How should I .... ?

[mevetts]

Hi,

I am yet to purchase an MP3 player, but was thinking tht maybe I could start transfering my CD collection onto my pc so that when I do get a player my music is ready to go.

However, is this worth doing because as I understand it their seems to be 3 or 4 types of recording and as I'm not sure which player I intend to get I don't want to waste my time transferring the CDs.

If I do begin transferring then what software should I use?

Any advice would be welcomed.

Mark.

[justdoit]

dont start transfering your CD's until you buy your player because if you buy a ipod you will need to reconvert everything to aac for it to work, Sonys like atrac best (for features and battery life). Converting a compressed file to a different compressed format loses quality and should be avoided. However if you really insist that you want to start them I would say rip your CD's at at least 192 bit rate to minimise the loss.

[mevetts]

Thanks for the info. What happens if you switch players? I guess that's the idea, the one you buy first time around then you are somehwhat limited to future players from the same manufacturer?

[Cloysterpeteuk]

Stop talking rubbish justdoit!, you won't need to convert everything to AAC in order for it to work with an ipod he's talking bolloks.

The ipod is an mp3 player, hence it will take mp3 files, as will ANY mp3 player. Therefeore, it's a safe bet that if you encode all your CD's into high bitrate (the higher the better for sound quality, although they will take up more space on your player) mp3's then they will work fine on whatever player you use. Lots of people will tell you to go around using alternative formats such as Atrac or Aac, while these formats arguably offer better sound quality than mp3, mp3 files still sound excellent when used at a high bitrate, plus mp3 is the only format that will work on all models of players.

Something else to bear in mind is make sure you don't go buying songs online until you know which player you want, itunes music store only sells music as Aac files while other stores sell in a protected wma format which won't work on ipods.

[Cloysterpeteuk]

Originally Posted by mevetts

Thanks for the info. What happens if you switch players? I guess that's the idea, the one you buy first time around then you are somehwhat limited to future players from the same manufacturer?

No, if you used mp3 you would be able to take those files and put them on any other brand of player. If you had different files then you would just had to re-encode the music from the CD's back onto the PC, into a format your new player supported of course. Don't worry though, encoding (the process of copying music from a CD onto the PC) is really simple and requires only a few button clicks the first time you do it to set the quality, then the next time you come to encode a CD you can do it with one click or even have the PC do it automatically. All with free software too.

[BenW]

Rip all the cds to 192kb/s MP3 using lame encoder.

Then when you get the mp3 player you can transfer the mp3 files

[mevetts]

Oh ok. I did think it was a little odd and as I'm no music guru I doubt I would be able to tell the difference in quality anyway!

So which software should I use to rip my CDs?

[justdoit]

Oh sorry to upset you Cloysterpeteuk I missed the 'best' off the end of the sentence as in 'if you buy a ipod you will need to reconvert everything to aac for it to work' best'. i.e. to get the most out off the storage and battery life of the unit not to mention leveling the volume levels etc. its best to use most players proprietary format.

mevetts if you intend to use wma files windows media player will happly rip them, itunes will rip files to aac for the iPod not sure if you can rip to mp3 as I dont use it after it tried screwing my files up. You can buy or may find some free plugins for windows media player to convert tracks to mp3's instead of wma just do a search on google. Other than that, most if not all players come with software included with the player to do the job.