (in the hi-fi world especially) as well as good information. A subject for huge debate indeed!

My system is only an Athlon XP 1800+ but I'd imagine VBR encoding will take longer as more CPU time is needed to perform more analysis on the stream in order to decide which bitrate to encode a particular segment at etc.
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Post by Shotokan101 » Thu May 18, 2006 11:28 pm

I agree entirely - I stopped the Upgrading Hi-Fi spire some years ago for similar reasons and the "Logarithmic deterioration" IMO of the Value For Money ration (especially as mye ears keep getting older/poorer) :lol:

I'm a bit surprised that your Athlon XP 1800+ is as "apparently" slow as it seems - especially for CBR encoding .... :? what ripping app are you using ?
Jim

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