Wonder what is Musepack (also known as MPC) ? There I explain how to make nice MPC files with CDex | Version anglaise uniquement, désolé. Vous pouvez utiliser le service de traduction automatique en haut de cette page. |
Contents
What is Musepack
Musepack – or mpc, or formerly mp+ – is, for many, one of the best – if not the best – lossy audio compression algorithms. In any case, for a given bitrate (i.e. size), it’s pretty much better than mp3 or WMA. If you want more info, the people at musepack.net did a very good job explaining this. Moreover, Musepack is open-source.
My personal experience is the artefacts I could sometimes hear on instrumental music in 128 kb/s CBR Lame MP3 files are now gone with MPC at quality 4 (~130 kb/s VBR).
I’d say the only drawbacks in Musepack today are the lack of core development support and hardware support. More info about the former can be found on the hydrogenaudio mpc forums (e.g. on this thread).
Using CDex to produce Musepack files
Why CDex
I use CDex to rip my CDs. Why CDex, and not Exact Audio Copy (EAC), considered by many closest to perfection ? Well, several reasons :
- quick learning curve (though EAC progressed a lot on this one) ;
- ease of use ;
- allows to pass to the encoder the total number of tracks for an album ;
- open-source ;
- does the job for me 99.9% of the time. 🙂
Those interested in producing Musepack files with EAC will find a fine tutorial made by Case.
Why this short tutorial
Well, using Musepack with CDex is nowhere explained, as far as I know, and I would have been glad to have discovered this page when I started ripping to Musepack files. 😉
What you need
- CDex – just install it
- MPC encoder – just unzip it wherever you want (CDex directory – “c:\program files\CDex” by default – may be a good place)
Versioning
These settings were made with CDex 1.51 and mppenc.exe 1.15s alpha. Though it’s an alpha, I found it to be pretty stable, does work on the fly (which 1.14 does not), and is said to be faster.
Note on MPC tags
MPC typically uses APEv2 tags. Well, maybe you knew ID3v1, ID3v1.1, ID3V2, APEv1 ; now here’s a new species ! This table should resume some key points (like this means “best choice”) :
|
See what’s the best ? 🙂
APEv2 may be combined with ID3v1 tags, but in any case ID3v2 should be avoided. Even so, the ID3v1 tag would be useless, being an APEv2 duplicate at best, so I advise to stick to APEv2-only MPC files. The tutorial below will produce such properly tagged files.
And don’t worry : any MPC-aware reader will read these APEv2 tags.
Enough chatting
OK, let’s go.
Go to Options > Settings |
Go to the Encoder tab :
Parameter string explained :
|
Go to the Generic tab :
For “ID3 Tag version” field : select the option “None” in the drop-down list. We do not want nor need ID3 tags here, only APEV2, which are added by the external encoder mppenc. |
What’s next
After ripping your CD, a good idea would be to replaygain it. Unfortunately, CDex does not allow for batch post-album-processing [hello there ? ;)], so you have to do this by hand. 3 ways :
- use Foobar2000 and its native replaygain support ;
- or use replaygain.exe. If you have to replaygain on several folders, use sweep.exe like this (see Replaygain paragraph) ;
- or (easier if you’re not familiar to command-line) install rgdir (updated to V1.2 – now it works 🙂. rgdir is a package I made with sweep.exe, replaygain.exe and a shell script that makes replaygaining a snap.
When rgdir is installed, just right-click the folder, choose “Apply ReplayGain on Musepack files in subdirs”, and let go :
For many post-processing task, I also found MP3Tag to be very useful. In spite of its name, it works fine with mpc files and Ape V2 tags. The best tag and audio file editor in my opinion.
Useful links
Musepack – Central place for Musepack
Hydrogenaudio – Where the digital audio developpers and gurus gather
Glossary
(to be developped)
CBR: ConstantBitRate
kbps, kb/s: kilobits per second
Lame: considered as the best MP3 encoder around. Open-source IIRC.
MPC, Musepack: a lossy audio compression algorithm.
VBR: Variable BitRate
Changes on this page
Date | Change |
---|---|
2005-09-? | New version of rgdir |
2005-03-05 | Added step not to get ID3 tags |
2004-12-04 | Introduced rgdir |
2004-10-03 | Page creation |
I love your guide to ripping MPC files! Your rgdr program works like a charm! Thank you so much for offering a complete guide on using CDex to spit out MPC files, and cutting down on steps with rgdr. You’ve made my digital music archival much easier! Thank you!
Hi! Good site! Thanks. Paris Hilton.
http://paris01.dressing-gown.biz/ Paris Hilton
http://rolex.dressing-gown.biz/ replica rolex
http://pg01.dressing-gown.biz/ pergo flooring
Wow, Paris Hilton likes my site! 😀
The first comment spam ever to make me smile… 🙂