FLAC or WAV?

If your going with a Mac mini I would go with AIFF unlike WAV it supports album artwork. 

I rip on my pc so I rip as flac even though my main listening hub is a mac mini.  I rip as flac as this is the best supported lossless Format and I may need them some day if I ever ditch from mac for something else.  

 

I then use dbpoweramp to convert flac to ALAC for my mac.  If you purchase dbpoweramp it will batch convert a folder full of albums which is really handy.

Hi I went through the agony of this about 12 months ago! You're right to rip but try and rip once only.

After a fair bit of research here's the method I adopted:

Rip CD using DBpoweramp into FLAC format (with no compression) stored on a ReadyNAS Duo (played back with Sonos). So far I'm at about 700GB.

I now use MP3Tag to edit tags (I tried MediaMonkey but it didn't update the timestamp so Sonos wouldn't update the index - long story which I can expand if you need me to...)

Some people keep one archive copy on a hard drive and another copy on the NAS for daily use; I have not bothered with that but I DO back up the NAS every month or so on a portable hard drive.

DBpoweramp (purchased version) has a batch convertor so I can convert the FLACs into MP3 (or whatever lossy you choose) for incorporation into iTunes on my PC for use with my iPod. [DBpoweramp purchased version can also rip to different formats at the same time I think but I have not personally tried that.] So far I'm at about 140GB in MP3 (256)...

I hope that helps. It's a worthwhile task but you really really need to get your method right before starting.

If external links are allowed, try this...

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Computer-Audiophile-CD-Ripping...

If not, google computer audiophile cd ripping strategy and look around...

Best of luck!

I'm happy with WAV. Not sure what is meant by tagging? But WMP labels all the albums so I don't need to. If you have MAC maybe its a different story. Also, as hard drive space is so cheap now, WAV seems the best for me.

It'll be a different story if you play the WAVs on anything other than the PC you've ripped them on, as the "labels" won't travel with them.

Correct, as does iTunes.  This only becomes an issue if you want to transfer those files somewhere else, because the WAVs do not store that labelling inside the files themselves, whereas FLAC (and other formats) do support this.

Oh I see, thanks Lhc. My WinMedia audio player plays the WAV files or converts with song info so I don't need to. I've tried various other ripping programs and can't get on with them. They either take far too long, or fill the PC up with junk. If I'm looking to use lossless files to replace CDs in the home portability isn't an issue.

thanks JD

Oops, jinx...

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I think what i will do is rip to FLAC, then back up to a external hard drive so i have got two copies of the FLACs, and then i can convert the FLACs to whichever is needed to work with what i decide to buy while also keeping a copy of the original FLAC rips.

What bit do i rip to FLAC? I have seen somewhere you can get 16bit and 24bit.

Just out of interest, if i converted from FLAC to WAV would i lose any sound quality?

And if i ripped from FLAC to WAV and then from the WAV back to FLAC would i lose any quality and would it be the same as the original WAV rip?

Thanks

CD’s are 16bit so if ripping CD’s I would recommend sticking to 16bit. 

You shouldn’t lose quality going from Flac to Wav but you would lose the metadata, album artwork etc. This is the reason I use AIFF.

Now all you've got to explain away is the big print...

You can convert backwards and forwards WAV<->FLAC to your heart's content. Nothing will change unless the file gets corrupted. If you want to try to save even more space on your unused backup, you could even try WinZip'ing the FLACs, though I bet that wouldn't save much (might do though...I've never tried!)

Thanks for clearing that up, i was just checking as i am going to rip everything to FLAC and keep two copies of everything so one can be a back up and the other can be converted to something else when needed, just wanted to check if converting from FLAC to another lossless format and then back again would be ok, otherwise i would of made three copies of everything.

There's no need for that really, at least not for the reasons you think. Creating an mp3 version of a FLAC file (for example), does not delete the FLAC file, the mp3 will be created in addition to the FLAC file, which will remain unchanged.

Arguably you should have a backup simply to protect you against losing the files due a disk failure or some such.