Hi Larry, On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 10:03:20PM -0400, Larry Troxler wrote: > > > On Wed, 2003-07-02 at 17:06, Jan Depner wrote: > > > > Just had to put my 2 cents in here. So, I go and buy the CD - it > > > > won't rip or play on my computer - I slap it in my decent CD player > > > > (with analog outs to my DSP2000) - I record it at 16/44.1 - I encode it > > > > in ogg - I post that on the web somewhere. Now, question for the > > > > student, how much worse is my ogg copy than a ripped and encoded ogg > > > > copy? If you're willing to settle for mp3 then this is just as > > > > acceptable and it can't be stopped. From what I gather from most of my > > > > reading up on sound cards, most of them go from digital to analog and > > > > then back when you rip anyway. Is the connection from your cd player > > > > to your sound card digital? It is on my system but I don't think it is > > > > on most of the cheaper ones. > > Hi, I'm sorry that I don't have Jan's original message still handy to reply > to, but reading this leaves me very confused about how the ripping process > works. > > For example, from the Cdparanio doc: > > "Cdparanoia is a Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA) extraction tool, commonly > known on the net as a 'ripper'. The application is built on top of the > Paranoia library, which is doing the real work (the Paranoia source is > included in the cdparanoia source distribution). Like the original cdda2wav, > cdparanoia package reads audio from the CDROM directly as data, with no > analog step between, and writes the data to a file or pipe in WAV, AIFC or > raw 16 bit linear PCM." > > So clearly this is strictly digital process. What you're describing sounds > more like simply playing a CD in audio mode in your CD rom drive and > recording via the analog connection to the sound card. > > Either I'm in the twilight zone (cursing myself that I don't get the sci-fi > channel for the tz marathon this weekend) or there's two different meanings > to the phrase "rip a cd". Just my two cents, you can rip a CD in either analog or digital form. Analog will incur some lossiness since the path is CD-DA -> DAC -> ADC -> WAV The ADC (analog to digital conversion) is a lossy operation. Ripping directly from the CD is preferable since there is no ADC involved. But it is not necessary to get acceptable sound quality. Programs like cdparanoia and EAC operate as digital rippers, using the cdrom's built in mechanisms to extract the audio data directly. There are other programs however (such as cdsound-recorder) that will play the disc through your CD drive's built in DAC, and record the sound through your soundcards ADC input. Or, you can use a standalone CD player for the same effect. -- Ryan Underwood, <nemesis at icequake.net>, icq=10317253
