What Is Audiograbber?

Taken from Audiograbbers Website:

Audiograbber is a beautiful piece of software that grabs digital audio from cd's. It copies the audio digitally-not through the soundcard-which enables you to make perfect copies of the originals. It can even perform a test to see that the copies really are perfect. Audiograbber can also automatically normalize the music, delete silence from the start and/or end of tracks, and send them to a variety or external MP3 encoders, such as Fraunhofers L3enc, or even use some MP3/WMA encoders internally for automatic creation of MP3's. Audiograbber can download and upload disc info from freedb, an Internet compact disc database. You can even record your vinyl LP's or cassette tapes with Audiograbber and make wav's or MP3's of them.

It has it's detractors because unlike Exact Audio Copy or CDEX it does not have secure or paranoia modes for dealing with badly scratched CD's. However it does have a different method of checking to see if the copies are perfect and this is known as checksum. I think it is an excellent piece of software because it is very easy to use, it's line-in sampling facilities are excellent and for those who use normalizing you cannot find better features in that department from those offered in Audiograbber.

Explain Some Of Those Terms

• Ripping - The term given to the extraction of digital audio from compact discs.
• Codecs - An encoder such as ones for MP3. Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a codec as is Advanced Audio Codec (MP4/AAC). You can use codecs either internally (dll files) or externally (exe files).
• Line-In Sampling - Line in sampling is the name given for recording sounds direct from the line-in input of a computers soundcard such as recording from a turntable (via a pre-amp), cassette deck or mini-disk.
• Normalizing - A feature to level the sound of recordings from a number of CD's so that when you listen to your own compilations you do not need to keep adjusting the volume button.

Setting Audiograbber Up

Audiograbber can be obtained from the site's download page.

Codecs

Audiograbber does not come with an mp3 codec although one is shipped with some older versions of Windows. However this is only a version of the Fraunhofer codec which is limited to recording a maximum of 56 k/bits. However Audiograbber has dedicated Ogg Vorbis support which is a patent free codec which produces good quality audio files but ogg does not have widespread hardware support at present. To obtain a MP3 encoder I suggest using LAME which has been proven to be the slightly better mp3 encoder at present at certain bitrates. You can download LAME from here and you will need to extract lame_enc.dll into the Audiograbber directory. I would recommending extracting all files in the zip archive into the Audiograbber directory as you can then use the LAME external encoder as well and read all the help files that come in the archive.

Of course you are not limited to LAME or Ogg Vorbis. Almost any external encoder can be used with Audiograbber and these are discussed on this page.

Differences between the Internal and External versions of Codecs

Generally speaking using an external codec will give more options to create quality files. These are used through a command line or via a front-end. In Audiograbber's case you can use it as a front-end but you will need to specify the command line. Using an internal codec is a better option for beginners as you can make selections direct from Audiograbbers options. More on this will be discussed later.

What Are Bitrates and What Do They Mean?

The number for a related bitrate represents how many kilobits per second are being processed. For mp3's the most common bitrate used seems to be 128 k/bits at a constant bitrate. The highest bitrate is 320. The bitrate selection is normally 64, 96, 128, 160, 192 and so on up to 320. Generally speaking the higher the bitrate the better quality. However you have to also expect larger files at 192 k/bits than you would do at 128 k/bits (which is roughly 1 MB per minute of music).

What Are The Differences Between Constant (CBR), Average (ABR) and variable (VBR) Bitrates?

CBR is generally believed to be the lowest quality with the exception of recording at 320 k/bits. ABR is higher quality than CBR but VBR is the best. For example a CBR mp3 encoded at 192 k/bits will remain as such even when recording quiet and less demanding pieces of music. Encoding at 192 VBR will see the bitrate flutuate between the various parts of the track such as silence, tempo and demanding pieces of music. In short:

• VBR encoding is based on achieving constant quality through the stream.
• ABR encoding is based on achieving desired size, while trying to keep quality constant.
• CBR encoding is based on using constant bitrate.

What Codecs To use at Certain Bitrates?

Lossless Formats such as FLAC have a 2:1 compression ratio (sometimes slightly higher) to the original track where as a lossy one such as MP3 or AAC can be reduced to 10 times the size. However Lossy is not called lossy for without a reason and in the compression stage removes parts of the audio file we cannot normally hear. Lossless on the other hand means exactly that and should be identical to the original. However you will need more space on your hard-drive to store files in lossless formats due to their size. This is the reason most people plump for lossy formats although with the prices of hard drives reducing this may not be the case in future. Anyway back to the answer to the original question - I have taken this excerpt from the FAQ at Rarewares.

Which encoder/format is the best?

• Short answer:
  • You should test them yourself, and choose which one best suit your needs.
• Somewhat long answer:
  • For best possible quality: Lossless (WavPack, FLAC, Monkey's Audio)
  • For highest quality @ high bitrates: Musepack (MPC)
  • For overall high quality, even at lower bitrates (96 ~ 160kbps): Psytel AAC, Ogg Vorbis (Note: Psystel has been superceded by other AAC codecs such as the Nero and Quicktime encoders. However these are commercial programs and cannot be used with Audiograbber on their own and you need a third party tool to do this. However I have had no success using these with Audiograbber at the moment!)
  • For best compatibility: Lame using --alt-presets
  • For very low bitrates (<64kbps): MP3pro, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, Real Audio.

Is MP3 at 128 k/bits CD Quality?

This is the claim plugged by many a manufacturer that an mp3 encoder (Musicmatch Jukebox for one) at 128 k/bits is CD quality. Whilst quality can only be judged by your personal preferences overall it can be said that an mp3 at 128 k/bits is not CD quality as you can here artifacts in the recordings. The higher the bitrate the better the quality of the file and using Lame with its --alt -preset standard preset (aps for short) will give the majority of users a file with greater transparency and that they will find hard to distinguish it from the original CD recording.

What Codecs Do I Recommend?

None as explained on the home page! Personally I use a variety of codecs with Audiograbber depending on what I am recording. For example I will encode my vinyl and cassette recordings to FLAC (and I can transcode to other formats when I need to) and use Ogg Vorbis for my portable player (i-river ihp 140).

Updating The Internal Ogg Vorbis Codec

At present when you download Audiograbber it comes with the Ogg Vorbis internal codec (libvorbis.dll). However this file is somewhat out of date (July 2002) and improvements have been made to Ogg since then. If you want the later version you can update.

To update the Ogg Vorbis files you need to head over to Rarewares Ogg page and download the following two files:

Libvorbis.dll - Download libvorbis.dll using libVorbis v1.1.0

Once downloaded extract them to the Audiograbber directory. You can see the different version when selecting Ogg Vorbis under the internal encoder options (The old one stated it was a July 2002 build). Just in case anything goes wrong rename original libvorbis.dll to libvorbisold.dll as backup before you update.