Ripping (aac|mp4|m4a) with sound-juicer

[makzu]

I'm the proud owner of a brand new iPod, and I'd like to stuff it full of music. Unfortunatly, most of my music is in vorbis format, which iPods of course can't read. So I'd like to re-rip my modest CD collection to AAC or M4A so that I can put it on my nice shiny new portable.

I put together a new audio profile in Sound Juicer for mp4 audio, with the following pipeline:

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audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! faac name=enc

However, this pipeline has a serious problem in that it won't tag the resultant files, so I'm left with simple audio and no more. Boo hoo.

Is there any way I can modify this pipeline so that it does add the tags as wanted? Or is there another way to get around it (possibly by using the MusicBrainz tagger or something?)

[LukeLemmings]

Makzu,

I'm looking for a solution too. Did you figure it out?

In de mean time I get huge aac files with your pipeline?

Lucas.

[drjimmy42]

I hate it when people ignore the original question and make an unrelated suggestion but in this case I'll make an exception.

If you go with AAC you will eventually run into a similar problem as with your current vorbis collection. Namely some player you may have in the future won't play them. Whether its your cell phone or cool new creative player or whatever.

For this reason I HIGHLY recommend going with good ol' mp3. And don't let people sell you that crap about sound quality. If you use variable bit rate encoding with mp3s it will sound very very very very good.

try this for your pipeline and it will play on everything forever.

audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! lame name=enc mode=0 vbr-quality=4

[chidorex]

If you go with AAC you will eventually run into a similar problem as with your current vorbis collection. Namely some player you may have in the future won't play them. Whether its your cell phone or cool new creative player or whatever.

This has always been my concern. Your post arrives just in time for me to make a decision about continuing to encode in AAC, MP3 or another option.

For this reason I HIGHLY recommend going with good ol' mp3. And don't let people sell you that crap about sound quality. If you use variable bit rate encoding with mp3s it will sound very very very very good.

I have actually made some tests with lame and compared (subjectively, of course) a 256Kbps fixed rate vs. a vbr=4 as you suggest. I can honestly say I could not distinguish one from the other. However, file size was 20 to 35% smaller in the VBR, which works for me.

Thanks for the post Dr Jimmy.

[drjimmy42]

I'm glad that helped although comparing fixed rate encoding to vbr in the same format isn't really the true test.
VBR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_bitrate) in mp3 will only use the bits it needs for different parts of the song so it should always sound as good and be smaller than a CBR (constant bit rate) counterpart.

However the real test is if a vbr=4 mp3 sounds as good as an AAC at whatever bit rate you use. Again I am unable to tell a big enough difference ( or really any at all ) that would make me not use an mp3 encoder.

Happy encoding.

[chidorex]

That's interesting. I will make the test at one time or another. Although as you say, It might be hard to tell the difference anyway.
Thanks again.