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Topic: Xing Encoder; It's really bad? I'm not sure... (Read 17056 times) previous topic - next topic
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Xing Encoder; It's really bad? I'm not sure...

Reply #25 –
A couple of years ago ... I think it was around April 2000, where I used AudioCatalyst 2.1 in Highest Quality VBR (most people at that time thought/told me that it was stupid to use, as some players etc. could'nt play the encoded files, etc. etc., but I ignored them, and I am glad I did).

I have reviewed all the hundreds of CD's encoded and the avg. bitrate for all tracks was found to be ~178kbits/s (both rock,jazz,metal,dance,trance,new age,classical and other types exists in the collection)

I have been looking at the encoding quality reported by encspot, and most are good or "not bad", but a few are reported as "bad", often it is classical music which have been encoded at or below 100kbps (avg).

At the time of encoding I used a lot of effort cleaning each CD to avoid any possible CD reading error, and had it(audiocatalyst) set to abort if any error was encountered.

Now that Harddisc space have decreased dramatically in price since then, I was thinking of transfering all the CD's again, but only this time in a lossless format.

I have considered "MAC(monkeys audio codec)/APE, FLAC, WMAPro 9.1 and LA(Lossless Audio)

I will definately used EAC for the ripping, but I want to preserve the Image style of the CD's that EAC is capable of (using the IMG button), and saving a CUE sheet.

Now I have a few questions.

1.) Is it necessary? What is your opinion? ... is it really necessary to repeat this process (just want to hear your opinion ... I am probably going to do it anyhow)
2.) which Codec? - My favorite is LA (as it produces the smallest files), but it is less compatible (no source code) as FLAC and WMA.
3.) a.) Do there exists a Playlist format, that will allow a m3u like file to access song tracks in a CDImage.la file (much like a cue sheet)... or do I have to split it into smaller track files (this option could be the only viable ...
    b.) does there exists some type of compacter, that after unpacking a .la file to .wav file will be able to  reconstruct the same CDImage.wav file (exactly) as if it was made with the IMG button, that is to concatenate each of the WAV files with gaps, etc. etc. into one CDImage.wav file, and write a cue file???


thank you for your time and interest.

best regards: eskildsen