[corndale]

I plan to purchase Roxio Creator 2009 shortly and install it on a computer which I will build using Windows 7 beta. My first major music project will be to digitize my gospel vinyl record collection. In my research, Apple's ALAC format seems to be the best lossless format when considering file size of the various lossless formats. Can 2009 convert LP tracks to ALAC, and also play ALAC files? I understand that I must install a third party program and a decoder in order to play ALAC files in Windows Media Player (this may be another forum's discussion). Or, should I just convert the LPs to MP3 files at 320 kpbs? File size will not be a problem because I will have ample HDD storage space. My goal is to digitize my LP collection in the best quality format for playback on my computer and burning to CDs.

[grandpabruce]

I plan to purchase Roxio Creator 2009 shortly and install it on a computer which I will build using Windows 7 beta. My first major music project will be to digitize my gospel vinyl record collection. In my research, Apple's ALAC format seems to be the best lossless format when considering file size of the various lossless formats. Can 2009 convert LP tracks to ALAC, and also play ALAC files? I understand that I must install a third party program and a decoder in order to play ALAC files in Windows Media Player (this may be another forum's discussion). Or, should I just convert the LPs to MP3 files at 320 kpbs? File size will not be a problem because I will have ample HDD storage space. My goal is to digitize my LP collection in the best quality format for playback on my computer and burning to CDs.

When you "capture" those LPs, "capture" them as .wav files.

This post has been edited by grandpabruce: 21 January 2009 - 03:34 PM

[Brendon]

In my research, Apple's ALAC format seems to be the best lossless format when considering file size of the various lossless formats. Can 2009 convert LP tracks to ALAC, and also play ALAC files?

If you capture your CDs as .WAV files they will be the same size as your CDs because .WAV is uncompressed

Creator 2009 will capture to FLAC 1.2.1 format at 1411200 bps, which will give you quite a degree of lossless compression.

[d_deweywright]

When you "capture" those LPs, "capture" them as .wav files.

I use the uncompressed .WAV file format myself, 44100 samples per second, 16 bit samples, stereo. That is the standard CD quality file. Do all of your post-capture processing using .WAV files. Once you get your final version onto CD, then you can do as you will to compress the files, either lossless or lossy.

Good luck!

[jeanrosenfeld]

I record as .wav, and use those to make the CDs, but for my PC music collection, to save hard drive space I convert to lossless .wma format using Windows Media encoder 9 (together with Exact Audio Copy, which can do batch conversion of .wav files using Windows Media encoder as the external encoder). The resultant lossless .wma files are about half the size of the wav files. I have about 32GB music files in the losless format; this would be about 65GB in wav, so it is a significant saving. Also, WMP has no problems tagging .wma files compared to .wav, which it doesn't do too well.

This post has been edited by jeanrosenfeld: 09 April 2009 - 12:10 PM

[d_deweywright]

I record as .wav, and use those to make the CDs, but for my PC music collection, to save hard drive space I convert to lossless .wma format using Windows Media encoder 9 (together with Exact Audio Copy, which can do batch conversion of .wav files using Windows Media encoder as the external encoder). The resultant lossless .wma files are about half the size of the wav files. I have about 32GB music files in the losless format; this would be about 65GB in wav, so it is a significant saving. Also, WMP has no problems tagging .wma files compared to .wav, which it doesn't do too well.

There's another option too, the "APE" lossless compressor. I'd say it achieves about the same amount of compression as .WMA lossless. You can find it here... free. They also have a plug-in to allow Winamp to play .APE files.

[jeanrosenfeld]

Yes (Mediamonkey - I use that occasionally to expand ape to wav), but again ape is not convenient for WMP's library. Also I've had occasional ape files that WMP did not play properly. I don't use Winamp, I like WMP 11.

This post has been edited by jeanrosenfeld: 10 April 2009 - 08:15 AM