I remember the first time that i found out about ripping and encoding, it was about 4 years ago when i was using WMP8 to rip my cds into WMA 64 kbps (Cold so cold ) and thinking that the pops and skips in the audio were part of the encoding. And then i found CDex (Great when your a newbie) and i was blown away i could rip my music without skiping and in 128 kbps mp3 man this sounds a hell of a lot better than wma. Then stumbling across HA and found that i was doing it all wrong i should be using "EAC (Secure mode) + Lame 3.90.3 --alt-preset standard" and i've been using these settings ever since.
So how did you start in the world of audio encoding.
ConCave
I remember recording some music onto a PC in about '96 and thinking "wow whis sounds great". The PC only had 8Mb RAM though and a 500MB hard drive so it was kinda limiting. No encoding at that time, just saving as WAV.
Then I tried it a bit more on my next PC (10Gb har drive) for which I bought CoolEdit 2000. Ripping all the tracks and then opening each one in the wave editor and saving as mp3 (fraunhofer encoder) 192K - sounded great but I did get some skips/jumps occasionally. I used to store them back onto CDR - hard drive not big enough to store anything extensively.
My new PC has allowed me to rip my whole collection now and I'm a happy bunny!
I was using EAC before I became a regular here, and I had toyed with Monkey's Audio. I guess I must have come across various people recommending EAC (who knows, maybe it was earlier visits to HA) in order to switch from CDEx, which I used in the beginning. I don't know where I got Monkey's Audio from, but I remember wondering why I would want to encode tracks at such high filesizes when I had MP3. I played with it for a few hours, digged the monkey, and then forgot about it.
I was actually using the Radium/Fraunhofer codec at 128 CBR before I was turned to LAME soon after visting HA regularly. I had used LAME before, intermittently; most notably at work where the Radium codec might not be appreciated. I don't think I trusted VBR at the time, as it all seemed a bit "out on the edge".
My first introduction to encoding was some Bill Hicks soundbytes I downloaded in the mid to late nineties. They were in an unknown MP2 format, which lead me to Winamp. I thought Winamp was mega. I soon started playing about with MP3 (LAME, Blade, Xing, L3Enc) and VQF, which was the successor to MP3...
I don't ever remember having problems with pops or skipping, although obviously some poor quality given the list above.
I became a regular here after discovering some of my CDs were deteriorating, and started looking at a good backup plan. I've waffled on about all this before. I had obviously visited HA a few times on my travels previously. I have no idea why I became a regular; I suppose it was because I posted and was in discussions, rather than just reading "archives".
Ah! you just reminded me of the good old Xing encoder havent thought about that in a while is that still used today, havent even checked to see if RealPlayer still use it or not.
ConCave
I started using CDEx with the --r3mix preset once I got to college, and I started encoding my own music for the first time. I later switched to EAC, however (and the --alt-presets).
At some point i ran into some strange files with the extension .mpc, later i learned what they were. My first ripper was eac secure mode(later on test© too) using mpc q7 or q8. Then i switched to flac. Later i switched to cdparanoia and made my own script to do the stuff i was missing from eac (like test©). All this started started a few(3-4 probably), when mppenc 1.14 was already out and used a lot (i think). So it was much later than most.
For me it all started when I got my 4G ipod in 2004. I was so into it and I found iLounge, which referenced HA and Exact Audio Copy. Since then I've been back and forth between AAC and mp3 -v2, -v5, etc. I finally settled on 128 pseudo variable AAC iTunes for portable use, FLAC on an external hardrive for home use.
This really is the greates website and I must check it at least 10X a day!
audiograbber ->
remix site/forums ->
lame ->
hydrogenaudio ->
NOW
...i wouldn't be surprised if that was really common (back then) it seemed like a bunch of people (newbies, like me) came to HA with a bunch of funny ideas from roel...
later
audiograbber ->
remix site/forums ->
lame ->
hydrogenaudio ->
NOW
...i wouldn't be surprised if that was really common (back then) it seemed like a bunch of people (newbies, like me) came to HA with a bunch of funny ideas from roel...
later
That's the exact same progression of how I got here.
