Audio-specific geekery

1. What is metadata?

Metadata is the information in each audio file detailing the song name, album name, artist, genre, album art, etc. The RipFactory has partnered with All Music Guide (AMG) and Get Digital Data (GD3) to provide you with high class data and cover artwork. Typically, we will find 98% of album art, all of which is provided free as part of our service. 

2. How will my Digital Music Library be organised?

The RipFactory organises your Digital Music Library by artist / album. This information is included in the ID3 tags (MetaData) within every file.

3. What is the file name structure?

Files are stored in Artist folders, then by albums in the following naming convention:

X:\Artist\Album\01_Trackname.

4. Is the music The RipFactory returns to me CD quality?

This is dependant on your chosen format(s).

We highly recommend Flac as the format for any Digital Audio System (i.e SONOS).

Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) is a file format for digital audio. Being a lossless compression format, FLAC does not remove information from the audio stream, like lossy compression formats such as MP3, AAC, and Vorbis do.

For your portable music player, we recommend MP3.  The reason for this is the wide variety of existing software and hardware that takes advantage of this file format.
It is a compressed format resulting in a reduction in the audio quality, however, for most people this is acceptable when being used as portable audio.

5. What audio file formats does The RipFactory offer?

MP3, WMA, AAC, FLAC, WAV.

6. What about Copy protected CD’s and / or homemade CD’s?

Such CD's will not be converted, as this is breach of copyright restrictions.  As the customer you will be charged for these discs and notified of this at the time of your order completion. So, please do not send them to us.

7. What fields (Metadata) do you fill in to the track header?

We fill in all available fields including Track, Artist, Album, Genre, Album Art and year of release.

8. What is 'Bit Rate'?

Bit rate is the number of data bits recorded, per second, in a digital audio recording.  The higher the bit rate, the better (higher fidelity) the recording, the higher the bit rate the larger the digital music file. Most MP3s for MP3 players are encoded at a bit rate of 128 kbps (kilobits per second) to 192 kbps.  Higher quality stereos with large hard drives generally are encoded at 256 kbps or higher.

9. What bit rates do you offer?

Currently, 320 kbps.

10. I know my audio formats, can I select my options?

Of course. You can select from FLAC, WAV, MP3, AAC and Windows Media. If you are unsure, please call us on our 0800 number below to chat with one of our Digital Music experts.

Still not sure? contact us on 0800 12 717 63 it's free and we love to chat.

The RipFactory is a New Zealand owned and operated company exclusively licensed by PPNZ to legally
rip CDs to hard drive for personal use. Click here to learn more. | Site by creative