[KDE] K3b poor mp3 ripping quality

[doctordruidphd]

There are 2 problems here, inter-related. I just got a new USB cdrom drive, as the built-in drive is starting to go sour. I normally do cd ripping with ripperX, as it is the only ripping program I have found that actually does what I tell it to do, particularly regarding mp3 quality. But it won't see the cdrom drive. The drive is there, it is mounting as /dev/sr1, but ripperX seems only to see sr0. So first question, anyone know how to get it to see sr1? There are no config options for this, and noting in its .ripperXrc file.

Second related problem: K3B does see the drive, but in spite of what I tell it, its ripping quality is garbage.
Pictures worth more than words:
RipperX quality:


K3B quality:


Yecch.

Anyone know if it's possible, somewhere, to force k3B to use my parameters instead of its own?

[claydoh]

K3b's drive selection settings are likely found in the plugins area somewhere

for ripperx, you have to specify it in the config
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=199421

Also, I believe that Dolphin still can rip audio cds. If you open the drive, or look in Dolphin's sidebar, you should see FLAC and mp3 folders. If you drag the files to another folder, it will rip them to that folder. There should be some settings in System Settings for this. They are a bit basic but have worked for me in the past. Iam not at home so I can't check if it there in Kubuntu by default, or if things need to be installed for this functionality. it has been over a year since I did this, I had to dig a drive out of a dead computer and slap it in my pc so I could try out FLAC files form the one actual CD I have lol

[doctordruidphd]

Thanks, that was it. For anyone landing on this by search, the solution is that you can specify the drive for ripperX under the WAV config tab, as the extra option -d /dev/sr1 .

Still, for all the K3B can do, odd that there seems no way to specify decoder options beyond some very basic parameters that don't really get you the full range of lame's options. Must be hard-coded into it somewhere.

Also, I believe that Dolphin still can rip audio cds

Yes, the settings are in System Settings > Multimedia > AudioCD
but even with everything set to max, it still isn't giving the same quality. No way to specify the actual parameters it sends to LAME.

[Mister Pi]

Personally, I rip losslessly to FLAC using cdparanoia (CLI-based) and save the FLAC in bulk storage, then use LAME with my preferred settings to transcode to MP3. Though I haven't examined the results as thoroughly as you, so maybe I'm losing too much quality with LAME and I don't know it.

[Mister Pi]

Come to think of it, MP3 saves bits by removing sounds you are supposedly less likely to hear. I recall reading somewhere that one example of this is that if you have two tones, one at X dB and one at less than X-29 dB, you supposedly can't hear the softer tone.

It appears you have high frequencies at -80dB and lower frequencies around -50dB, and the transcoder is deciding to cut the high frequencies because "you can't hear them anyway." Can you hear the difference?

(Which doesn't mean that you shouldn't have the option to have higher quality settings, just that that's probably the default setting for K3b.)

[doctordruidphd]

I don't know that much about the tech details of mp3 encoding; it IS lossy, and the difference between even good mp3 and FLAC is quite noticeable. In the example in my original post, with cheap earbuds or some other such abomination, no difference, but with good headphones the difference is obvious (at least to me). You're right, the best way to do this is rip to FLAC or WAV and then manually encode it, and I may eventually go back through all my stuff and do it that way.

[oshunluvr]

Yeah, all my music is ripped to FLAC and played from the FLAC files on my media server. If I need mp3 for something (like the car) I convert from FLAC.

[Mister Pi]

Clearly K3b uses a lower quality setting. The bitrate of 237k seems odd -- is it using VBR?