Best Practices for a Lossless Music Archive?

Sparagmei asks: "I'm a big music fan, and I like listening to the music I own on various pieces of digital gear. Right now, my library's at about 20,000 tracks, ripped from CDs to MP3 at 256kbps (enough that I can't tell the difference on my low-end playback gear). However, with the MP3 judgement rippling through the world, I'm interested in perhaps moving to a different compression standard. Before I do that, I'd like to ask a question: what lossless format would you recommend for making a digital 'master library' that could be (relatively) easily down-sampled to a compressed format?"

Important factors would be true losslessness, filesize (smaller than PCM WAV would be nice), embedded metadata (ID3v2-like), existence of automated ripper software, and (to a lesser extent) an open-source implementation of such software. Widespread playback implementation of the lossless codec is not an issue for me; the lossless library would likely be burned to archival DVD media and stored after being down-sampling with the chosen compressor. The reason I ask is this: I've got a 20,000-track re-ripping job ahead of me. I'd like to do that just once, lossless, so that years from now, when I decide to jump from Vorbis to 'komprezzor_2039_1337' or whatever, I don't need to drag out the old plastic discs. Thanks!"

FLAC.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

The Free Lossless Audio Codec [sourceforge.net] sounds perfect for you.

(all answers below are quoted from wikipedia's FLAC [wikipedia.org] page).

Important factors would be true losslessness,

A digital recording (such as a CD) encoded to FLAC maintains the quality of the audio perfectly.

filesize (smaller than PCM WAV would be nice),

Audio sources encoded to FLAC are typically reduced in size 40 to 50 percent.

embedded metadata (ID3v2-like),

with support for tagging, cover art and fast seeking.

existence of automated ripper software,

Yup, lots [wikipedia.org].

and (to a lesser extent) an open-source implementation of such software.

See above.

Widespread playback implementation of the lossless codec is not an issue for me

Well, bad luck, you're going to get it anyway :-) Both hardware [wikipedia.org] and software [wikipedia.org] support.

Also, consider SHN [wikipedia.org], (although it seems superceded). I'll also mentiuon wave pack [wikipedia.org] - because it uses an interesting approach (splitting the file into a small lossy standalone & a lost bits diff). don't bother with Apple's lossless format [wikipedia.org] - it's going nowhere.

Hydrogen Audio

[eddy]

Forgot to mention that you'll probably want to go to hydrogenaudio [hydrogenaudio.org] instead of /. for these sorts of questions.

Re:FLAC

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and see the comparison [sourceforge.net].

Re:Ape

[TeknoHog]

Ape compresses a few % better than Flac at the expense of much more CPU usage. When compressing lots of CDs at once, the difference is significant. Flac was designed to be light on resources to facilitate portable devices, but it helps with modern computers as well.

Also, Ape is not free software, despite the availability of source for certain versions. It's only officially released for Windows.

So, in line with most others, I'd recommend Flac, but you might also look into WavPack as it also seems to be free software.

Let me just say...Woooooosh!

[Overzeetop]

Everybody sit down. Did you see the line about Monster cables and Bose?

Parent was trying to be funny. He wasn't, but don't go off the deep end.

Overrated is more appropriate, though Troll probably will be the choice of the Mac fanbois for the Apple Lossless dig he included.

Re:FLAC.

[WilliamTS99]

I also recommend FLAC, that is what I am ripping all of my CDs to. When you can get a 500gig HDD for under $140,it is worth every cent and more to do what you are doing. I have an Ubuntu [ubuntu.com] system set up for network storage so I can play my FLACs with my two Cowon iAudio [cowonamerica.com] (Highly Recommended) portable media players(support FLAC natively), streamed to my stereo through the Xbox media center( XBMC [wikipedia.org], streamed to my computer, my daughters computer, or transcoded for other players. In my opinion FLAC is 100% the way to go.

Re:Conversion question

[mahonri5]

Oggify [freshmeat.net] was designed to handle flac to mp3 or ogg conversion in bulk, while preserving the tags. I've been happy with it (not that I'm biased or anything), and so have a number of other people. It's open source, free, and in Perl.
You should try it.

Re:no point using linux

[Anonymous Drunkard]

I believe it is only possible to have the same rip twice under windows using EAC.

Please read the documentation for EAC. You may be surprised to find that EAC was written because the author wanted a Windows port for the Linux program 'cdparanoia'. EAC's entire goal is to mimic the pre-existing Linux program 'cdparanoia' in its bit-for-bit redundant checking and matching.

There are decent frontends for cdparanoia if you don't want to run it via command line. GRip happens to be excellent. But please check what you are saying before you say it; few things are more annoying than having someone announce "Oh you can't do X in Linux, you can only use Windows program Y" when, in fact, Windows program Y was developed to give Windows users the chance to use a superior program that was already established in Linux.