You know that feeling, when you are listening to music say in your car, via headphones, or really anywhere…where the song choices just match the mood you are in right now? Like nothing can be more right or wrong, that everything is going well?

Really weird, but I am having one of those moments. I am just using my computer though while listening to these wonderful tunes, doing nothing really special outside of typing this entry right now and browsing my RSS feed list.

Yet I have that feeling, when the best tunes come on and all you can do is smile. Amazing how good music can be when its get down to its purest form, without all of that commercialization.

I have in my possession several gift certificates at a major U.S. electronics store. I have decided to see if I can find some new bands to listen to.

Does anyone have any recommendations of some albums to buy? I mainly listen to Alternative Rock-type music.

I have been trying to do that rating system for awhile, but it is just too easy to give out a 4 or 5 star rating! I have to learn to be a little more objective in some of the songs I give those ratings to.

I have decided once and all to end my dependence on re-ripping my music CD collection. I have completely revamped my strategy of digital music and organizing it. The reason is simple: I want flexibility in the future. When new formats come out, I want to be able to instantly convert my collection to them.

Why this sudden change?

I recently discovered with horror (i.e: blowing up my ear drums) that my iPod when connected to my car stereo does not use Sound Check. As a result, I constantly have to switch the volumes of songs.

I also recently decided to start using the LAME 3.97 Beta with the -v 2 quality setting for encoding my music. However, all of my old music files were encoding using a wide-range of settings and versions of LAME.

For now on, this is the process I will use for digital music:

1. Rip CD’s using Exact Audio Copy and encode directly to FLAC (with setting 5)
2. All FLAC files are stored on my 120 GB external hard drive.
3. Using foobar2000, add all ReplayGain tags.
4. Convert these FLAC files to MP3 using the LAME 3.97 Beta encoder, with the resulting MP3 files already preprocessed with ReplayGain (essentially skipping the step of using mp3gain)
5. Add the resulting MP3′s to iTunes 6 with Sound Check enabled.

With all of that, I will no longer have to worry about re-ripping my collection. If some hotshot new AAC VBR encoder is released for example or if some miracle results in OGG support with the iPod, I can basically start up foobar2000 and have it output to the new format overnight while I’m sleeping. With how fast computers are today, I estimate it would take at most a day to convert from FLAC to any new format.

I’m psyched about this. Guess I am going to be busy over the next few weeks getting my collection ripped one last time.