Music Ripping, the # of formats offer confusion

_RaT_ · Mar 4, 2006

I reposted this after my first post simply asked about "ripping" which could mean alot of things. Anyone have some knowledge or opinions to offer before I start ripping only to find what I ripped is really not what I should have done? It gets confusing. MP3, LAME, AAC, Windows Media Loseless or Lossy. I visited Radified but I am not sure I want to go to that extent of perfection. Thanks, Rat.

anojones · Mar 4, 2006

Most folks either rip to a lossy format (MP3, AAC etc) which compresses the file, makes it smaller but still sounds good. Some audiophiles want a lossless rip- which takes up a lot of space but supposedly has better sound quality. I'm not an audiophile, and as we age our ears aren't what they used to be and usually space is a consideration if you want to play the files on an ipod (or similar device). I prefer to rip to MP3 (and would use a minumun of 128 bit conversion, max 192 if you can hear the difference). AAC supposedly gives you better quality, but I can't hear the difference. MP3 is universal, it will play on everything- not all players will play AAC. I would avoid formats like WMA (windows media files) as they are proprietory and won't play on many players (including the iPod). You can always re-convert your MP3 files to something else if you need to (with some quality loss, as with any conversion).

jim_wilson · Mar 4, 2006

If you are going to rip music I would recommend sticking with the MP3 format. It is the universal standard now and will play on pretty much everything. The different bit rates give you higher or lower compression with lower sound quality the more you compress.

I have ripped most of my music to MP3 at 320bit because it gives me pretty much CD quality music with much less space taken up. Frankly with the low cost of hard drive space now I can't see ripping to a lower quality just to save space. If you are going to rip a sizable quantity of music you may listen to it for years to come - and hard drive space will always get cheaper as time goes on.