[vorbis] wav/raw normalization

[xdfisl]

> What do you audiophiles (as it were) recommend? Do you use extractors
that
> normalize/clean up/remove the beginning and end of songs?

I used EAC (www.exactaudiocopy.de) to rip about 200 albums last weekend,
it has some pretty pedantic features, such as the ability to use a CD
already analysed (by the person who wrote EAC, or other trusted party)
with a known offset, to calculate the read offset of your optical
drives!

In general EAC is pretty bare bones, is aware of various advanced
features that optical drives (Both those that do good, like Accurate
Stream, and those which need to be circumvented, like caching) and will
extract each audio block something like 8 times to make sure it is
accurate (and if those 8 don't match it goes into more vigorous
routines). Needless to say it doesn't (by default) modify your audio by
normalising it or anything like that (though there is an option for
normalisation -- as far as I know normalisation is a bad idea as it
affects the quality of your original waveform. If you want normalisation
its best to do it later (vorbisgain) rather than sooner (normalising the
wave). This of course, also ensures that you have a faithful copy for
sharing with others.)

It now also has support for oggenc, so no more messy hacks to get it
working like in previous versions.

In general EAC is obsessed with getting an exact extraction of the CDDA,
so for scratched or otherwise damaged CDs it will either get an accurate
extract or die trying. If you have damaged CDs you may want to look into
other extraction applications which will permit dropped audio blocks at
the cost of slight skipping, but will let you actually rip your CD in
less than 12 hours.

PS. Unfortunately I have not used any other ripping utilities lately, so
cannot comment on any sort of comparison between EAC and other software.
I would have thought that EAC goes as far as is possible, though.

Hope this is of help.

Dani

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-vorbis at xiph.org [mailto:owner-vorbis at xiph.org] On Behalf
Of
> Amy Schoenhofen
> Sent: 25 July 2002 0228
> To: vorbis at xiph.org
> Subject: [vorbis] wav/raw normalization
> 
> Hey all. I was an "early" adopter of mp3 (1994-1995), and I took great
> pains
> to use digital audio extractors and avoid jitter and whatnot thru
proper
> hardware - back then, this was no mean feat. Well, I'm starting to
switch
> to
> Ogg (dragging out all the CD's, starting over) and I want to know if
> anyone
> has an informed opinion on the merits or demerits of "normalization"
and
> other such "clean up" of raw/wav files upon extraction, that so many
cd
> audio extractors try to force upon you these days. In fact, I'm having
a
> hard time finding a Windows cdda type tool that I can trust isn't
altering
> the raw/wav file in some way.
> 
> What do you audiophiles (as it were) recommend? Do you use extractors
that
> normalize/clean up/remove the beginning and end of songs?
> 
> 
> 
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