BeoSound 5 Forum

Re: Beosound 5 Encore - Guide how to rip / transcode / store files using a Mac

i4ict — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 04:13:44 GMT

Flac is the best format to use on your Beosound 5. It has the best sound quality, and is easiest to use when placing content. Also, you can use great quality album art by downloading covers and renaming them to folder.jpg.

Soon B&O will also support ALAC. But still, Flac is the way to go in my opinion.

Re: Beosound 5 Encore - Guide how to rip / transcode / store files using a Mac

Stephan — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 04:04:24 GMT

I will give it a try this weekend with FLAC... I just ran out of storage space so I couldn't try it til now.

XLD gives fantastic results so its a breeze to transcode my library to any other format but it takes some time...

Best regards

Stephan

Re: Beosound 5 Encore - Guide how to rip / transcode / store files using a Mac

Stephan — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 04:01:08 GMT

@Karel: I want to have a ripped reference file in the best format so I chose Apple Lossless for the first rip and keep this as my digital reference file for future transcoding.

I started with Apple Lossless as this codec was released and always hoped that B&O would support this format...so its historical as well...

Re: Beosound 5 Encore - Guide how to rip / transcode / store files using a Mac

Jan — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 02:37:06 GMT

Is there a video showing it?

Re: Beosound 5 Encore - Guide how to rip / transcode / store files using a Mac

beojeff — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 16:39:22 GMT

I re-ripped only my favorite artists and cds to lossless for my BS5. For all the rest of my iTunes library, I'm waiting to see what the iTunes Match service will offer. If iTunes Match can replace all of my inferior rips with iTunes Plus quality music, complete with proper tags and high res cover art, that will be ideal.

I'm foreseeing a rapidly-approaching future where CDs will be replaced by digital downloads anyway. Already, all of the brick-and-mortar CD stores in my area have gone out of business. I'm not saying this is a good thing. Just a reality.

Re: Beosound 5 Encore - Guide how to rip / transcode / store files using a Mac

Carolpa — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 15:13:27 GMT

Stephan:
(Before you ask, I don’t like FLAC….)

hi Stephan

I can't hear a difference between CD / WMA lossless / Apple lossless / FLAC.

Or even better BR or DVDA / WMA lossless / FLAC (all in 24bit 96kHz)!

In the end, up til now, I have always prefered the lossless formats. Depending on the bitrate, the encoder, etc lossy sounded OK, but not as lossless!

I switched all my files to FLAC. On Mac I have several way to pay them; on a PC it is even simpler. And they can be played on BS5 & BS5e. Maybe you should give it a retry.

Re: Beosound 5 Encore - Guide how to rip / transcode / store files using a Mac

mbee — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 11:21:19 GMT

And XLD is a far better ripper than iTunes (you get a lot of feedback about the ripping process, like EAC on a PC)

The solution : use XLD to rip in FLAC, put everything on your nas, well organised with covers.

Then, if needed, use XLD to convert the whole library in 320AAC for your iThings.

Re: Beosound 5 Encore - Guide how to rip / transcode / store files using a Mac

Karel Uyttendaele — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 09:50:30 GMT

Stephan,

Why do you rip first in Apple Lossless... and then convert to 320 AAC? iTunes can rip directly into 320 AAC... Imho it's an unnecessary step as the resulting 320K AAC file has the same original master (CD or Lossless are of the same quality).

For the rest: nice howto!

Karel.

Beosound 5 Encore - Guide how to rip / transcode / store files using a Mac

Stephan — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 06:44:13 GMT

After several days of transcoding ( Format A to Format B ) and rebuilding databases on my Beosound 5 Encore and my NAS here is my “how to do it” thread so you don’t have to make all the mistakes by yourself.

Hardware used:

iMac running OSX Snow Leo

Western Digital WD Live NAS with Twonky Server

Beosound 5 Encore

Software used:

iTunes for initial rip

XLD for transcoding ( can rip as well )

Problem:

Convert Apple Lossless Files to a Beosound 5 Encore readable format and show everything correct on the Encore

Solution:

Section 1 – Ripping –

Take your physical CD and rip it with the encoder of your choice ( iTunes in my case ) in the highest possible format ( Apple lossless / ALAC in my case )

Once the rip is complete, check all ID3 tags if they meet your expectations, otherwise change them and including the cover artwork ( 500 x 500 pixel works best imho ). Make sure you select all tracks before adding the cover to the files, dragging the picture to the “drag picture here” area sometimes don’t work, I select all files and go into the “Information” tab in the context menu and add it there.

Note that if you listen to a song while editing the ID3 tag the information might not get stored correctly, so never listen to the file you edit!

Genres don’t work for me, so I created my own genres and just named the bands by their starting letter ( e.g. genre for Pink Floyd is “P”, Soundtracks have the genre “Soundtrack” and Compilations are filed as “Sampler” )

Once you have ripped your CD library consider this as your source for everything else and do a backup!

Section 2 – Transcoding –

Since the BS5encore cannot read Apple Lossless files (yes we complained a lot but I guess this won’t change) I decided to transcode my library to the 320 AAC format (Before you ask, I don’t like FLAC….) After testing several formats on my Lab5’s this was to me the format with the best sound/size ratio.

XLD is a free & fantastic tool to transcode large libraries without adding files to your iTunes library. Just do an initial setup, specify the output folder and drag the entire folder you want to transcode onto the XLD symbol.

It has a very good option that shows you the metadata before transcoding, so you can be sure all the information is correct and the cover is added, once you press go, the transcoding starts and from the Apple lossless format the encoding of a song just takes seconds... ( My lib of 16000 songs / 600 GB lossless files took 6 hours on a iMac i7 )

Section 3 – Fill up the NAS -

I use a Western Digital Live NAS which is very easy to setup if and has ( and this is not a standard ) a “power down” feature when not in use.

Since the NAS has an installed Twonky server, just go into the configuration menu of the NAS and stop the Twonky server while filling up the HDD for the first time.

Once this is done, let Twonky create its database by switching the Twonky server feature on, this also takes a while, be patient J

Section 4 – Beosound 5 Setup

Setup the BS5encore to find your access point and/or Twonky server ( explained in the manual ) and the system populates its internal library with all the contents of the Twonky server. This takes some time and some of the Album covers might not show up directly ( depending on the size of your database ) but if its correct in Twonky, it will show up correctly on the BS5e.

That’s about it, you’re done!

Unsolved Issues so far:

- Sorting of bands starting with “The” (e.g. The Beatles), you will find them under “Beatles, The” in the Beosound 5 Encore, as Twonky sorts the bands and ignores the word “the”.

- Legally downloaded mp3 tracks: Even after transcoding and manually changing/adding the ID3 tag information with XLD the files are listed under “Unknown” in the Twonky server and therefore in the BS5e as well.

Comments:

Besides the described issues this workflow worked for me, all the cover art is visible and the bands are grouped where they should.

Any comments welcome …

Stephan