All:

Just received 2 Rio Receivers from EMScomputing.com. Ordered them last Friday and spent a few hours over the weekend extending my home network to the locations where I wanted to use the receivers.

I have to say that I was stunned at how easy these things were to setup. I installed the software and scanned my drives for music in under 2 minutes and then plugged in my first receiver. Within 15 minutes of arriving home last night, I was playing MP3s on my home entertainment system - and it sounded MUCH better than I thought it would - in fact, the sound was great!

I also ordered, from EMS computing, a 120Gig hard drive - which I plunked into my PC last night. I'm going to take the plunge and move my entire CD collection into my attick - with a quick stop through my PC's CD RROM drive on the way for a quick rip to MP3. I plan on transferring my entire collection - just under 400 CDs to MP3.

Question - I'd like to go with the highest available bitrate which I beleive is 320kbps. An reason why I shouldn't rip at that bitrate? I'd like to preserve (as closely as possible) the CD quality of my collection.

I'm using MusicMatch 7.1 and it does a very nice job ripping. I'm setting up a play list for every album, so I can still listen to my CD's tracks in their proper order (thanks to this board for making me aware of the receiver's limitation prior to my ripping away 400 CDs).

At 320Kbps, I'm getting about 8 CDs per gig. With the 120GB hard drive (formatted it's actually 111GB) I could store over 800 CDs at 320Kbps - so storage space is not an issue (the hard drive was $180 - storage is getting extremely cheap - Western Digital ATA/100 2MB buffer, 5400RPM).

I considered getting the Rio Central or HP's similar product but then decided that, for $1000 less, I could get a hard drive that was 3 times the size and 2 Rio Receivers. I essentially have 2 Rio Centrals in my house now at 1/3 the price and with 3X the storage (only 40GB in the Central). To boot, I get a much nicer interface - my PC.

Very cool product - I hope Sonic Blue either continues to support it or comes out with new/improved models.

Charlie

I've used MusicMatch for over a year. I'd like to steer you away from it for what you plan on doing. There is even a MM employee in the empeg BBS that doesn't use it to rip. I'm sure the quality (esp. at the bit rate you are talking about) will be great, but the ease of use isn't.

I really recommend using Audiograbber (or EAC if you are using Windows2000). What is nice about these programs is that you can feed it cd after cd after cd real quickly. These programs will rip to a .wav. You can feed them a lot of CD's in a short amount of time. Then, while they are encoding the .wav's into mp3, you go to bed or work!

It took me nearly 6 months to encode my collection to 160 (then 192) using MusicMatch. I've been re-doing my collection to VBR LAME with a mix of AudioGrabber and EAC and have done 1/2 of my collection in about 5 lazy weeks. Not bad!

Setting these programs up takes more time. But it is worth it. You can set them to do 320kps CBR (like you are doing with MM) and have them auto create a .m3u playlist file too. I just feed them CD's, touch up the FreeDB entries, and click the "rip" button.

They handle comilation CD's more intelligently too (usually correctly assiging the artist name).

Again, I used MusicMatch (and still do to play mp3's or edit tags) but for MASS ripping like you are talking about - I would take a day or two to research it and in the long run - save tons of time.

Sorry, but having used both AudioGrabber and MusicMatch, I'd be inclined to wholeheartedly disagree.

As far as the argument against the speed of MusicMatch, I found that I averaged around 7.0X for the rip/encode process which was very comparable to what I was seeing on AG for just the rip. Additionally, the quality of the rips from MM seemed superior to me in terms of pops, clicks, and other digital distortions.

And as far as ease of use goes, it doesn't get any easier than dropping in the CD, waiting for the update from CDDB, then hitting the record button.

Finally, I decided to go ahead and rip my entire collection at 160kbits. Personally, my ear is not capable of distinguishing between this and a higher quality, but YMMV. The advantage of ripping at the lower rate is that if you have a portable player (I have the RioVolt SP100), you will be able to put your collection on 1/2 the number of CD-Rs.

Are you using Windows2000? When I switched to Win2K, I got pops with AudioGrabber and have been using EAC instead. That got rid of all pops.

I can't see getting that speed with MM unless you have the "Pocessing Level" at "Standard". I always had it running at "Very High" and I rarely got above 2.0x compared to my EAC's 7x (Audiograbber does less error correction and got 8x). (BTW: I bought MM so it is not running slow becuase it is the free version).

Quality (other than pops) is subjective. So maybe no one will ever notice the difference between "Very High" and "Standard". But if I was going to box my CD's up and put them in the attic, I would take the extra step just in case. For instance, I was perfectly happy with encoding at 160kps compared to 192kps (couldn't tell the difference with my samples) until I heard that one song that I COULD tell... so then I had to re-encode my entire mp3 collection with MM. It took months and months to get as far as I did with EAC in a few weeks.

Now, comparing the MM's 2x to the EAC's 7x is decieving because MM is also encoding. But I'd rather do it in 2 steps if I am ripping a lot of CD's. That way I can sit in front of my computer to feed it cd's and walk away (and sleep) during the encode.

EDIT: EAC is more like MM than Audiograbber. I do simply drop my CD in, hit "Cntl-G" to get the FreeDB data (which does a great job on compilations), and hit the "mp3" button. Your point about portables is a good one. I don't have a portable, but if I did - I'd be hurting for space.

I am using the Rio for about 2 months now. I have finally converted my CD collection (about 500) to Hardrive. I admit I have used a rate of 128 except for classical music where I used 160. I would really advise to take a CD you consider to be critical in audio quality and rip it at different rates. Then compare them by listening to them over your Rio. I would almost bet that you won't be able to hear any difference beyond 160. There's really no point in encoding more information than your ears can resolve, even if space is getting cheaper and cheaper. Especially not if you plan to keep your CD's anyway so you could always go back and re-rip them in a few years if a new technology comes out (like a software update for your ears or so...)
I use the MP3's not just to listen to them on the Rio but also to share with friends, per email, on portable devices etc.... The smaller the files, the easier it is in those cases. When you comile a MP3-CD for example, you want to get a lot of files on there.
Just my 10 cents.

Night - I debated going to something less that 320Kbps, but couldn't come up with a good enough reason not to. After converting my entire CD collection (actually ended up being over 400 CDs) I'll still have over 1/3 of the 120GB hard drive left. It took me 15 years to accumulate all those CDs (I sell a lot after they end up not being keepers) so I don't think space is ever going to be an issue for me. As for losing the mobility of the music due to its size at 320Kbps, that was a bigger issue - I have a Nomad Jukebox. I found that MusicMatch can downsample from 320Kbps to 128Kbps, while transferring MP3s from my PC to my Nomad Jukebox. Problem solved.

As for hearing the difference between the various bitrates. At 128KBps I can hear the difference. Once things get over 192KBps, it gets hard to tell the difference. I guess I just like to know that I've captured/copied as close to the real thing as possible.

In reply to:

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so I don't think space is ever going to be an issue for me

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Famous Last Words. I remember saying that when I got my first 40 Mb Hard Drive.

:d:

I understand; I used to be a big audio buff (did my thesis in it) and just the thought of compression would have choked me back then. Carefull with that unlimited space though... I thought I needed a 40G, bought a 60G "just in case" and now have only 14 G left on it! And that is with my small 128 and 160 files... If I had done 320k files I would have filled a 120G by now I guess.