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Topic: Recommended Audio CD Authoring application (Read 8198 times) previous topic - next topic
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Recommended Audio CD Authoring application

Heres the deal: Although audio cd's are fairly rare for me nowadays, they do come up on occasion. Up to this point I have either went the route of 'convert compressed audio to PCM WAV in adobe audition, then burn in nero as a cd audio project' or 'burn straight in winamp and let it do the conversion process on its own'.

Now I am one of those ones who is very anal about quality even when it becomes unecessary. Although ironically I tend to use mp3 for compressable audio almost exlcusively because I barely have the drive space to support any lossless formats in large quantities. For the most part I have been very pleased with using winamp's built in ripping function to do the job for me. I just make sure to keep lame_enc up to date to the latest alpha build on rarewares and I keep my settings at 96-320 VBR, VHQ, 0q, stereo.

Like I had mentioned above, I have only used those two options for authoring audio cd's. I am just curious if anyone else here had any recommendations for doing this while keeping quality in mind. Or is the fact that it's going to a decompressed format makes the program choice nil?

Recommended Audio CD Authoring application

Reply #1 –
For someone who is anal about quality, you seem to have made an inordinate number of mistakes.

Recommended Audio CD Authoring application

Reply #2 –
Also, for someone who is anal about quality, you seem to be contradicting yourself by converting compressed lossy audio to WAV.

Recommended Audio CD Authoring application

Reply #3 –
Incorrect, he is not contradicting himself. Converting lossy to WAV is REQUIRED to burn audio cds, and if he needs an audio cd he has to do that.

Back on topic, it shouldn't really matter which route you use. If the cds you burn in winamp work fine then use that.

Recommended Audio CD Authoring application

Reply #4 –
Alpha builds are never recommended for 'production' use.

The recommended L.A.M.E. compile can be found here.
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...and_source_code

The current recommended L.A.M.E. settings can be found here:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=28124

I find that -V 2 --vbr-new suits my needs very well.

I have had excellent results with Nero 5 and 6. I have seen several positive reviews of Nero's audio CD burning.

I would recommend FLAC for archiving music. The music can be played in without decompressing it. It is lossless, and therefore has excellent quality. FLACs transcode to whatever you like in a snap. I use DVDs to store my FLACs. Try Foobar2000 for built in decoding.

I find EAC ( Exact Audio Copy ) to be a terrific ripping program. I can feed the PCM ( WAV ) output to whatever codec I choose.

I believe these options are anal without being obsessive compulsive.

Recommended Audio CD Authoring application

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Vchat20 on
Heres the deal: Although audio cd's are fairly rare for me nowadays, they do come up on occasion. Up to this point I have either went the route of 'convert compressed audio to PCM WAV in adobe audition, then burn in nero as a cd audio project' or 'burn straight in winamp and let it do the conversion process on its own'.


Why? You go from CD to Lossless and/or LAME mp3 in one step using EAC with or without REACT and OmniEncoder. Going to a wav intermediate is a waste of time.

Quote
I just make sure to keep lame_enc up to date to the latest alpha build on rarewares and I keep my settings at 96-320 VBR, VHQ, 0q, stereo.

Using the latest alpha for day to listening is not advised - by the developers or anyone else. The alpha's are designed to address specific issues and often poorer overall quality than the official releases. Alpha's are for testing, nothing more. You will get better sounding files if you stick to the latest official releases.

You can also do better with the settings. Take a look at the wiki, then try V2, V1 or V0 with q0. They will put you in the target rate range. Drop the stereo.

Quote
Like I had mentioned above, I have only used those two options for authoring audio cd's. I am just curious if anyone else here had any recommendations for doing this while keeping quality in mind. Or is the fact that it's going to a decompressed format makes the program choice nil?


Not sure what you mean by "authoring".

For me, authoring is starting from a source live or studio recording, mixing and mastering, then burning the resulting 16/44 PCM files to a Red Book standard audio CD.  I use Audition with various plug-ins for most of this work.

