A Question About Ripping and Burning

[Rogue]

Windows Media Player version.

So, I have this set of CDs. Old Dave Matthews Band stuff called the "Bitter Blues Compilations." Pretty cool stuff for the nerds like me that could follow DMB around all summer in a VW bus if it weren't for things like life, work, responsibility, etc getting in the way all the time.

So, I want to offer a few sets of these CDs to some folks on a fan site.
Thing is, DMB fans and those who trade concerts are pretty strict about what is good sharing etiquette. I've never figured out how to do a bit torrent, so I'm not a techie expert like that.

So, I've ripped these to my hard drive.
I'm now burning them onto new Sony CD-Rs (namebrand only for trading purposes I'm told). The folks in the know talk about only sharing "lossless" audio.

Is what I'm doing good enough? It's taking about 6-8 minutes per disc to burn so by my hillbilly logic that means it must be good quality. Right?

What say ye, SO?

[Tulsa_Fireman]

A Question About Ripping and Burning

It's your son Rip, on line toot.

Can we get one of those habanero brand thread merges? :)

[Turd_Ferguson]

I thought this thread was gonna be about the status of my drawers.

[yermom]

what format are the files on the CD's? are you just copying the tracks? are you ripping them to mp3 then burning them as audio? that would not be good...

if it was me, i'd be ripping them lossless with iTunes, or with some open-source thing that uses .flac

that seems to be the bootleg trader's format

i've never seeded a bittorrent, but i can't imagine it's that tough

[Rogue]

what format are the files on the CD's? are you just copying the tracks? are you ripping them to mp3 then burning them as audio? that would not be good...

if it was me, i'd be ripping them lossless with iTunes, or with some open-source thing that uses .flac

that seems to be the bootleg trader's format

i've never seeded a bittorrent, but i can't imagine it's that tough

Thanks.
Probably whatever the defaults in WMP are set to.
.flac does seem to be popular. Whatever the hell that is.
I doubt it's MP3 as I don't own an ipod.

One suggestion is a program called EAC. Thoughts?

[GottaHavePride]

"Lossless" is a different kind of animal. When you ripped the CDs to your hard drive, did you convert them to mp3s? If the answer is yes, that is not a lossless compression format.

Windows Media Player 9 (or above) has a lossless encoding option. Go into the ripping options and change the format to "Windows Media Audio Lossless"

MP3 format compresses audio files by eliminating some of the finer detail. Lossless encoding doesn't do that, but the compressed lossless file will still be 55 to 60% of the original size of the file, so it takes more hard drive space.

Then you should be able to burn the lossless tracks to a disc like normal.

[Rogue]

You see there, people...GHP gave me an answer that I might be able to figure out. It's like finding a....well something that's hard to find in a place like this anyhow.

[PhilTLL]

There are a few good ways to do this. Aforementioned EAC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exact_Audio_Copy) is my favorite program for ripping and FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Lossless_Audio_Codec) for compression, which you can implement through EAC or through a separate frontend or command line (flac is just a codec). Flac has the advantage of not being associated with Microsoft, which the paranoiac in me thinks means a potential run-in with DRM/CPRM, which I detest.

If you just want to send physical copies of the CDs around, what you're doing sounds fine, or use EAC to make disc images, which are .wav files with .cue sheets (disc layout/cd-text/etc info file) that you can just copy to new discs as many times as you need. If you want to upload them to people, make the .wavs from the disc images into .flac and send them with the .cue sheets. This is pretty easy stuff to do with EAC and FLAC frontend; if you install those and play with them a little bit you should be able to get it.

There's also ripping the discs into individual tracks and making .flac for each track, which increases bandwidth flexibility and overall portability, I guess. Track-by-track is the usual way of spreading live shows.

[Frozen Sooner]

GHP did a really good job there.