LAME 3.93 VBR 160-256 with -k switch using AudioGrabber to rip.
Thanks to HA.org I switched to 3.90.2 APS and APFS->3.90.3 APS and APFS>Ogg Vorbis aoTuV 4.51 LE now using EAC to rip.
I found out about ripping and encoding to a lossy format back in the Fall of 1998 using Iomega's zip disk software (IomegaWare) that had some crappy encoder, nonetheless I must credit it for my introduction into ripping and encoding music since I didn't know anything about it.
I think starting in 1999 (unsure) I found out about CDex and LAME and used that combination for a long time until I found the R3mix forums (no comments on that please). Then my education into secure ripping and proper encoding was put onto the correct path by reading threads and getting help from people like CiTay, and others whom I've unfortunately forgotten their usernames. I have to give allot of credit to CiTay for his help back in the day for setting me straight when I clearly didn't have a clue.
My first ripping experiences must have been with musicmatch 2.x or something like that (they now have version 8 or even more.. hell knows..), well and i guess my first interest in encoders occured because of its inability to transcode wma to mp3.
My interest has grown over the past few years but i'm still a noob, just reading, learning and happy with EAC, flac and lame.
For me it was Napster. I decided to install it one night and see what the fuss was all about. I started doing searches for tunes and kept finding them. I immediately had to find out how people were making these MP3 things.
I started ripping/encoding with Nero about 5 years ago, then after some wondering about quality I googled some stuff about MP3, wich led me to some know-it-all ripping guide from some site I forgot, it mentioned Lame, EAC, Musepack and some other stuff. After searching around for info on those things the same site kept popping up, and that site was hydrogenaudio.org.
I was using Winamp and played with the diskwriter it had a lot, often trying to use LAME in ACM mode to make some MP3 WAVs to send over AIM.
At some point I found one of the sites that distributed LAME binaries, and played with the various versions, reading the docs to find out new settings and stuff. And from there on, I came here some time later, and I'm now a foobar2000 lover. Makes encoding so much easier! I used the LAME VBS script to do it before...
I found CDex/Vorbis a long long time ago...but I don't think I started using EAC/Foobar2000 or got really picky about my audio till I found this site
I just browse around and soak up information I guess...that would explain my 2 1/2 years here but only 66 posts
Started back in the day of Cdex 1.10. I knew about LAME and then I stumbled upon Vorbis in it's infancy (like the idea of an open-source codec). I thought the idea was ingenius and I was amazed at how you could achieve a compression ratio of more than 11x that of a regular PCM file on a CD and still achieve transparency
Started with CDex, went to Xing/ Audioripper (for speed, maan!). Went back to Cdex to rip to wav files and encoding using Radium's hack of the FhG encoder. Discovered Lame and r3mix preset, heard about HA.og. Visited here and been with EAC, Monkeys Audio (earlier) WavPack (current), and Lame (3.97b2 now) since then. It's been an eventful trip with frustration now and then, but being with the HA.org community has made it memorable
I think it started for me back in 1997 or 1998. I used AudioGrabber and Bladeenc (I think) in those days. Due to limited disk space, I used 128kbps (CBR). I remember that the encoding of a single file took about 20 minutes or more on my Pentium 120Mhz (overclocked to 133Mhz), so I would set up a batch to encode before going to bed.
For me it was Napster. I decided to install it one night and see what the fuss was all about. I started doing searches for tunes and kept finding them. I immediately had to find out how people were making these MP3 things.
exactly like that, except it was with Kazaa . Before I was using Samplitude to rip CD's to WAV, and they just sat there, stuffing the whole (4GB) drive.
J.M.