To get compressed formats (FLAC, mp3)  from these mastered mix downs, I use EAC or another program to compress the files, but I do not re-rip them from the CD, I just use the final files directly.

Are we talking about the same thing here or is "authoring" something different for you?
EAC secure | FLAC  --best -V -b 4096 | LAME 3.97 -V0 -q0 -b32

Recommended Audio CD Authoring application

Reply #6 –
To the first replier in a kind of 'guess' on my part as well as anyone else who questions my procedure for ripping cd's: I am sorry if up to this point I have been largely uninformed. Up to finding this site and reading the wiki, I have never heard of EAC or any similar apps save for cdex. So any application that is able to go from cd to mp3 with my choice of lame codec and keeping id3 tags in check has been fine for me. I /HAVE/ though since downloaded EAC and got it fully config'd and tweaked to use for future cd rips though so don't get your panties in a major bunch over some slight confusion.

Shifty: Like I said, most of the time I don't burn audio cd's anymore let alone listen to commercially mastered cd's. The times I do are few and far between and kind of leave me out of reach of my library of original cd's where i can do a direct copy so I am stuck using the lossy mp3's as source.

ddrawley & UrbanVoyeur: I appreciate the information about better lame settings. Although I am curious if I really WOULD see a difference between using a stable release and an alpha release. I think so far I have transitioned between the stable 3.97 release right on up to the current 3.98a11 release and have yet to notice any difference in quality nor any stability issues of any kind. But I will definitely keep those options in mind and look into tweaking things a little more.

UrbanVoyeur: I tend to pit the 'authoring' term to any kind of optical media burning. Be it data cd, audio cd, vcd, svcd, dvd-video, dvd data, etc.. Although that is just in my vocabulary. I know it may confuse others. So in this actual case I am referring to the general process of taking the lossy mp3 format and going to a redbook audio cd.

ddrawley: Maybe it's just a misconception on my part, but Nero is nice for manual stuff like burning data cd's and whatnot. But ever since having experienced the really crapalicious xVCD authoring included in the suite, I have tried to steer VERY clear of any automated conversion done by nero. audio cd burning included. Whether or not this is a legit complaint or something I can ignore I don't know.

Recommended Audio CD Authoring application

Reply #7 –
Nevermind the smart-asses.

I think the main point, regarding your lame version, is just to say that you're playing with fire.  Apha/beta versions of software have bugs... and often bugs that don't become known until people like you "test" it and find out the hard way.    Of course if you own the CDs the worst that can happen is that you'll have to rerip them.  You seem comfortable with that, so do what you think is best.

Back to the original question, I've always used Nero (v6 NOT 7) and it has never let me down.  I see no reason whatsoever to change that.  And you mentioned you've got EAC setup and ready to rock.  It looks like you're all set.

Recommended Audio CD Authoring application

Reply #8 –
Quote from: Vchat20 on
ddrawley & UrbanVoyeur: I appreciate the information about better lame settings. Although I am curious if I really WOULD see a difference between using a stable release and an alpha release. I think so far I have transitioned between the stable 3.97 release right on up to the current 3.98a11 release and have yet to notice any difference in quality nor any stability issues of any kind. But I will definitely keep those options in mind and look into tweaking things a little more.


There is a thread on the latest LAME Alpha where you can find out how what other people are finding. Whether you find an issue or not depends on what you listen to and whether it includes the type of audio sample that version affecting. I've tried a few alpha over the years - some are fine, some have huge bugs. But the point releases are uniformly excellent. I'll take consistency.

If you *do* find any artifacts or problem encodes with any of the LAME Alpha's. please let everyone know so we can help track it down.

Quote
UrbanVoyeur: I tend to pit the 'authoring' term to any kind of optical media burning. Be it data cd, audio cd, vcd, svcd, dvd-video, dvd data, etc.. Although that is just in my vocabulary. I know it may confuse others. So in this actual case I am referring to the general process of taking the lossy mp3 format and going to a redbook audio cd.


