The A/V Club Q&A Thread

Question about importing into iTunes:

What do I want to select?

There is MP3, AAC and AIFF. Which of these is best without getting crazy in taking up massive amounts of space? I probably want to set the bit rate at 256 or 320, but what about kHz in the sample rate? This mostly goes for pre-1995 records which are sooo 'quiet' compared to modern music.

space just depends on bitrate, nothing else. go with mp3. it's not the superior format, but it is universal.

Originally Posted by ravenscroft

a little curiosity on my ipod at the moment. in my list of artists it reads:

the mountain goats
the mountain goats & john vanderslice
the mountain goats & kaki king
the mountain goats

and both instances of 'the mountain goats' bring up the exact same list of albums. and no, it' can't be to do with the artist names being marginally different because otherwise it wouldn't bring up the same list twice. not something I'm too fussed about but has anyone seen this before?

yes both me and my sister have had that issue of bands showing up twice with the exact same list of albums. it just seems like a glitch to me rather than a tagging issue. maybe removing the files from your ipod and re-adding them would fix it but I've never cared enough to try.

yeah this happened to me with deerhoof

no idea what causes it and i just wound up deleting them altogether

I have The Beach Boys, Beach Boys, and The Beach Boys.

I have a 35 minute MP3 of a show, is there anyway in iTunes (or Apple software) to dice up the track into separate tracks?

I think with iTunes if you try to split it up you'll end up with lower quality files. Audacity probably will do the trick if you already have that installed, but a simpler program I've gotten used to using is called mp3directcut: http://mpesch3.de1.cc/mp3dc.html#dwn

I was really hoping Audacity had improved since I used it 5 years ago. Complete piece of unintuitive shit. I just want to split the tracks; let me pick the time and then slice.

how long have these sharing options been at the top of the page?!

see town hall..

they were added today

oh i'm a dummy

lately itunes has been mysteriously adding the numbers "131" as a genre to certain songs. what up with that?

ya I've gotten number genres too. I don't really care about genre so it doesn't bother me too much.

i prefer keeping the genre field blank except in the instance of stand-up comedy albums.

it's randomly been doing this to me too, eddie, after i started using my new laptop

i went from ubuntu/gtkpod back to windows/itunes and i thought that was surely it...

hey audio nerdz,

honestly, what's the best way to make mp3s sound great? it's a tired subject, but I never really paid attention to any kind of quality stuff. however, I will shortly have a new laptop and combined with my external I have way more space than I need. and with me only just getting back into buying physical products due to a combination of funds and decentish audio setup, my music collection is due something of a cleanup. so basically I just want to rip all my cds at a good quality for my ipod and backup in case any of them disappear anywhere just because I have so much space (everything else was previously ripped @ 128, they were fine, honestly). and I don't want to bother with lossless formats because they're harder to share and less compatible, I'll stick with mp3s.

so uhh, from what I understand vbr is the best way to go but I've never paid attention to all the shit behind it. my point is, what's a good quality to use as standard and is there anything else I need to know (software, etc)?

i actually don't know why v0 (VBR @ 256kbps) is so highly regarded. it may be because it's virtually indistinguishable from 320 but saves space. you needn't bother. 192 will sound good even burned to the cd, and v0 is a pain in the ass to do the proper way (you need to download like three programs, for starters).

itunes has a very easy to use ripping interface, can rip in VBR (different from v0) and has error correction. no brainer..

if you want everything in the best possible quality don't bother with vbr as thats just letting the computer guess which [quieter] parts don't need to exist. stick with 320... as thats the best mp3s can sound. plus it sounds almost identical to flac. people who claim to hear the difference between flac and 320 thru earphones or computer speakers are just lying or are victims of the placebo effect

if you have EAC set up correctly it's more than just "guessing" the quiet parts and will be as perfect/space saving as an mp3 can get

30 minute, 90% silent "hidden track" files don't need to be 100 megabytes for no reason

this guide looks more complicated than it is and once you're set up you're set up for good

eac looks great but I'm on ubuntu and I usually don't bother with emulation and what have you.

had a little search and found that rubyripper is the one most highly regarded for linux. it's based on eac too. if the space saving is accurate and v0 is easy to do, I think I'll give it a shot. thanks all.

can anyone tell me if what.cd is just a blank page for anyone else? they're up to some cryptic shit, but they've been doing staff picks every day for the last couple of days and I don't wanna miss a thing.

it's blank for me too

blank and all my seeds are dead

people on other forums are saying it got shut down.

somehow I doubt it. probably technical difficulties. it says this now: "Theseus did it or something"

damn greek myths are destroying the internet