General Forum

Re: Ripping Music - The Digital Age

TripEnglish — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 20:12:53 GMT

While the BeoMaster 5 is a Windows machine, the software is not Windows Media Center, and, as I've said, I've had good luck simply installing codecs on the underlying OS and having the BeoMedia interface play them as if native support existed. I'd be surprised if the the BeoMaster 5 is different in this regard.

Re: Ripping Music - The Digital Age

jk1002 — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:27:38 GMT

I stay out for now as well. My ripped music collection is all done in 192kbs which is way not good enough for listening to my BL3/BL2 but was the way to go when ipods had limited capacity which they sort of have again with Iphone and Touch.

I can not get myself to maintain my single library, i.e fishing for missing coverart or categorization and description of movies so myself maintaining a 2nd libary with higher quality wont happen anytime soon.

I would be interested in the MOTS more of the same technology though, I am hoping I can but Beomedia without BS5 but with a 2 way remote down the line. That would make much more sense to me and my setup.

Re: Ripping Music - The Digital Age

linder — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:17:15 GMT

I agree. Beosound 5 is a windows machine and wma lossless is the way to go. It is more of a dilemma for those of us that are users of iTunes and iPods. I have several hundred albums ripped in Apple lossless format and have decided not to change. I use a good quality DAC and play the music through an airport express either from Apple TV or an Apple laptop. I also enjoy lossless playback on my recently purchased iPod touch which also is a two way remote for iTunes.

A few days ago I received a really cool brochure from my dealer with a letter explaining that they are taking orders for Beosound 5. I am afraid that I will forgo the Beosound 5 and buy Beolab 9's later this year. As an avid fan of B&O, I hope they do well with the Beosound 5.

Re: Ripping Music - The Digital Age

mawheele — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:18:47 GMT

I think the only answer in this case is WMA Lossless if you want an archival quality direct replica of the original CD. With the BS5 system being based on a Windows XP embedded operating system, I believe the opportunity to expand the system with additional codecs is more limited than with the BeoSystem 1, which is essentially a Windows Media PC in a B&O box and a skinned interface. So I'm not sure FLAC is an option on the BS5 - it would take a down the wire upgrade to perform.

If open standards are important to you, then you might want to look beyond the BS5. Just remember, for the most part WMA will hold you into a Microsoft stack. Fancy a Zune anyone? Most third-parties and developers are moving towards the open standard as it reduces their contracts and licensing fees on the BOM for a new product and makes them more favourable to customers.

Mark.

Re: Ripping Music - The Digital Age

csmager — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:52:48 GMT

All formats can have ID3 tags (or similar) embedded, except for WAV. But there's no point using WAV when an identical result can be achieved using less disc space using a lossless compression format like WMA Lossless, FLAC or similar.

Re: Ripping Music - The Digital Age

Beobuddy — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:14:31 GMT

What about the ID tag?

If I convert my cd to mp3, then there's automatically an connection to a database, which has the relevant information for the converted track

Does all the programms and formats do that?

For instance, if I want a lossless format like .WAV, then there is no room for the information about the album, track , artist etc.

Re: Ripping Music - The Digital Age

mawheele — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 01:51:03 GMT

Hi there,

It sounds like you want portability of your music collection across multi-vendor products and guaranteed support for the BS5. The BS5 is basically a Windows XP embedded system with the most common codecs installed (a follow on the the BeoMedia if you like), including Microsoft's own propriertary formats which you'll often see start with a W - in this case WMA. It also supports MP3, AAC and a few others. It would seem to default to 196k MP3.

My suggestion above is to encode to 256k AAC. Of the formats supported by the BS5, this should give you the best quality, file size and portability from this to other systems like mobile phones, iPods, different operating systems, TVs, computers etc - now and in the future. The sound quality is technically equal to CD, however some HIFI buffs will say they can hear a difference. I am sure B&O have licensed a decent quality set of codecs for this to be the case.

Hope that helps, Mark.

Re: Ripping Music - The Digital Age

GANGO — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 01:26:56 GMT

ciao ragazzi,

i have to "computerize" my home for all the common use but also for rip my cd collection. all this talking about the right format makes me a little bit confused so my question is: what hardware i have to buy ( apple or pc/windows) to avoid problems with a future beosound5. iwould like to have a wireless solution like airport...

all the threads on this great forum are very interresting but the more i read the more i get confused..

grazie

Re: Ripping Music - The Digital Age

The_Beonic_Man — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 19:16:50 GMT

Jandyt:
TripEnglish:

less "lossless"
Phrase of the year so far Trip! Love it.
Andy T.
PS. Sorry we haven't spoken since your return Simon. Nice to have you back mate.

