I see that you are well into ripping
:-).
I’ve done one or two, yes Nik. ;)
I see that more all-in-one solutions
are
coming out like Rio Central or this new Compaq server, where you put CD
into
machine and it ripps CD for you, and stores it on hard drive. Do you have
any
idea how it compares with manual ripping.
No idea at all TBH, although I
don’t
care for the idea too much as, even my own CDs alone have no chance at all
of
fitting on an 80GB drive ripped at 128Kbs, I was struggling to fit them on
a
120Gb without the compilation albums!
I know that with manual ripping you
have
more freedom to choose encoder, bitrate etc, so are those all-in-one
solutions
comparable in terms of quality or not?
Again, I honestly don’t know
what the story is with the all-in-one
solutions but I know Sony are now doing one straight into the UK market
(more
detail @ http://www.robertwhyteltd.co.uk/shop2/vcr/son_HARD1000.htm
) but I, personally, don’t want to go down that route as I think
it’s
too limiting in the long term.
Someone said that even if you choose
same
parameters (bitrate etc), there is still huge difference depending of
algorythms. Allegedly, LAME is the best.
I used a program called Easy CD-DA on
high
quality @ 128Kbs and to my ears this sounds fine for day-to-day, general
background stuff. Which is what I use MP3 for, I have said many times that,
personally, I would not recommend MP3 for anything except background music
as
it is not what I consider a viable format (yet) for true music reproduction
that is comparable to other playback devices I use. For example my CD/DAC
arrangement is a Micromega affair which is
utterly
brilliant IMO and *no* MP3
playback device can even come close to the quality of sound from that even
at
high bitrates IMO. I have tried the DDAR, the
AudioTron and the SliMP3 players and, again IMO,
regardless
of the player the playback is entirely dependant on the rip I can hear no
real
difference in the players, or certainly nothing to crucify one on over
another,
it simply comes down to what suits you personally. So I would assume that
the
standalone players are much the same and it again comes down to what suits
you
to use for your needs.
HTH
K.