Waay off topic Q about "music systems"

[SadieKate]

Whew. One all inclusive article. I hope.

http://www.ecoustics.com/tl/21081/

[bikerz]

Whew. One all inclusive article. I hope.

http://www.ecoustics.com/tl/21081/

That's a great article.

It really illustrates the one weak point in all my process, which was using the SONY VGP for the ripping - it is not really a high quality device for the purpose. I had been thinking that I might select the the CDs to which I listen most attentively, and get them professionally ripped, and see if I can tell the difference.

[SadieKate]

Good article yoresef!!

We probably have no more than 250 cds so a pro service might be a good idea for at least the lossless format at 69 cents per and then do your batch conversion for MP3. I'd want to figure out a lossless solution the long run for each CD as I buy it.

MusicShifter had one of the better sites I've found as I've stumbled around the net. They'll do ten for free

[bikerz]

That link that Pedal Wench posted is for a place just down in Palo Alto - I'm going to give them a call and find out their prices.

[bikerz]

Here's the page from Squeezebox on tagging classical music

[SadieKate]

ReadytoPlay looks good also. Squeezebox and the links have good info about the metadata for classical which is a challenge.

Have you looked at any of the services that work with Squeezebox? Either MusicShifter or ReadtoPlay talked about Vorbis for metadata.

[Pedal Wench]

The ecoustics article is okay, but two things stand out to me. The first is that it's written by the man who runs a company that rips CDs. So, of course your home system will never measure up... Read that info with a grain of salt.

Second. He mentions the different lossy formats, and the difference in sound quality that you get at different bitrates, but he never mentions the difference in sound between the lossy formats. For the same bitrate (using up the same amount of space on your computer) formats such as AAC and WMA will sound better than MP3. MP3 was the first, and it hasn't improved much. AAC and WMA use newer psychoacoustic models that sound better -- audible at 128kbps.