MP3 Ripping Software

[patrik]

Maybe I should have mentioned that I use MP3s for that single purpose, being able to play my music where I want, without any limitations whatsoever.

Since most of the music you find in iTunes Store can be bought as regular CDs from Amazon, I can't see any particular reason for shopping at iTunes Store at all.

Max, http://www.sbooth.org/ is a very versatile ripper and I use mainly for backup ripping to AIFF-files.

[Lawrence]

No, definitely not. The ITunes Proprietary format limits your use of the file to only 5 machines.

I believe only songs "bought" from the iTunes Store have that limitation. They only "sell" crappy 128kbps files anyway, so any self respecting music lover doesn't get their music that way.
You can however use iTunes to rip your own stuff to mp3 or Apple's AAC format (and a couple other formats, I forget which) and do what ever you like with them.

Not only did I not know that ITunes could rip MP3s, but I found the following four additional features, which has made ITunes my default ripping software.

1) ITunes has variable bitrate recording (VBR). I don't know how variable bitrate settings are handled in other software, but if you select VBR, then the bitrate you select becomes the MINIMUM bitrate for the track (not the maximum); thus, to use VBR to save space, you need to set the bitrate at LOWER than you normally would set it. You also can adjust the type of VBR, from high-quality to low-quality. Thus, you can set it at 128 minimum bitrate with "high" quality, and most of the songs will come out with an average bitrate of, say, around 200; or set it at 128 minimum and "medium" quality, and your songs will average about 170.

On the Edit drop-down menu, select "Preferences" (or hit CRTL-COMMA). In the Preferences window that pops up, select the "Advanced" tab, then select the "Importing" tab in the "Advanced" settings. On the "Importing tab, under "Setting," select "Custom" and a window will pop up with both the VBR check box (check it) and the bitrate setting.

2) You can set ITunes to automatically download the album information AND to automatically rip a CD when inserted, and then eject it when finished. Combining these three different settings eliminates much of the burden of ripping your own stuff; you can do it at work in the background without much of a distraction, at all. Just put in a CD, work, remove it when ejected and put another in. It does all the work except load and remove the CD from the tray. Note that this feature is not compatible with #3 and #4 below because #3 and #4 both involve making manual edits before ripping.

These settings are on the same "Importing" tab of the "Advanced" tab on the "Preferences" window that pops up from the "Edit" drop-down menu.

3) You can manually edit the tags BEFORE ripping, including BPM, genre, album, and so on, which stay with the MP3 as you take it to other programs. The only tag that does not go into the MP3 is "rating" (ITunes keeps it as part of the database), but all the other tags hard-code the MP3 tag that you can carry to and view in any other program. (You can edit the tags for any track in Itunes this way before or after ripping, but do it BEFORE you rip the MP3 so it is hard-coded into the MP3 instead of into the ITunes database; if you use #2, then edit the tags outside of Itunes because not all edits will stay with the MP3 outside of ITunes.)

Insert the CD, and from the CD window, right-click on any track. Select "Get info" and a info window will appear for that track. Select the "Info" tab, and most all the relevant tags will appear int he window for editing.

4) You can change and set the "start" and "end" point of the MP3 to eliminate intros and "outtros." It is not as precise as some software because it does not provide a visual graphic of a sound-wave timeline so you can locate the splice visually, but you can parse the seconds into tenths and hundreths and, using trial and error, can pick the precise moment you want the MP3 to start. The actual MP3 will begin and end at those start points. As with #3, this feature similarly works for MP3s (and all track) that are already in the ITunes library, but it will only keep track of the setting for ITunes if you adjust it after you rip the MP3, so adjust this setting BEFORE you rip.

This setting is also on the "Get Info" window for any track. After you load the CD, right click on the track, select "Get Info," and select the "Options" tab. The start and stop times are in the middle.


Reuben, I owe you one.

[Lawrence]

Time for an update.

I recently tried an A-B (side-by-side) audio test of VBR MP3 rips of some songs using the new ITunes MP3 ripper, Exact Audio Copy (using LAME), and JR Media Center's ripper.

The results indicated that the ITunes ripper set at VBR with 192 minimum bitrate produced the exact same size MP3 as Exact Audio Copy with the same settings. Even though the settings were the same, I considered it odd that the different rippers produced the EXACT same sized MP3. They also sounded the same in my own A-B audio tests: even down to how they re-produced the audio flaws in the original master recording.

