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In: Home Theater
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I’ve long championed the use of AccurateRip for bit-perfect audio extraction from CDs. Exact Audio Copy (EAC) has been my program of choice for years because it offered the best extraction quality and the largest feature set. Unfortunately, it’s also pretty difficult to configure, which lead me to create my EAC configuration guide. The only other option was dBpoweramp Music Converter, but it was not as accurate as EAC, it didn’t handle Compilation CDs (i.e. Various Artists CDs) well, and it didn’t handle queued ripping very well. But now things have changed. Spoon over at Illustrate has just released dBpoweramp Music Converter version 12. ItRead More →

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In: Home Theater
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Update 2010-Jan-21: For playback of FLAC in Windows 7, use either the xiph.org Directshow Filters or the Shark007 Codec Pack. The Lossless Audio Blog is reporting that FLAC lossless audio files can now be played in Windows Media Center 2005.  This is great news, because every music player I own now supports FLAC, the format I use to encode all of my music files.  So I can listen to my FLAC music files at my PC using dbPowerAmp or one of many players, around the house on my Sonos, in my car with my PhatNoise PhatBox, and now in my home theater with Windows MediaRead More →

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After working on it for several weeks, I finally finished my guide for audiophile-quality extraction of music from CDs. To get the best possible audio quality, it is necessary to have bit-perfect extraction from the CD (with no unnecessary error correction trying to reconstruct misreads due to CD drive offset). Then, the perfectly-extracted audio should be compressed using a lossless format to maintain the original quality. The guide shows how to use setup and use some free programs to do this: EAC, FLAC, and AccurateRip. To be honest, I’m not positive I could identify the difference between a “regular” extraction and a bit-perfect extraction, andRead More →

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I’m in the midst of figuring out how to get music from my computer to my house and my car. There are so many formats, codecs, and DRM systems that it has been difficult for me to pick the best format. I started with 128kbps fixed bit rate mp3, then went to ~220kbps Variable Bit Rate mp3, and then tried DRM-protected WMA files downloaded from MusicMatch, and finally WMA Lossless. Of these, the VBR mp3 seems to be the most universal and offers great sound, though it is a lossy format. Looking at the devices I will probably be using, FLAC (free lossless audio codec)Read More →

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I’ve been buying music online from Musicmatch for the past year and a half. I like the fact that they have fairly high bit rates (168K) and that Musicmatch Jukebox is so easy to use. Now that However, now that I’ve started listening to music on multiple PC around the house, I’ve become very frustrated with the DRM and the fact that I requires that I jump through so many hoops. I have to play every single song in Musicmatch Jukebox on every PC so it can first download the decryption keys. As I download more music, I have to repeat the process. It’s myRead More →