[tlug] CD Ripping and Compression Quality (was OGG & MP3)

[Jim <jep200404@example.com>]

"Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon" wrote:

> ... how to save my CD's with Linux in an uncompressed format

   cdparanoia

Or search Freshmeat for ripper. 

Saving CDs in an uncompressed format is feasible now because 
huge capacity hard drives have become cheap. Nonetheless, 
you should probably consider lossless formats, particularly FLAC. 

> I take it that it's easier to go from .wav to .ogg than from .mp3?

Yes. 

Not only is it easier, you will get better quality sound 
by skipping the MP3 compression/decompression step before 
compressing to Ogg Vorbis format. 
Each time you compress and decompress audio with lossy formats, 
such as MP3 or Ogg Vorbis, the quality is degraded, 
so when using lossy compression, you want to compress as few 
times as possible, preferably just once. 

Lossless compression does not have that quality degradation concern.