I know that there have been old comparisons that the ITunes MP3 ripper was not nearly as good as EAC with LAME encoding (some cited earlier in this thread), but the ITunes MP3 ripper has been vastly revised since those oft-cited comparisons were done. (Most of the features discussed in my post immediately above this one did not exist in the earlier versions).

Does anyone know about any current reviews that compare MP3 rippers? Does ITunes now use LAME as its encoder (explaining why it came up with EXACTLY the same-sized MP3 as EAC using LAME)?

Second, has anyone else recently here done A/B tests of EAC against the new ITunes ripper (or any similar A/B tests)?

[Lawrence]

Does anyone know about any current reviews that compare MP3 rippers? Does ITunes now use LAME as its encoder (explaining why it came up with EXACTLY the same-sized MP3 as EAC using LAME)?

Second, has anyone else recently here done A/B tests of EAC against the new ITunes ripper (or any similar A/B tests [of MP3 ripping programs])?

Anyone?

[Toon Town Dave]

I haven't done any methodical testing but I did notice that ripping with iTunes (almost a year ago) didn't have the same error detection/correction capabilities as EAC. I had a new-ish, good condition CD that had skips/digital errors when ripped with iTunes while EAC was able to detect (and correct) the errors. Maybe I just missed some settings in iTunes but it was easier to just re-rip with EAC which I knew and had pre-configured.

Can't comment on the encoder. For my DJ stuff, I still do it as a 2-step process; rip with EAC and convert to VBR MP3 with lame (via a script I wrote).

[Lawrence]

There is an error correction switch/box in ITunes in the same "Import" tab of "Preferences" that I described above. It was probably not turned on if you did not know about it, because it is set "off" as a default (presumably because most consumers want fast ripping over accurate; not so for us). All the high-quality and VBR settings are also in that tab.

[Toon Town Dave]

Found it. Thanks!

[Lindyguy]

There is an error correction switch/box in ITunes in the same "Import" tab of "Preferences" that I described above. It was probably not turned on if you did not know about it, because it is set "off" as a default (presumably because most consumers want fast ripping over accurate; not so for us). All the high-quality and VBR settings are also in that tab.

Thanks for the heads up. A luddite like me would have never known to look. I checked my box for future imports.

[Surreal]

I've recently switched over to jriver media centre and have noticed that the ripper is very slow (generally around 5x speed). itunes generally goes around 16x for me, even at high quality.

Does anyone have quality comparisons for jriver? How about speed? Lawrence made some comparisons with itunes and EAC in an earlier post, but didn't mention jriver.

Not only did I not know that ITunes could rip MP3s, but I found the following four additional features, which has made ITunes my default ripping software.

3) You can manually edit the tags BEFORE ripping, including BPM, genre, album, and so on, which stay with the MP3 as you take it to other programs. The only tag that does not go into the MP3 is "rating" (ITunes keeps it as part of the database), but all the other tags hard-code the MP3 tag that you can carry to and view in any other program. (You can edit the tags for any track in Itunes this way before or after ripping, but do it BEFORE you rip the MP3 so it is hard-coded into the MP3 instead of into the ITunes database; if you use #2, then edit the tags outside of Itunes because not all edits will stay with the MP3 outside of ITunes.)

You can actually edit the tags while itunes is ripping the album, just as long as the song you're editing hasn't been ripped yet. In cases where I do not have internet access so the tags don't autofill, I fill in the tags for the first song, start importing, then race the computer as it rips.

[Lawrence]

I did include JRiver in the comparison, I just apparently did not report on it.

JRiver was less flexible in terms of the ripping options and the sound quality was marginally worse than the others. So I don't use it. I did not notice a timing difference, but I didn't pay too much attention to that in my test. I was more focused on quality and the flexibility of the different options.

I also have a copy of JRiver that is about two years old, so they might have improved it since then.

[Surreal]

An interesting link I came across: do you hear the difference?

[Surreal]

Do you guys usually rip in vbr or cbr? Assuming you set them to rip at approximately the same level, is there any audible difference?

[GemZombie]

Do you guys usually rip in vbr or cbr? Assuming you set them to rip at approximately the same level, is there any audible difference?

I rip in VBR High, while i can tell the different between a 128 vs 320 (as i can now confirm with that website), I cannot tell the difference between a 320 CBR and a 320 VBR file.