Subject:how many formats should I store?

Posted by: wynton

Date:11/25/2006 7:43:40 AM

I'm converting my vinyl to digital format, primarily for use on the ipod. I know that I want to save an MP3 version (for the ipod) and an uncompressed version (WAV) for possible future use. I also am using a laptop, so need to store most of this either on an external drive or separate CDs.

Here are my questions:

1. Since my itunes library will have MP3 versions of everything, is it still wise to have MP3 versions stored elsewhere ? In other words, I could have the itunes library on my laptop, and MP3 versions of everthing on an external drive or CDs. Would his be overkill?
2. If I decide to store on CDs rather than an external drive), should I simply burn the data as "audio CD" (i.e., the format that can be used in a CD player)? I would only use the CDs in a CD player very rarely, but if this format is just as good (for the future) as storing everyting in WAV format, then perhaps I should just burn the data as audio CD?

Subject:RE: how many formats should I store?

Reply by: JohnnyRoy

Date:11/25/2006 8:21:48 AM

CD Audio is WAV format at 44.1Khz with a 16-bit sample depth. If you recorded your vinyl at 44.1Khz/16-bit, the WAV files on your PC would be the same quality as the WAV's on an audio CD. If, however, you recorded at 48Khz/24-bit or even 96Khz/24-bit the CD quality would actually be lower than your wave files (and lower than the original analog vinyl recordings). Of course your MP3's are much, much lower than that anyway so you might want to just burn the whole collection to audio CD's as an archive and be happy with that since that's the quality you would get had tyu repurchased your records on CD anyway. You can always rips the CD's to MP3's at any time.

~jr

Subject:RE: how many formats should I store?

Reply by: wynton

Date:11/25/2006 9:54:40 AM

Thanks, I have a somewhat unrelated question.

What you said does encourage me just to make the audio CD as an archive. And I realize now that the "burn disc at once" option may be faster than saving individual tracks as MP3s first. But I'm not sure what the best way would be to convert the CD audio format to MP3s.

Once I've burned the audo CD, what is the fastest way of converting everything to MP3 (keeping in mind that typing/entering the individual song info is part of the equation)? Should I just import at that point with itunes? Somewhere, I seem to have been told that itunes is not very good at converting WAV to MP3, but I suppose it's fine to convert CD audio to MP3?

To date, I've simply been manually saving individual files as both MP3 and WAV, but this really is pretty time consuming.

Subject:RE: how many formats should I store?

Reply by: JohnnyRoy

Date:11/25/2006 1:51:48 PM

I've used MusicMatch for the past several years and I just love it. (I actually bought the Plus version but you can use the free version and go a long way). Just pop in an audio CD that you made, do a search for the original album in the CDDB database and it automatically creates MP3's from the tracks and tags them with the correct song data. Nothing could be easier. (ok, getting you little brother to do it for you would be easier, but i don't have a little brother) ;-)

So your work flow would be recording the vinyl in ACID. Drop CD track marks, burn disc-at-once and then rip to MP3 using MusicMatch. No need to make WAV's. Vinyl->CD->MP3

~jr

Subject:RE: how many formats should I store?

Reply by: wynton

Date:11/25/2006 4:38:03 PM

Is Music Match (the free version) superior to using itunes to convert the CD to MP3?

Subject:RE: how many formats should I store?

Reply by: JohnnyRoy

Date:11/25/2006 8:48:14 PM

I hate iTunes so I'm not the person to ask. I like to listen to albums as they were originally recorded and iTunes has no concept of that or any way to accomplish it. Also iTunes is all about Apples format and not MP3's (it supports Mp3's but only as an afterthought). Musicmatch was one of the original MP3 players along with WinAmp and is based around the MP3 format and not any proprietary copy protected stuff like iTunes (although it does use WMA for its paid for music). I suppose you could use iTunes but I prefer Musicmatch. The free version will rip MP3's from CD's with no problem.

~jr