Hello everyone. I've decieded to start ripping my CD collection to MP3 in anticipation of getting empeg (plus I listen to them at work) and wanted to verify that what I'm doing will work with empeg. I purchased AudioCatalyst and have set it up to make VBR MP3's with the Highest quality settings. I'm also normalizing to 98% but only if the track is lower than 91% or higher than 99%. I'm more interested in sound quality than size. If I rip my collection like this, will I be pleased with the results on the empeg? Thanks for you help.

I purchased AudioCatalyst and have set it up to make VBR MP3's with the Highest quality settings. ... If I rip my collection like this, will I be pleased with the results on the empeg?

If you set AudioCatalyst to do VBR with the highest quality settings, you will:

a) be unable to tell the difference between the source CD and the resulting .MP3, and
b) be wasting a lot of space on the hard disk.

For most material, the medium quality setting is fine, unless you're a total audiophile and can hear every last nuance of detail in the music.

I do everything at the medium quality setting except for a couple of albums which I want the extra high fidelity, then I do one of the two highest settings.

One thing to remember about AudioCatalyst:

Its CD-ripping engine (called "AudioGrabber") isn't, by default, set up to perform the safest rips. It defaults to the fastest rip method rather than the most reliable. Depending on your brand of CD-ROM drive, it might be OK or it might be getting bad rips. Listen closely to your ripped tracks with a good pair of headphones, and listen carefully for the following kinds of errors:

- Skips, pops, or dropouts.
- Sudden shifting of instruments between the left and right audio channels.

If those happen to you, go into its help system and read up on the "Troubleshooting ASPI errors" section.

On my computer, I can have it rip at the fastest speed, but I must leave the system alone and make sure the screen saver is turned off while it's ripping. If I don't do this, I will get occasional ripping errors in the music (usually the L/R shifting problem).

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144

Thanks for your response. What would be the safest ripping method so that I can get some work done while I do this?

What would be the safest ripping method so that I can get some work done while I do this?

Well, personally, I think the safest ripping method would be to use WinDac32 to perform the rips instead of AudioCatalyst. When I use that, and when I turn on its sector synchronization feature, I can do anything I want on the machine and it'll work in the background. If it gets an error, it tells me by saying "synchronization failure".

As far as AudioCatalyst is concerned, it has a similar feature called "Dynamic Synch Width". This is the "reliable" method, but, like the burst method, it doesn't always work on all drives. It's also a lot slower than the burst method.

Ripping is sort of a black art, still. There's going to be a period of trial-and-error while you figure out the settings that work best on your system.

For more information on why ripping is such a black art, check out this section of the CD-recording FAQ.

Tony Fabris
Empeg #144