Cheers Andy, it was really nice to read your comment, thanks. Its great to be back. If I can be completly honest, I wrote to Lee recently and said I had made a mistake in leaving several months ago - I left because I felt provoked and threatened by someone on the forum. The truth is that I really missed BeoWorld a lot. I love the community of this site and I really look forward to commenting and debating about all sorts of issues. When I wrote to ask if I could have my membership reinstated (to which Lee and all other moderators agreed) it also turned out that the person I had originally felt provoked by sent me a really nice email and we have exchanged some very positive emails since, so I personally am looking forward to a very happy and positive 2009. I think the moral here is that life is too short and everyone's opinion is valid and important, no matter how different it may be from your own. I hope to meet many of the forum users in the new year, particularly if there is a trip to Struer which I will certainly make sure I am on as I really wanted to be part of it last year but couldn't for personal reasons.

All the best,

Simon.

Re: Ripping Music - The Digital Age

mawheele — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:09:02 GMT

Hi everyone,

Its all about the Codecs. Lossless is always going to be the best - but make sure you do not get stuck down a proprietary route like WMA. The problem there is with the 'W' and even that said company, who live and die by their operating system is moving towards open standards with their playback technology - realizing that they need to support AAC and H.264.

AAC is the successor to MP3 and was designed to fix many of the performance flaws in the MP3 format. And by encoding at 256 kbits you are getting sound quality at pretty much parity with CD. Depending on the AAC profile and the MP3 encoder, 96 kbit/s AAC can give nearly the same or better perceptual quality as 128 kbit/s MP3.

The AAC format is also supported natively within the BeoSystem 3 since its an open standard.

Being an ISO standard, AAC should give you the best long term bet for playback compatibility and portability across multi brand systems.

Just my 2 cents. Mark.

Re: Ripping Music - The Digital Age

Jandyt — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 11:56:15 GMT

TripEnglish:

less "lossless"

Phrase of the year so far Trip! Love it.

Andy T.

PS. Sorry we haven't spoken since your return Simon. Nice to have you back mate.

Re: Ripping Music - The Digital Age

Puncher — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 11:48:33 GMT

True enough - you can, for instance, download a FLAC codec/plugin for Media Player and you can if you wish translate any format to any other, either lossy or lossless with free apps from the web (of course you can't go backward from lossy to lossless). My point was really about the inconvenience of doing this, now that we are in sight of being able to use one lossless collection everywhere (media server and iPod) the fact is we can't (with a Win/B&O media system and an Apple iPod) without mirroring you music collection in two different formats to accomplish this, the mirror being either a compressed version or not. However, while you need a mirror for incompatible codec reasons it makes little sense for the "portable" mirror to be lossless.

It's just not as seamless as it should be just yet!

Re: Ripping Music - The Digital Age

csmager — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 11:46:47 GMT

TripEnglish:
1. If you rip in a lossless format, is there a reason that you could not use a program like Switch (I use this on my Mac) to switch to either another lossless format or even a compressed one. In other words, is one format more or less "lossless" than others or have some qualities which would make them sonically desirable.

Lossless is lossless. You can convert from one to the other with no loss in quality - or decompress to WAV file and end up with the original PCM as was on the disc. This is one of the reasons I've chosen lossless over high-quality lossy - as I can change formats or create a lossy file without deteriorating the sound any more than it should.

Re: Ripping Music - The Digital Age

TripEnglish — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 11:39:01 GMT

It seems like there is a real issue with codecs almost more so than rip quality. I suppose it's pretty easy to figure out whether you want lossless or not and I would guess many here do. However, it seems that when adopting your format of choice, you could potentially limit what devices you can play music on. FLAC has come up a few times, as an example, which is not currently supported on the BM5 or many portable players.

I'm wondering two things here.

1. If you rip in a lossless format, is there a reason that you could not use a program like Switch (I use this on my Mac) to switch to either another lossless format or even a compressed one. In other words, is one format more or less "lossless" than others or have some qualities which would make them sonically desirable.

2. I'm wondering whether you can't make the BM5 support whatever codec you want. I'll have to try this out when we get our models in (the US won't get them until the very end of the month). On my BeoMedia I was able to boot it in Windows and download video codecs, like divx, from the web and once installed on the underlying OS, BeoMedia played them perfectly. I never tried it with audio, but can't imagine why it wouldn't work the same way.

Re: Ripping Music - The Digital Age

Alex — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 10:19:05 GMT

I believe the buffer size in the latest iPods is now 64 mb, or at least it was in my video iPod. It may now be even larger in the latest iPods.

I personally find 256 kbps AAC or 320 kbps MP3 to be perfectly good quality, and while I would prefer not to, I have listened to music at 192 kbps AAC. 128 is frankly awful but it's better to enjoy good music at low quality than bad music at good quality IMO!