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    Archiving music, encode Lossless and Lossy at the same time with EAC?

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by Aeyix, Sep 1, 2013.

  1. Aeyix

    Aeyix Notebook Evangelist

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    I'm re-ripping all of my music... slowly... very slowly. I'm using EAC to rip the CDs to WMA Lossless using MSFT Expression Encoder 4 as the external encoder. It's clear my collection will be in the ballpark of 50GB. (If you are wondering why WMA, I own an Xbox, Windows Phone 7, Windows Laptop, Windows Tablet.. essentially it is best for me). The issue is I'd like to be able to get a lossy compression of my collection as well with as little of a hassle as possible.

    I'm using EAC only for ripping, encoding, and getting basic metadata (no cover art). I then use Windows Media Player to adjust all aspects of Metadata how I like and add cover art. At this point, my music is sorted by author folder then album folder. Each music file has the album art associated with it and all other appropriate metadata. Moving this collection to my tablet is quite a waste of space considering I won't be using anymore than just a simple headphone jack, and although I use Sennheiser earbuds, they aren't going to discern any difference between lossless and lossy. For my phone, and this is the biggest thing, Zune can compress the files down to any lossy size I want when syncing to my phone, which is awesome. I don't know yet if I can grab the lossy tracks off of my phone and save to my collection like on Zune players, that's the first thing I will try but I need to finish archiving my collection first, but this is where the issue is. I want to upgrade to Windows Phone 8 eventually or just wait till 9 but Microsoft for some reason decided no longer to use the Zune software which means no more compressing audio files when syncing (their current options don't offer this feature).

    So, long story short, in the case I cannot reverse sync the lossy files back into my collection, is there a way to get EAC to encode the ripped WAV files into both WMA Lossless and MP3 during the rip process? If not, is there simple to use software that can convert the WMA Lossless tracks into an MP3 while keeping the metadata and cover art? Unfortunately, I cannot use Audacity for direct WMA to MP3 because Audacity does not allow importing WMA files and Expression Encoder 4 only allows WMA/WMV exporting even though it can import FLAC.

    I figure at this point I will just stop autodeleting the WAVs after WMA encoding so that I can use Audacity to encode MP3 from them. But the downside it, the meticulous part of me will want to go through Media Player and make sure all metadata is the exact same as the lossless copy. But, if I can just compress from the WMA file and keep metadata, it'd save quite the headache.