CD to Ogg Vorbis and FLAC conversion guideCD to Ogg Vorbis and FLAC conversion guideThis guide will assist you in the proper method to generate high quality Oggs (or FLACs) to the exacting specifications of us #quake audiophiles. For your personal use. In no way is this guide intended to be used for copyright violations. It is merely intended to be used for enjoyment of fair use rights.
US Code, Title 17 (Copyrights), Chapter 10, SubChapter D, Sec 1008, as ammended by the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 states:
No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
You might want to grab an official release of vorbis-tools, which contains OggEnc, though the above CVS build is probably better.
Unzip the OggEnc package, and install the binaries and DLL file into %SystemRoot%\system32 or where ever else in your PATH you might like. (%SystemRoot% is usually C:\WINNT or C:\Windows)
Run the installer for CDex (or unzip it, depending on which download you chose), and adjust settings for your CD drive if necessary. It usually runs fine as-is, though.
I don't like missing bits, so I enable full CDparanoia, which is a bit slower, but guarantees perfect digital copies. Clicks and pops make baby Zanshin cry!
Go to the Options menu and choose Settings, or just hit F4 and then click the CD-ROM tab. You might need to experiment with the CD settings a bit, but it's fairly straightforward. One thing you definately want is cd paranoia turned on to ensure you get a proper rip.
If the default settings don't work with your CD-ROM you may have improperly installed ASPI drivers. Check this page for help.
On the General options tab, what's important is to make sure Normalize Volume is unchecked, and that there's nothing in the ID3 tag comment field or encoded by fields. Normalizing can cause clipping, which makes Moneo yell at gibbler and act retarded. We'll talk about a better method for controlling volume of ogg files later.
It is also CRITICAL that you set the ID3 Tag version to NONE, as if you don't, you'll make an ogg that can't be read by all the *nix folks, and that will piss us all off.
Next, go to the Filenames tab. You can set up your default output directories there to whatever you like. The important bit is to set the file naming convention to #quake standards.
In File Name Format, enter the following string: %1 - %Y - %2\%7 - %4
Make sure the Split Track Name to Artist box is unchecked.
This is probably the most important step. Set Encoder to External Encoder, Extention to ogg. Bitrate on this screen doesn't matter, as we don't use that.
Click Browse, and select oggenc.exe, which is in %SystemRoot%\system32
You can check or uncheck Hide DOS box window if you like. Having it enabled lets you see the progress of the encoding.
Unforunately, on-the-fly encoding doesn't work because Windows pipes are poo.
Here's the nasty bit. In Parameter string, copy and paste the following into the box to insure proper encoding and tagging:
Ogg Vorbis command line: -q 6 -a "%a" -l "%b" -N "%tn" -t "%t" -n "%n - %t .ogg" -o "%2" "%1"
Check out the output from oggenc --help to understand what each command line option does.
FLAC command line: -8 -V -T artist="%a" -T album="%b" -T title="%t" -T date="%y" -T tracknumber="%tn" --replay-gain -o "%2" "%1"
Check out the output from flac --explain to understand what each command line option does.
The important thing here is the quality setting. How do we select which quality to encode at? Encoders for both MP3s and Ogg Vorbis have moved away from bitrates to quality settings. For OggEnc, the rank is from the lowest quality of -1 to the highest of 10. In Vorbis 1.0, there is a gradual transition to lossless stereo coupling, which is complete at -q 6. We are going to go with a quality of 6. Feel free to do some testing with your own ears.
For more discussion on quality settings: Vorbis.com FAQ.
Next, you want to fill out your email in the CDDB options tab, and set it to automatically connect to remote CDDB, that way, it names and tags all the songs for you.
Select a 
server for a CDDB remote server, not one of Gracenote's faggoty CDDB.com servers. Also, http is preferable to cddbp.
This step is entirely optional, but if you really want to be our bitch, you'll add replaygain tags to the ogg files.
Replay Gain is a smart acoustic level gain finder thingie that "listens" to the file, and writes ogg tags to tell the player what level to set it to, so all the songs are roughly the same volume. The peachy keen thing about it is that it's "lossless", i.e. it doesn't affect the contents of the file at all, so doesn't cause clipping and other nasty artifacts.
If you installed VorbisGain.exe in your system32 directory, you're all set.
Just open up a command window and cd to the directory the Oggs are lurking in.
Then, simply type VorbisGain --album --fast *.ogg and it will do its thing. All options.
You should get a screen that looks like this:
That's it!
Happy ripping, and remember, copyright infringement makes baby Hilary Rosen cry and poop her platinum coated diapers.
