I Hate to Admit It

I had similar bad experiences with MP3s, but now am a quasi-convert. I use them in my iPod, and its OK for commuting purposes. Since I had the MP3s on my computer, I also hooked the computer to my stereo (Quicksilver monos/ProAc RS2s) in my study, and the jukebox software is OK for that kind of thing--its easy and gives good b/ground music. For serious 2CH, its still upstairs to the real rig.

My frustrations with ripping CDs was driven by the lousy software out there. I used a lot of commercial ripping software (all mentioned above) and never got good results, even for WAVs. Then someone turned me on to Exact Audio Copy. Stunning advance in ripping (tongue in cheek)--it actually reads the blocks more than once and does a compare! You would have thought *someone* might have made that conceptual leap somewhere along the way in the commercial world. Anyway, its $20 from somewhere on the web--just run a search on google. No more skips/nasties on WAVs. Much better than anything else I tried. User interface is kind of awful, but the end product is worth it.

If you ever want to try MP3s again, use a free program called LAME, which can be called by EAC. There are some command line presets that work well--I use "--alt preset extreme" for my iPod, but there is also an "--alt preset insane" for really HQ MP3s.

Try SoundForge for sound extraction/editing. Granted, it may be a little "excessive'" - the program is actually meant for much more complex tasks, but it has a built-in ripping facility, and tons of features, if you ever want to try and improve the sound of some recordings. But if you want the best, this may be it. Proffessional quality and reliability to boot, and great flexibility.

Thank you everyone, I have found this thread very useful and expect to convert for jukebox and background applications.

Further to Ipods, I have two questions:

1) Can I buy an ipod for windows software and later convert to the Apple interface if I decide to buy a Mac? (I would rather not spend the money on a Mac, but everyone says it works much better.)

2) Am I being too anally retentive audiophilish in my desire to bypass the internal amplifier and volume controls in computer and Ipod applications?

It seems that my external Grado headphone amp should sound much better, but it has been a pain to find line level outputs on mobile devices.

The computer salesmen look at me like I have 5 heads every time I ask for a line level output or for a battery powered, high quality external DAC. Maybe the internal electronics on the Ipod arent so bad?

Any other advice on audiophile quality, mobile audio, that can run on batteries for long flights would be greatly appreciated.

I think I saw a thread on A'gon a little while ago about external DACs for computers--hmm... try this:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?icomp&1035756620&read&3&4&

I think the Mac and Windows iPods are pretty different. Google iPod and windows conversion or somesuch. There were some sites with info about hacking the Mac version for a windows environment--if you are ultimately going Mac, you might buy a Mac iPod and see if you can temporarily do the Windows mods.

The internals of the iPod aren't bad, given that its a tiny box. I (temporarily) used a pair of etymotics earbuds and was rather impressed by the sound quality, but had to abandon them (in-ear 'phones were giving me motion sickness on the metro).

If you are trying to squeeze better sound out of the iPod, check into Headroom--they make external amps/processors for the iPod that are well reviewed.

Go to www.etree.org & check the faq page, it will tell you everything you need to know about preserving music digitaly. My hobby & the reason I got into audiophile hell is recoding concerts from bands that allow taping. We are rather advanced in our storage skills when it comes to saving wave files on drives with compression. I record everything on DAT than transfer into my PC using a bit-perfect soundcard (not any sound blaster product, they resample) than convert to shn. SHN will compress the file without dropping any bits & is available for FREE. Once you load MKW on your PC you can then re-convert to analog wav for playback. You can also load SHN-Amp in your PC & play back SHN files without converting back to wav. There has been vollumes written about these techniques as we are a rather "large" community (or so I like to think) Most of us will not listen to MP3, yes it is THAT bad. There are also plenty of ways to cut tracks once you have the wav file in your PC without damaging the original wav. I also use SoundForge for wav capture & feel it is the best way to go. As far as "ripping" I would recommend Nero or Fuerio for burning discs once they are in your PC. Also realize if you get a bit-perfect soundcard you can then output from the card into the DAC of your choice from Coax or Toslink, this will preserve the analog signal in the best way without adding any artifacts to the original source (i.e. resampling)Please feel free to drop me a line if you need any help.