A lossy codec-such as .mp3, Dolby Digita, DTS, etc throws away bits that describe parts of the music that you supposedly don't hear because they would be masked by other parts of the musics. When the audio stream is decoded, you do not get an exact copy of the original data.

A lossless codec-such as FLAC, AAC lossless, Dolby TrueHD, Sony DSD-does not throw those bits away and the decoded data is an exact match to the original data.

Garbage in, Garbage out, though-you can't polish a turd with a better codec.

[OKC-SLC]

I don't understand a thing that you guys are saying.

Except, however, I'm interested in getting my hands on a copy of this CD set, Rogue. Is that possible/legal/kosher?

[Frozen Sooner]

I don't understand a thing that you guys are saying.

Except, however, I'm interested in getting my hands on a copy of this CD set, Rogue. Is that possible/legal/kosher?
DMB is one of the bands that allows taping and trading of live shows so long as they have not released that show commercially. The Dead, Phish, and Metallica also do this.

[OKC-SLC]

DMB is one of the bands that allows taping and trading of live shows so long as they have not released that show commercially. The Dead, Phish, and Metallica also do this.
I've known DMB allows recording; i wasn't sure about the trading part. That is excellent news. I recorded and burned their first concert I went to--the first in the 2000 tour.

[Rogue]

I don't understand a thing that you guys are saying.

Except, however, I'm interested in getting my hands on a copy of this CD set, Rogue. Is that possible/legal/kosher?

Yes, absolutely. I was up until after midnight last night burning 6 sets of this.
3 are spoken for now. The fastest way is for you to sign up and post
right here where you can see the song list and read my delirious disclaimers (http://antsmarching.org/forum/showthread.php?t=222802).

Otherwise, I might not get to it before I head to the Charlotte and Rothbury shows.
When you say you have the first concert of 2000, do you mean Columbus, OH both nights? We might could make a trade.
One other poster here is getting a copy so, if my theory holds, these discs should now go forth and multiply. ;)

Thanks to PhilTLL and Froze too. Now Ima hafta subscribe to this thread to reference after I get some of this fancy schmancy new software.

Anyone know why some CDs won't let me put all of the tracks on and some will?
For example, one of these has like 11 tracks and SONY CD-R #1 will hold them all while the very next disc from the same dayyum package will only hold 10 of the tracks. WTF?!

[OKC-SLC]

Yes, absolutely. I was up until after midnight last night burning 6 sets of this.
3 are spoken for now. The fastest way is for you to sign up and post
right here where you can see the song list and read my delirious disclaimers (http://antsmarching.org/forum/showthread.php?t=222802).

Otherwise, I might not get to it before I head to the Charlotte and Rothbury shows.
When you say you have the first concert of 2000, do you mean Columbus, OH both nights? We might could make a trade.
One other poster here is getting a copy so, if my theory holds, these discs should now go forth and multiply. ;)

Thanks to PhilTLL and Froze too. Now Ima hafta subscribe to this thread to reference after I get some of this fancy schmancy new software.

Anyone know why some CDs won't let me put all of the tracks on and some will?
For example, one of these has like 11 tracks and SONY CD-R #1 will hold them all while the very next disc from the same dayyum package will only hold 10 of the tracks. WTF?!

Yeah, I have Columbus the first night (THE first show of the 2000s by DMB)--I'd be happy to make a copy for you, I just don't know how the quality will be compared to what you're used to.

[mdklatt]

Put some Ben Gay on it. Wait...what?

[soonerinabilene]

I dont have a super duper audio system, so maybe thats why I cant tell a difference, but i dont hear anything different between a cd and an mp3 ripped at 320.

[sooner_born_1960]

Nobody can.

[Frozen Sooner]

I dont have a super duper audio system, so maybe thats why I cant tell a difference, but i dont hear anything different between a cd and an mp3 ripped at 320.

There's going to be very very little difference between the two.

Then again, a CD ripped with FLAC might take up less room on a hard drive than one ripped as .mp3 @ 320.