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Ripping time

As part of our preparations for travelling overseas I thought it was time we joined the 21st century and ripped our (small) CD collection. Minimal research led me to use Exact Audio Copy with REACT to generate FLAC images for archival purposes (I’m no great audiophile) and MP3s for general listening. The final stats were: 97 CDs with 1405 tracks taking up 31GB for the images and 5GB for the MP3s. Only on one occasion did I have to drop down to burst mode to rip a particularly worn CD. (I won’t say which to avoid any embarrassment!) freedb came up trumps with a track listing for every CD including Emma’s and even those for learning Norwegian!!

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 9:19 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “Ripping time”

  1. Neil says:
    20 February 2008 at 2:02 pm

    Dave,
    I have never used FLAC but the compression achieved doesn’t seem that great. Uncompressed 97 CDs would come out at about 63 GB rather than the 31GB you mentioned giving a compression of about 50%. In comparision the apple lossless compression gives a compression ratio of about 30%.

    cheers,
    Neil

  2. Dave says:
    20 February 2008 at 4:32 pm

    Are you sure about those figures Neil? Although not exactly unbiased, this comparison suggests that, in terms of compression, there isn’t much to choose between any of the formats. That font of all knowledge Wikipedia, also seems to suggest 40-60% is around the right number for Apple Lossless.