Encoding entire CD collection to ALAC Options

[hdeucedeucen]

Okay I am not that computer savy compared to most on this forum so I would appreciate some pointers. I've decided that I want to manage my entire music collection in iTunes as a lossless format, I've also pretty much decided I will rip my CD's using dbpoweramp since it can verify the rip through accuraterip, I've tried EAC but it was too buggy and it kept freezing on my windows 7 comp. Now I know dbpoweramp can rip and encode the CD's to ALAC, but I've read apple keeps ALAC proprietary and the 3rd party encoders are reverse engineered and could create problems although unlikely, eitherway I would like to be as safe as possible with my rips. Would it be best to rip the CD's to WAV, import them into itunes and convert to ALAC through iTunes? The only problem I forsee is tagging all the songs which will be a major pain! Finally since my rips are verified through accuraterip, dose it make any difference on the drive I use to rip them, I assume since the rip is verified I don't need to worry about the drive correct?

I appreate any responses in advance!

[lisofm]

Converting to ALAC with dbpoweramp is a safe procedure. I never had any problems with itunes/iphone about them. Yes ALAC encoder is proprietary software but so is dbpoweramp! You can preserve your tags and everything should be alright here.

It doesn't make that much difference what drive you're using as long as it is verified.

[greynol]

Yes ALAC encoder is proprietary software but so is dbpoweramp!

How exactly does this help the situation?

[kwanbis]

I've read apple keeps ALAC proprietary and the 3rd party encoders are reverse engineered and could create problems although unlikely, eitherway I would like to be as safe as possible with my rips.

Yes ALAC encoder is proprietary software but so is dbpoweramp!

How exactly does this help the situation?

He was probably mentioning it for this.

[greynol]

Again(!), how does dbpoweramp being proprietary help regarding potential problems with ALAC implementation because ALAC is proprietary?

This post has been edited by greynol: Jun 23 2011, 20:11

[hdeucedeucen]

After doing some further research, I actually think I will skip encoding through dbpoweramp, encode straight through itunes and then use cuetools to verify rips. Seems like an easier straight forward solution.

This post has been edited by hdeucedeucen: Jun 23 2011, 20:13

[KFal]

If the safety of your rips is the most important aspect, I would use dBpoweramp rather than iTunes and cuetools. I am not suggesting that cuetools can't do the job, I just favour the built-in support of Accuraterip that dBpoweramp has. It is absolutely straightforward to use and you can directly review the results and their accuracy after the rip in the same GUI. When ripping in dBpoweramp, you are actually comparing twofold: once against the Accuraterip database and secondly the encoded (ALAC in this case) material and the original WAV are matched.

Another consideration are the much more comprehensive tag sources in dBpoweramp. iTunes has just one, Gracenote, whereas dBpoweramp accesses four or five.

After ripping, you will need to import the ALAC tunes into iTunes, but that is easily done by drag-and-drop.

I personally have either directly ripped to ALAC or converted previous FLAC rips to ALAC more than 900 CDs using dBpoweramp and so far I have not detected a problem.

[spoon]

> but I've read apple keeps ALAC proprietary and the 3rd party encoders are reverse engineered and could create problems although unlikely,

dBpoweramp will always be able to read its own ALAC created files, even if (how ever unlikely) iTunes suddenly cannot, at worst you would convert to AIFF and iTunes cannot possibly have problems reading AIFF files and would create ALAC files from those, but I do not think it is required.