MP3 analysis and Lp ripping
 

I've been messing with various settings and bit rates of MP3 encoding lately.
I was wondering if there was anyway that I can get some kind of numerical value of the frequencies of various Mp3s encoded at different bit rates and the frequencies of the source CD? Like if an equalizer could give me numerical value rather than just the bar going up and down. I just want to see how much is lost from the source CD to various bit rate encoded MP3s?

Second Question:
Any Linux software out there that I can use to Rip Lp's?

Thanks.

hmm... i'm not aware of any all in one ripping thing for lps. but krecord should be fine for getting your lps onto your hard drive and then you can use lame to encode that output file. you should have krecord included, but if you don't, you can get it here:

http://bytesex.org/krecord.html

megaspaz:

Thanks man. I appreciate the link.

The numerical frequency question I posed would be useful for me to tell if any one encoding app, bit rate, CD-Rom (ability to do DAE), or format (ogg, wma, ogg) is empiracally superior to others. Rather than just trusting your ears.

well, i don't have great ears. but the consensus that i keep hearing is that for lossy compressed audio files ogg has better quality than mp3s and wma files at the same bitrate (128 kbits and under). i use mp3s as most of my collection is mp3s although i have some ogg files and i can't hear a difference between an mp3 encoded at 128 kbits @ 44.1 KHz and an ogg encoded at the same specs. as far as apps on linux, i doubt you'll get any encoding difference. i mean, ripping a cd using grip and ripperX makes no difference technically on output quality since they both use the same library to rip and encode cds to mp3s and/or ogg files. the only difference is the default quality settings between the programs. which can be adjusted to be equal (or deficient).

actually, to make a long story short, i don't know about the numerical frequency thingy. sorry.

"i doubt you'll get any encoding difference. i mean, ripping a cd using grip and ripperX makes no difference technically on output quality since they both use the same library to rip and encode cds to mp3s and/or ogg files."

But Grip is just a front end to choose which encoder application you want to use. Whether it's Lame, Xing, Bladeenc, gogo, 13enc, or a host of others.
I'm sure each encoder app uses a different algorhithm to encode a file.
But thanks for the info. I'm still scouring the web to find something that will give numerical data.

yeah, you're right about encoders. and i wasn't disputing that. i guess i was just assuming you were going to use a gui frontend, in which there would be no quality difference between the gui apps in output if both used the same encoding, bitrate and frequency output. but if you want lossless, then flac is really good, but there isn't much compression and encoded files are bigger at the same bitrate as mp3s/oggs/etc.