I started encoding to MP3 using I think blade.dll and AudioGrabber, but had no idea what good settings were to use. All I knew was that 128 Kbps was good for downloading over modems, but didn't sound very good, but I didn't know what a better setting was.
I did some searching, and found a webpage for -r3mix. From there I found a link to HydrogenAudio. So I started using LAME 3.90.3 --alt-preset standard.
Once I upgraded my computer witha 200 GB hard disc I started re-ripping everthing to FLAC. When I bought an iPod, I first transfered all my APS MP3 files over. But later transcoded by FLAC files to iTunes AAC, to save a bit of space.
Back in 1994 I used to use adpcm for storing some music, I had to record them with the soundcard 'cause there was no rip feature in the drives available by that time (2x).
Then around 1998 or 1999 I started to fool around with the fraunhofer command line encoder. After years of doing my mp3s that way I switched to CDex and until last year I switched again to EAC.
First software I used for extracting were WinDAC for ripping and Audioactive Studio for encoding, some time in 1997. I was so into WinDAC for years, it worked for me, it had this rereading mode that helped with some CDs... but as time went, I switched from warez to freeware or registered software I use. So, I listened to reccomendations on usenet groups I visited, and setup EAC+lame, it was looong time ago, 5 years now.
Occasionally tried ogg, and for lossless I use either FLAC or APE, depending on what's currently available.
Ivan.
of course, how could I forget about windac!!
*ahh the nostalgy
I remember ripping my whole CD collection and being so excited that I had an "exact" copy of all my CDs on the computer! (96kpbs WMA haha) I came really close getting rid of my CDs at that point, but luckily I found out about EAC and Lame before I did anything stupid! Probably less than a week after I finished ripping my music to ~192kpbs MP3, I learned about lossless encoding and had to pull the CD book back out.
"exactly like that, except it was with Kazaa. Before I was using Samplitude to rip CD's to WAV, and they just sat there, stuffing the whole (4GB) drive."
I think I had a P1-100 with a 1 GB drive at the time. I was madly downloading all these old tunes from Napster with no regard for quality or bitrate or encoders or anything, and suddenly got an error message that my drive was full. Yikes! How much did I download?
Stopped to listen to a bunch of it, wondered why so many of them sounded so crappy. The hunt for knowledge began.
I knew nothing about computers and was told about Napster by a friend. I was given a 486 computer at 66Mhz and started downloading 128 files. I had to decode them to wave to listen to them as the processor was too slow for realtime. The drive was only 512 Mb.
So I bought a zip drive to get the files off the system but was generally unhappy because I had to always mess around and decode to wav to listen. I was on a 56k dialup and although I thought the files sounded good at 128, it was clear that the 192 files were much,much better.
But they took too long to download.
So I called Dell, got the hottest box they sold then,P3 733 with 133 mhz bus. It had a burner which made life easy. I also switched to DSL which blew me away totally. Encspot was another big step in the evolution of my library. Eventually I was ripping friends and family's cd's at -V1 -ms and getting ever larger hard drives. Razorlame was a key discovery for this.
I originally started ripping to xing with audio catalyst until I found R3Mix.Lame 3.85 was the latest at the time. I thought it was cool that the Lame VBR at around 180 was better than xing 256. I eventually switched to Eac and have been upgrading as recommended ever since.
I started out with MusicMatch sometime in 1998, I think. Back then it used a Xing encoder. The LG CD-ROM I had could not rip for sh*t: horrific jumble of clicks, pops and squelches, with a teaspoon of audio was the best it could manage, and the P-233MMX did not bid especially well for fast encoding. So I didn't get serious with it until I had a Kenwood TrueX 72X CD-ROM and a Pentium II.
The TrueX was fast transfering data, but when it came to DAE it was only slightly better than the LG. Ripping was slow and errors were very common. Only my first CD burner, an 8X HP drive, brought ripping results to an acceptable level.
