Santa Brought You an iPod... Now What?
Riptopia Executives Offer These Five Tips for Blooming Digital Music Audiofiles
(PressMethod) - There it was on Christmas morning: your brand-new iPod. Now, Christmas has come and gone and you've barely had time to upload two CDs. It's time to head back to work, and the hundreds of CDs waiting by your computer will keep doing just that until you can find time to upload them yourself.
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What's unfortunate is that since you're in a hurry to get your music uploaded, you're probably ripping it to your computer at the fastest possible speed and greatly diminishing the quality of it in the process. That's why the executives at Riptopia -- the leading commercial digital music processing service -- are offering advice to get the highest quality music onto your iPod. These tips from Riptopia co-founder and President Dr. Kurt Beyer will put you on the fast track to audio-bliss and help you to rip your CDs once and rip them right.
-- Use the right file format. Today's consumers are most familiar with
MP3 audio files but there are many other formats available. MP3 remains the
most popular mainly because all brands of players can decode the ubiquitous
CODEC. Microsoft and Apple promote WMA and AAC, respectively, to address
perceived deficiencies with MP3, especially at high compression rates, but
these CODECs only work on limited brands of hardware and are the default
settings for Windows Media Player and iTunes. Lossless formats, such as WMA
Lossless, ALAC, and FLAC, also preserve the original CD sound quality, but
again are limited to the type of hardware that can play them.
-- Weigh in on what's important -- file size or quality. Techies use the
term "bitrate" to describe the pieces or "bits" of information that are
processed per second. In general, the more "bits" of information included
in the file, the better the quality. In turn, the more bits, the larger the
file. That's why knowing and correctly setting your file bitrate is
important. Music sold on iTunes has a file size of 128 kbps, while 192 kbps
is the file size Riptopia offers consumers (320 kbps and higher are also
available for aficionados). This is still lower than a CD, which is
typically manufactured at 1,411 kbps.
-- Consider error correction software. Even with top-of-the-line CD-ROM
drives, hardware and software, computers are not designed for audio
extraction. An audio CD player reads data in a continuous manner, with its
laser following a smooth track. Computers, on the other hand, read
information in blocks. So, blocks of audio data are read from random
sectors and then written to new random sectors on the computer's hard
drive. This can leave out important information, or add unwanted new data.
You can fix this by using error-correction algorithms that read overlapping
blocks, compare them, discard the inconsistencies and reread if necessary
to confirm that the data on the original audio CD matches the extracted
data. This is especially important when processing used CDs, since 20 years
of CD abuse makes error correction essential during the ripping process.
Error correction software is available for home use, but it can take two to
three times longer to rip a CD.
-- Take the time to clean your metadata. Because information about a song
isn't embedded on a CD itself, it must be added from another source or
manually typed into iTunes or Windows Media Player. Music server
manufacturers and commercial processing firms like Riptopia have partnered
with large digital audio data companies to embed all the identifying
attributes of the song: artist name, album name, song title, track number,
music genre, cover art and even composer and conductor in the case of
classical music. The embedded information gives digital music some
advantages, especially when it comes to searching and organizing vast CD
collections. A specific song on a specific CD can be instantaneously
located and played, no matter how large the CD collection. If only part of
the album name or a key word from a song is remembered, the correct song is
still only a click or two away.
-- Buy CDs: Don't download from the Internet. Aside from the piracy
controversy and digital rights management issues that come with downloading
music online, even when you pay for songs on Amazon or iTunes, you're
downloading a file that's dramatically compressed. This may be okay when
listening through iPod earbuds, but the sound will break down when playing
through your stereo or in your car. If you buy new music on CDs, not only
will you have a permanent physical back-up, but you can follow the tips and
create a digital version that preserves the original audio fidelity of the
CD.
Contact:
Contact:
Christina Jorgensen (ext. 103)
or
Lauren Anderson (ext. 115)
Drizen-Dohs Corporate Communications
818-772-9555
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