Ripping in iTunes for Serato SL3

[Capitan]

A fairly long post but I would really appreciate your help with this

I'm such a slow, considered purchaser, I've only just got round to getting Serato SL3, 2 Dicers and finally a 17" MacBook Pro! To be fair, the MacBook was a Christmas present from the wife and the rest I bought with Christmas money - I've had a very good year this year

I'll be using a DJM800 and 2 CDJ400's with this gear.

I'm 50 years old now so I want to do this right, once and never again! At present I'm unlikely to be playing out much so this is for my own gratification at home and the odd gig here or there.

Firstly, iTunes. Everything will be ripped from CD's and, eventually, vinyl.

I haven't started ripping anything yet and want to know if the settings I have chosen are the best to use.

I've set the rip rate at 320kbps and AAC. Do I need to set it for MP3? Can I use any other setting with my equipment? Will it make any difference?

Next, I've set the sample rate at 44.100KHz. Is this correct or should I set it to auto?

The channels I've set to auto. Would the stereo setting make any difference?

I've ticked the VBR encoding box. Is this best?

I haven't ticked either the High Efficiency Encoding or Optimize for voice boxes. In truth, I don't know what these would do anyway. Should I use them?

Should I use Error Correction when ripping?

In terms of "tagging"' I am at a loss.

All I'm really interested in is Artist, Song title, BPM'S, Year, Genre and Comments (to put in highest chart position). Will iTunes do all this automatically? All these fields are now showing on the page, but will they automatically show up in Serato and on my CDJ's or do I have to do something else?

Does iTunes find the BPM'S? On an old version of it, it appeared to do so on many tracks or was this because it was embedded on the CD I was ripping?

A long post I know, but at my time of life I want to get this right first time.

Thanks in advance for reading this and pointing me in the right direction

Capitan.

[J5k]

I'll take a stab at a few of them...

Ideally, you should rip to wav/aiff since there's no compression involved. But if you do that you'll need to consider how much music you want to store and if you have the hard drive capacity.

I rip with these settings in iTunes:
Mp3, 320, vbr OFF, 44.1khz, error correction on, Auto channels. I don't know what the high efficiency or voice box settings do either so I leave them off.

As for tagging, iTunes is pretty good about gathering tags but there are other solutions (that I haven't used) around to find tags when iTunes fails.

iTunes will not detect bpm's for you, but I believe serato will.

[Era 7]

i personally rip CDs into a lossless format:

wav, 44.1khz, 16bit, stereo, error correction on

[Capitan]

Thanks for the replies so far guys (I'm itching to get started as I have tens of thousands of tunes collected over the last 34 years or so).

Both of you suggest WAV as an ideal but everything I've read suggests most people can't tell the difference between lossless and 320kbps.

Is this true?

I'm asking as I want to learn.

J5k, you say you have VBR off rather than on. What difference does it make?

Era 7, you say you have the channel set to stereo rather than auto. Again, what difference does it make?

Thanks guys, I really do appreciate your time and help.

I'd hate to get through a stack of CD's only to have to start again.

Anyone else got any input on the BPM question?

[Era 7]

Thanks for the replies so far guys (I'm itching to get started as I have tens of thousands of tunes collected over the last 34 years or so).

Both of you suggest WAV as an ideal but everything I've read suggests most people can't tell the difference between lossless and 320kbps.

Is this true?

I'm asking as I want to learn.

J5k, you say you have VBR off rather than on. What difference does it make?

Era 7, you say you have the channel set to stereo rather than auto. Again, what difference does it make?

Thanks guys, I really do appreciate your time and help.

I'd hate to get through a stack of CD's only to have to start again.

Anyone else got any input on the BPM question?

depends. many people don't while some people do and on some tracks you notice it while on some you don't. wav is the way to go if you don't want any compromise but remember: wav takes up alot of space compared to MP3s (usually around the factor 4) so you gotta make up your mind if that sacrifice is justified in your eyes.
when ripping to MP3 you generally want to put it in 320kbps with VBR turned off. this ensures the highest sound quality (for an MP3).
as for putting it on stereo rather than auto: i think stereo was the default setting when changing it to wav encoding

i for my part completely switched from MP3s to lossless files such as wav and aiff. with the ever growing harddrive space storing these files is no problem.

[Capitan]

Thanks Era 7.

I think my decision has been made by the fact that, upon futher investigation, CDJ 400's don't support WAV.

[R2D2]

Both of you suggest WAV as an ideal but everything I've read suggests most people can't tell the difference between lossless and 320kbps.

Is this true?

On a big club system I can tell basically its lack of depth in the mp3

go lossless wav / aiff hds are cheap these days

esp if your doing your vinyl there are a number of programs you can clean up all the pops / clicks ect but to use them effectivly its best to start with an uncompressed file

rule of thumb with compression you can go down but never go up a 128k file will still sound shit even after converting it to a wav

[Era 7]

Thanks Era 7.

I think my decision has been made by the fact that, upon futher investigation, CDJ 400's don't support WAV.

the files your CDJ supports is irrelevant when playing with a DVS since your CDJ will not actually be playing the file. your computer will. but if you made your decision that's cool

rule of thumb with compression you can go down but never go up a 128k file will still sound shit even after converting it to a wav

every file that is not lossless, converted into a lossless file will only sound as good as the source file

[R2D2]

every file that is not lossless, converted into a lossless file will only sound as good as the source file

ok I was talking about mp3

[Capitan]

On a big club system I can tell basically its lack of depth in the mp3

go lossless wav / aiff hds are cheap these days

esp if your doing your vinyl there are a number of programs you can clean up all the pops / clicks ect but to use them effectivly its best to start with an uncompressed file

rule of thumb with compression you can go down but never go up a 128k file will still sound shit even after converting it to a wav

I see that, but my big club system days are, sadly, now behind me

Added to which, the CDJ 400's only appear to support MP3.

Now I've changed that setting from AAC to MP3, more options have come up :

The option to go as high as 48.000 kHz sample rate: yes or no?

Stereo mode: joint stereo or normal?

Smart encoding adjustment: yes or no?

Filter frequencies below 10hz: yes or no?

Sorry to be a pain, but do it right, do it once