By the time I discovered Napster (Nov 1999), MusicMatch had advanced a couple of versions, switched to Fraunhoffer encoders and I registered it ($25 IIRC) to be able to encode over 112kbps (the limitation of the trial version). In the meantime I briefly tried Real's Jukebox - I hate bloatware that tries to take over my system- and l3nc, which I found very good but painfully slow (under realtime). In MMJB, 128 kbps was touted as CD quality, but I picked 160 because it was labeled with oversampling (I kid you not). Of other curiosities, I recall that you could rip either via IDE or the soundcard, and there was an option to rip at 1X while listening to the CD (!).
Soon EAC emerged as the ripper standard on Usenet, dethroning CDex and Audiograbber. After experimenting with Blade and Radium for a while, I stumbled onto --r3mix and it has been LAME ever since. IMO, here on HA it seems the politically correct fashion to slam the r3mix site, but it was the source of cutting edge info in the pre-HA days...
Probably 1998 or 99. I was listening to streaming radio. Liking the songs I was hearing, I began finding ways to record/download these tracks. I was actually transferring them to cassette tape by playing them from my Sony VAIO laptop to the line in on my stereo. My wife kept complaining about the sound quality (most of the files were wma 48 and 64 kbps, although I think some tracks went down to 20.) While I could hardly argue, I loved the new music I was getting.
I knew nothing about encoding, figured that the kbps was a direct relationship to my dial-up connection (it was - but I knew nothing about bandwidth and what was necessary for streaming).
Later, I began some other downloading, finding that I could get decent sounding files at higher kbps. I knew wma and mp3, but really hadn't considered the differences. Just kept making mixed cds for myself. Got tired of this for a while.
I found out about ripping/encoding when I started looking around for an mp3 player. I started playing with formats/bitrates. I kept doing this, even after buying my Karma.
For ripping: tried WMP, Musicmatch, dbPowerAMP (my favorite until recently), EAC. More recently started using foobar2000 and love it. For encoding: have fiddled with wma, mp3, and vorbis, some FLAC. Am in the process of re-encoding my entire library to vorbis
audiograbber ->
remix site/forums ->
lame ->
hydrogenaudio ->
NOW
Similar, but not really:
good old analogue days ->
some old wave editor ->
l3enc ->
Winamp ->
audiograbber -> split
split 1
Winamp forums ->
HydrogenAudio.
split 2
LAME ->
EAC (yes, I've found about EAC using some old search engine)
Before 2003 I didn't have the means to play with encoding. I started off with 160kbps MP3 ripped by MusicMatch. Later on I tried out Ogg Vorbis and wondered how q0 would sound without the 15khz lowpass. Headac3he answered that question for me. Then I learned how to change the lowpass with oggenc, got dBpowerAMP and its generic cli plugin, rigged up oggenc for it, and never turned back. I wanted my disk space for video capture so saving space was more important than transparancy. (and I can't afford another hard drive)
Over the years I have tested just about every audio format and almost every encoder (that are publically available). I began MP3 testing with lame 3.95, and over various searches, hydrogenaudio always seemed to come up. Probably around late summer of 2005 I decided to test out lame 3.90.3 and see what all the fuss was about. I have to say, it certainly does impress.
Currently I rip my CDs with dBpowerAMP to oggenc2 lancer aotuv 4.51 -q 0 --advanced-encode-option lowpass_frequency=99 (64-70kbps), and I don't regret it one bit. When I need to use MP3, LAME 3.93.1 -q 5 -V 9 -Z -k --nspsytune -p (100-135kbps). These days I compile LAME myself so that I can test the latest versions without the -Y switch being forced on me. I am a codec tweaker, and just about every day I try new settings to see what they do, and to try to get lower and lower bitrates. It's an obscession.
Audiograbber with Winamp then EAC / Lame / Winamp
Learned from coobird and friends (MP3 board);
Downloaded software from definitely mp3 website