morning all,
i’m feed up of my cd’s hanging around and thought it should be possible to convert them to mp3 easily and get the tracks named up automatically. anyone done this and can recommend a download or something?

cheers

iTunes will do it. Quite often just easier to find torrents though.

oh right, i’ll have a look

Depending on how new your computer is, Windows Media Player will do this.

If you have an ipod or other Apple product, you might be best sticking with iTunes. Just remember to change the coding from .aac to .mp3 in the settings.

Or there is Media Monkey.

media monkey, dbpoweramp etc all free software. Will iTunes actually convert to mp3?

iTunes will do it, there’s an option to choose format in the preferences.

Better to rip to AAC or ALAC though, iTunes mp3 encoder isn’t very good.

seems to be working, found this article http://www.aimersoft.com/rip-dvd/itunes-rip-cd.html

just got 1,000 more cd’s to get through at 30 seconds per track… oh well working from home today and can’t log in dead easy through,

ooh just spotted the end of the last comment, will aac or alac still play on an mp3 player? why is the mp3 encoder not very good?

i think i’m going to put all my tunes on the apple cloud thing

seems to be working, found this article http://www.aimersoft.com/rip-dvd/itunes-rip-cd.html

just got 1,000 more cd’s to get through at 30 seconds per track… oh well working from home today and can’t log in dead easy through,

ooh just spotted the end of the last comment, will aac or alac still play on an mp3 player? why is the mp3 encoder not very good?

i think i’m going to put all my tunes on the apple cloud thing

itunes perhaps doesn’t have the best codec

I’d go with mp3 as a universal format. I’d up the bit rate to say 196 kb/sec. I did try listening to different codecs but couldn’t tell the difference, so i stuck with itunes

yetim – Member
ooh just spotted the end of the last comment, will aac or alac still play on an mp3 player? why is the mp3 encoder not very good?

Even at high bit-rates (256+) I can still hear pre-echo. Sounds sort of like percussion is a bit slurred or sometimes like a snare being hit out of time with the music.

LAME is a far better mp3 encoder, but you’d need to use EAC, MediaMonkey, or dbPowerAMP or similar to use it. As far as I know you can’t use it from iTunes.

AAC and ALAC will both play on iPODs/iPhones. AAC will play on Android phones, Sony Playstation 3, PCs and some other devices.

Just depends if you’re after quality or convenience really.

retro83 – Member
iTunes will do it, there’s an option to choose format in the preferences.

Better to rip to AAC or ALAC though, iTunes mp3 encoder isn’t very good.

Problem with comverting to .aac, rather than MP3 is mp3 players other than Apple ones probably won’t like the files and you’ll have to convert them all over again…..

I use Windows Media Player.
I use Media Monkey for ‘dragging and dropping’ music onto my iPod. I think that MediaMonkey only gives you a certain amount of conversions, before you have to pay for it. It’s not massively expensive though.

I have used iTunes in the past on another computer, but I found it was very slow to open, slowed my computer down massively and always wanted to do updates. Haven’t installed it on my current laptop, as can’t be doing with the aggro.
Plenty of people reckon it runs fine though; I just went off it and don’t really wanna get re-aquainted with it…

I ripped all my CDs with iTunes at 320bps, seemed fine to me at the time.

Never listen to them any more now, as since I discovered Spotify I only use iTunes to upgrade iPhones.

I’d go for quality over convenience, and only have to do the extraction once. Also go for an open standard when it comes to encodings, not an encoding owned by a single corporation.

Some years ago I ripped everything I had ( I guess around 400 CDs ) to MP3 at a *reasonable* bit rate. Things change, and it is now feasible to use lossless encodings in more devices, so I ended up ripping everything a second time to get improved quality – it would have been much better to do that to start off with. For listening in the car* I simply took the lossless collection ( FLAC ) and told MediaMonkey to extract MP3s from them.

* A Land Rover Defener, so not the best place to listen to music

stumpy01 – Member
Problem with comverting to .aac, rather than MP3 is mp3 players other than Apple ones probably won’t like the files and you’ll have to convert them all over again…..

That’s true, it’s not supported as widely as MP3. But it’s not too bad, I never struggle to find stuff which can play my music.

stumpy01 – Member

Depending on how new your computer is, Windows Media Player will do this.

It’ll do it on my 10yr old PC running XP. 😀

i had it set i tunes set up at 196 kbps i’ll stick it on a memory card and go and try it in the car,

Even at high bit-rates (256+) I can still hear pre-echo. Sounds sort of like percussion is a bit slurred or sometimes like a snare being hit out of time with the music.

😆

If you have an ipod or other Apple product, you might be best sticking with iTunes. Just remember to change the coding from .aac to .mp3 in the settings.

Problem with comverting to .aac, rather than MP3 is mp3 players other than Apple ones probably won’t like the files and you’ll have to convert them all over again…

That’s true, it’s not supported as widely as MP3. But it’s not too bad, I never struggle to find stuff which can play my music.

I think you’ll struggle to find anything that won’t play AAC;
it’s basically MP4, and Nokia, Sony, and, AFAIK, Android all support it. About the only players that won’t are Microsoft Zune. If a player wont’ support AAC, it’s not really worth bothering with.
AAC is open source*, as is Lossless.
*Well, it’s licenced by the MP3 people.
Oh, and rip at 320Kb, the sound quality is as good as you could possibly want, and it saves a fair bit of space over Lossless.

there are a bit of hiss at 196 i’ll up it, i’m playing it on a 2009 audi mmi interface off the memory car, i didnt think it would support aac but according to the manual apparently it does. i think i’ll try it again before ripping loads though

it’s basically MP4, and Nokia, Sony, and, AFAIK, Android all support it. About the only players that won’t are Microsoft Zune. If a player wont’ support AAC, it’s not really worth bothering with.

Yeah it tends to be cheap players who dont, like Sweex ‘ipod style’ players for example:

(annoyingly they claim to support it, but their PC software just transocdes it to some other format! sounds dire)

grum – Member
😆

Oooh ouch, I’m going to need some aloe vera after that one.