Compromising On Quality

[Glenn Wolsey]

*rant*

These days I hear, "Rip in 128 AAC not AIFF to save space", or "Dont rip your DVD's in H.264, use Mpeg 4 and a low resolution"

I personally disagree, with the price of HDDs these days why compromise on quality? I rip all my music with AIFF, and my DVDs using full disk extraction in MacTheRipper.

Do you really want to need to re-rip your media many time in the future as you get unhappy with the current quality, I say go for the best you can the first time.

HDDs will get cheaper, while re-ripping media takes time.

Listen to me, you will thank me in the long run

*end rant*

 

[SC68Cal]

I rip with MacTheRipper and then encode to MPEG for the sake of portability and ease of use.

 

[1dterbeest]

Yeah, my iPod (that i don't have) can't hold very
much audio in AIFF. No way am I taking thousands
of songs in my pocket in that format!

I rip at 192kbps, and since I'm not a huge audiophile,
the quality isn't bad. I might start ripping in 256 now
that I have my external drive for my library, but there
is no way I could afford to go to straight up AIFF.

 

[plinkoman]

funny you should mention this. since i got myself a little .5TB eSATA RAID for my powerbook, i've began re-ripping all my cd's into apple lossless on a separate user account(so i can still keep everything on my iPod with AAC). as of right now i don't actually listen to them that often, but i've wanted lossless copies all ripped and ready for when they day comes that i can throw them on my 10th generation iPod 60TB and enjoy.

as far as movies go, i usually compress, but always to h.264, and always at full resolution. if there is one thing in life i can't stand, it's low-res video.

 

[Glenn Wolsey]

funny you should mention this. since i got myself a little .5TB eSATA RAID for my powerbook, i've began re-ripping all my cd's into apple lossless on a separate user account(so i can still keep everything on my iPod with AAC). as of right now i don't actually listen to them that often, but i've wanted lossless copies all ripped and ready for when they day comes that i can throw them on my 10th generation iPod 60TB and enjoy.

as far as movies go, i usually compress, but always to h.264, and always at full resolution. if there is one thing in life i can't stand, it's low-res video.

How do you like the HDD? I'm planning on buying a 500GB one for Backup and my Video content.

What would you recommend?

 

[plinkoman]

How do you like the HDD? I'm planning on buying a 500GB one for Backup and my Video content.

What would you recommend?

the only problem i have with it is the cardbus. it is such an old standard that can barely classify as plug-n-play, so i always have to re-mount it after i put the powerbook to sleep, and if i forget to un-mount it before sleep, i get device removal dialog boxes upon waking, even though nothing is actually wrong. But man is this thing fast. at twice the speed of fw800, i can live with the shortcomings of cardbus.

as for your iMac, i reccomend a dual firewire RAID enclosure and two 250GB drives. after about 250GB, the price per GB shoots way up, so it is alot cheaper getting two smaller drives. and if you want to keep your backup and video content separate, you can use the individual drives instead of partitions. you can get drives cheap on newegg; as for an enclosure, this is the kind i got(except mine was eSATA) http://cooldrives.com/copr0fi80ald.html. Since you'll only have fw400, you'd need an adapter, or a different enclosure all-together. basically, by doing it that way, i have a 500GB drive that was $/GB cheaper then just about anything else, while at the same time being considerably faster then anything else.

hope that helps

 

[Glenn Wolsey]

So you recommend that enclosure plus two 250GB drives to go in it?

Would that work fine?

 

[plinkoman]

So you recommend that enclosure plus two 250GB drives to go in it?

Would that work fine?

if you're looking for 500GB, thats the cheapest way to do it; 500GB drives are way expensive. you could get 2 250GB drives, an enclosure, all cables, lunch, and a year of dot mac for the price of a single 500GB drive

as for compatibility, pretty much any enclosure and any hard drive/drives will work, just as long as they have the right connections.

 

[Glenn Wolsey]

if you're looking for 500GB, thats the cheapest way to do it; 500GB drives are way expensive. you could get 2 250GB drives, an enclosure, all cables, lunch, and a year of dot mac for the price of a single 500GB drive

Haha, nice way of putting it

Would you mind running me through what you would buy to do this yourself if you were me?

 

[The Mad Kiwi]

There's not really much point in ripping to aiff.
128 AAC or mp3 doesn't make much difference to the listening experience.

Modern music is so distorted in the mastering and recording processes to begin with that any added distortions don't make much difference.

And most old recordings are so poorly mastered and recorded that the distortion added by the compression is the least of the problems with quality.

Video needs the best quality possible especially if you've got a really nice screen.

I wish I had a really nice screen :-(

 

[Salasm]

I personally disagree, with the price of HDDs these days why compromise on quality? I rip all my music with AIFF, and my DVDs using full disk extraction in MacTheRipper.

You do realize that DVD video is already highly compressed, right? So doing a full disk extraction doesn't mean you're getting better quality. You have no problem with compressed video, but if you were offered uncompressed digital video, you'd complain about DVDs being already compressed, right?

That's the same reasoning you're using to justify not using AAC to compress your music.

HDD is cheap, but try cramming lots of AIFF music files on a nano, and you might have a change of opinion. 160Kbps AAC is more than adequate for music quality indistinguishable from that of its uncompressed source.

 

[Glenn Wolsey]

I think Apple need the option to convert music to a lower bitrate to put on the iPod just like the Shuffle..

 

[Counterfit]

You do realize that DVD video is already highly compressed, right? So doing a full disk extraction doesn't mean you're getting better quality. You have no problem with compressed video, but if you were offered uncompressed digital video, you'd complain about DVDs being already compressed, right?

That's the same reasoning you're using to justify not using AAC to compress your music.

Good point. CDs are NOT uncompressed. Very very little compression, but if you want real uncompressed audio, go to a concert.

 

[The Mad Kiwi]

I think Apple need the option to convert music to a lower bitrate to put on the iPod just like the Shuffle..

Easy just rip all your cds as aiff then convert them to 128 aac, then you set up 2 smart folders one which is the aiff one which is the aac, link the ipod to only update the acc smart folder.