Is the sound quality the same?

Question

I want to drastically thin out my cd collection and put some of the songs on the pc so I can ditch the cds and save space. When I rip a cd to the pc is there any compromise in sound quality? Anything else I should watch out for before consigning my cd collection to the charity shop?

Answer 1

If you rip to a lossy (MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG) format yes, you do loose quality. Although there is a way to rip it losslessly with both WMA Pro Lossless and Flac (which is CD perfect sound quality). The only drawback is that WMA Pro and Flac is that it takes a considerable amount of space compared to a lossy format (about 10 times more space). Wav is also lossless, but it doesn't support ID3 tags and is even bigger in size compared to WMA Pro Lossless and Flac.



I'm assuming you have a Windows computer. The easiest way to rip your music is to use Windows Media Player. The default codec is WMA, so you'll probably want to change it to Windows Media Audio Pro Lossless (if that's what you want). Otherwise if you want a more compatible format, I'd recommend MP3 of at at least 192kbit/s as a minimum (320kbit/s would be the best quality, but not as good as lossless).



I'd also like to note that you can also rip your music into WMA Pro Lossless and if you decide to get an MP3 player, Windows Media Player can automatically convert the WMA Pro Lossless to MP3 'on-the-fly' while it transfer to the MP3 player. This is what I do, but I use Media Monkey and Flac. Media Monkey though has a bit more of a learning curve and to get all the features costs money.



Here is a good guide that you can use to rip your music using Windows Media Player.



http://windows7.beyondthinking.net/2009/11/ripping-copying-music-cds-in-windows-media-player-12/

Answer 2

If you rip the CDs in WMA there is very little, if any, loss in quality. But each song takes up about 50 MB of hard drive space. While that may not sound like a lot by today's standards (hard drive space is cheap) it adds up quickly. On the other hand, an MP3 at 128 kbps only takes up about 5 MB. 128 Kbps is the minimum compression you would want to use -- it's a reasonable compromise between quality and file size. You can choose higher bit rates until you reach a point of diminishing returns. It pretty much depends on how much HD space you can use. Some MP3 downloads (that you pay for) are 256 Kbps and some I think are as high as 320 kbps. Anything above that is probably a waste.

Answer 3

Depending on what sort of file and how much compression you use, the answer will change.



If you are converting the songs to MP3 at a low bit rate, then yes, you will definitely lose quality.



CDs do not take up that much space. And as technology changes in the coming years, how you convert them today, will not be as good quality as if you convert them with the newer formats that will be out in years to come.



And then you will want to convert them from your CDs again, to your new devices.



Plus, if your computer or devices crash, or drives or files get damaged, you lose everything unless you hold on to the CDs.

Answer 4

The iPod is a very conformist gadget, even though it does have its ups... like the greater proper sound high quality alongside with the 30 some thing Equalizer presets that permit you to make your song sound much greater proper. additionally the headphones you get which includes your iPod have plenty greater proper acoustics and speaker settings than the different ive seen that come primary.

Answer 5

You can use lossless comprssion, direct Wav/Aiff, or high bitrate AAC, WMA, or MP3. WMA and AAC are more efficient than MP3.



Another concern is copyright. In most cases, your right to content you rip from your CDs is as legal as long as you still own and posess the original CDs. You getting rid of your CDs would make your ripped files essentially illegal copies.

Answer 6

Anything ripped with a setting that is not .wav is lower in quality. All MP3's are lower in quality than the original commercial CD.

Bad move to rid yourself of the disks, eventually your computer will have issues, and you'll lose your files, then where will you be ?

Answer 7

Usually no. Sometimes depending on what computer you have it may even be better then before. So I highly suggest it, and if you don't like it for some reason you can just burn it back. You can also buy a good speaker and hook it up to your computer and that will give it better sound quality.