MP3 vs WMA: worth re-ripping?

Thirith

I recently got MediaMonkey to organise my music collection. I've got about 40 CDs of music, mostly in WMA format, on a network drive; most of my devices play the format, but there are some (very few) that don't. While I went through all the files to see whether they all have correct tags and album art attributed to them, the devices recognise this unevenly - e.g. on my PS3 within one album some files show album art, others don't.

In terms of sound quality and organising my collection, is it worth re-ripping all my disks as MP3, using MediaMonkey? It would only take a few hours, but if I end up with the same inconsistencies (tags, album art) it wouldn't really be worth it. Any thoughts? Also, any tips on the best way to rip CDs (especially with MediaMonkey)?

Tav

I rip things using Winamp. If the tags are broken after this (or if I've downloaded something off bandcamp or whatever) I use MP3Tag to fix things. With it's Amazon plugin and convert title->filename option, it takes less than a minute per album.

Le_Goat

I always just rip through Windows Media Player then manually take care of everything else. I've been doing that since the 90s and it's just a second-nature habit for me. I agree with Tav that the MP3 Tagging in Winamp (Alt + 3 on target track) is a good way to correct or fill in details.

Thirith

Thanks for the info, guys. I think I'll check out MediaMonkey's ripping function with the CDs that I haven't yet ripped to see whether that solves the problem with the inconsistent/incorrect tags and album art.

Donovan Puppyfucker

I use the top rated free CD ripping software on CNets recommended list to rip all my shit to best-quality FLAC for archive.

Then I can convert to MP3 quite quickly and easily if I want to. My phone plays FLAC files natively, so I don't bother for myself.

Dr_Keenbean

If you're not ripping with this then you're doing it wrong.

The ideal solution provided you have the storage capacity is to rip to FLAC and then convert afterwards. For example if you need stuff on an iPod, you would just convert it to m4a (or mp3, really) from FLAC and it would be just as good as if you had ripped straight to m4a from the CD.

EDIT: Looks like MediaMonkey also uses LAME as its mp3 encoder. Doesn't look like it does the error correction that EAC does though.