Ok, now I understand.

I don't do much mp3 to CD, but when I do I use Nero 6, unless I'm on a 64 bit machine, then I use Nero 7.  Never had a problem with either.  I also use Nero to burn my mastered audio cd images.

Foobar, iTunes, and Media Monkey can also do the decode & burn thing. I don't know for sure, but EAC might be able to do mp3 to audio CD as well.

Of course going FLAC to audio CD is always better than lossy to CD...

Storage is pretty cheap these days - you might consider long term archiving a lossless format again.
EAC secure | FLAC  --best -V -b 4096 | LAME 3.97 -V0 -q0 -b32

Recommended Audio CD Authoring application

Reply #9 –
Personal listening tests are of course important. If you are content with the quality of your output, you are done. I do not personally have the time to test Alpha software for new errors or problems.

I only use Nero for data and audio.

I agree that Nero DVD authoring is dismal. I use DVD Author Pro for this and have been very pleased.

It can be found here:
http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/download/tda20.html

Recommended Audio CD Authoring application

Reply #10 –
@Vchat20

I would recommend Gambit's kick-ass cdrdao frontend : Burrrn

It is non-bloated, has a nice and clean interface for getting the job done quickly and with minimum fuss and it supports all popular formats right out of the box. Also it supports ReplayGain processing through John33's excelent WaveGain utility. Gambit has coded his app to read the LAME INFO tag on LAME encoded MP3's to retrieve the number of samples of the encoder/decoder delay and then accordingly trim the decoded MP3's to get perfect gap-less decoded output(i'm reffering to the gaps that occures during decoding to WAV and which is because of the design of the MP3 format and not about the normal and intended pause areas which often is between tracks unless it's a "continues mix" CD). Just absolutelly brilliant  Btw, the current lame 3.98 alpha version now finally incorporates John33's mpglib fixes so that the LAME decoder now also will read out and skip the trailling padding also, instead of the current behaviour of only reading out and skipping the leading padding.

CU, Martin.

Recommended Audio CD Authoring application

Reply #11 –
I just had one other question I wanted to ask here concerning use of EAC. Say I disabled C2 error correction in EAC even though my drive may support it. My main concern is that due to the whole 'may support, may not support' warning, I figure I could live with the extended rip times and just leave it disabled and put my mind at ease. that is /IF/ it doesn't effect the rip if I disable it when the drive indeed supports it. And that is my concern.

Also, on another note: Should I be at all concerned with some wildly different ripping speeds between two drives? I just got a hold of David Benoit's 'Fuzzy Logic' Album today and first place I ripped it was on my laptop here and it runs the Philips scb5265 dvd/cd-rw combo drive and it was  going god awful slow and was constantly creeping the error correction up and even gave me a sync and read error on two tracks during the process. This is with a brand new just opened cd mind you.
Second attempt was on my desktop here which has a fairly generic dvd/cd-rw drive in it. only model number reported reads 'Combo 52x16c'. It is set to pretty much identical configurations as my laptop (including diabled C2) but it flew through the cd without a problem and regularly got up over a 10x rip rate with 0 errors the whole way through...Just seems odd to me that there would be such a massive difference between the two.
 

Recommended Audio CD Authoring application

Reply #12 –
You can safely disable C2 in EAC. The secure mode in EAC is not fool-proof and neither is burst mode with test & copy, which means that it is possible to get either "Copy OK" or "CRC OK" on a rip where errors still are present, but overall, then EAC's secure mode, or burst mode with test & copy, will most times catch all errors, so don't worry to much about this(at least i don't ). There are very big differences between different drives and their error correction capabilities, so it is possible to get a very fast and problem free rip on one drive and then on another one, you will get a rip that's crawling ahead at very low speed and read/sync errors are reported. Also it can happen that a brand new CD has many errors on it, but this happens only pretty rarely though, atleast in my experience.

CU, Martin.