Audio Ripping - Degration?

S

Syric

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 4, 2009
Messages
114
So, in my quest for the perfect sound begun, I've a new question. I hope this is the proper area for it :) All this is solely under the understanding that I'm about to begin backing up my CD library from scratch....

Say you rip a CD at whatever .mp3 value you want: VBR, 320, 192, 128, etc. Now, you go to burn that onto a backup CD. Then, you move and during that process your original CD is broken. To make matters worse, you're sister thought it be fun to click here, press that, and basically you find yourself having to reinstall ur OS & start anew.

New OS loaded, you start to install everything, etc. etc. Now, there's that CD you burned to backup your music. You load it into the computer, and rip it all over again ....at whatever value you want ...all over again.

Wouldn't this suggest a consistent, over-time if done again and again, degradation in quality that eventually is going to leave you with shaet?
 
If you're merely burning a data CD of the .mp3 files, no....you won't have any degradation of the file (aside from obvious low-quality media issues aside). Now, if you're burning the .mp3s as a new audio CD and re-ripping off that--yes, of course there'd be a loss in quality; you're ripping to a lossy format.
 
If you mean what it seems you mean: yes.

That being said, if you're backing up your MP3s, why would you write them as audio tracks on discs as opposed to simply backing them up as files, negating the need to re-rip from the discs? If you're merely copying the files themselves, there is no further degradation.
 
ty for putting a few things into perspective ....that I've wondered for years, and just needed someone else to confirm and reassure me I had it right. Huzzah!
 
If you're ripping your entire collection from scratch you might wanna consider going w/something like FLAC, a lossless format. You'll have to re-convert all the FLAC files to MP3 for portable use and possibly manage them as two separate libraries (and FLAC files are much larger, so all of this is under the assumption that you have the storage space necessary or that your collection isn't more than a couple hundred CDs)... But the trade-off is that if you re-convert those FLAC files into anything else you're not losing any quality like you are with MP3 (because it's a lossy format).

So if in 5 years there's a new flavor of the month format (or FLAC has actually caught on w/portable players, or some other lossless format has), you can just convert to that one w/no loss in quality... Or if you wanna cut a ringtone out of a song you can do it of what's essentially an original, w/o incurring an extra step and unnecessary loss of quality. So on and so forth...

I use MediaMonkey to manage my collection, the filters make it very easy to keep my FLAC files (rips) and MP3 conversions straight (while at the same time grouping my downloaded purchases w/my FLAC files when browsing, since those don't exist as FLAC files).
 
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