CD > WAV > FLAC, Best WAV codec? Options

[Evil Overlord]

Objective - 1x lossless capture of CD library to Windws XP environment.

Several questions:
1. Is there a difference in WAV codecs? EAC offers a choice of 10+.
a) Is there a difference? If so, which gives the best quality? Which gives very good quality, rapid rip?
b) If not, why is EAC better than other rippers? Why is it so painfully slow?

2. Better to do this in steps or as one piece?
Most rippers have not updated to FLAC 1.1.3. It seems the best plan may be to take this project in steps:
a) rip CDs to WAV using EAC, Roxio, or other ripper. This is easy, but files are large
b) convert WAVs to FLAC (or WAVpack) for permanent archiving. Delete WAVs.
c) grab album covers and info for FLAC files using Windows Media Player or other player.
d) convert FLAC to MP3 for portable use.

Any other thoughts or comments? I have over 1,000 CDs, so I really only want to do this once. I'd like to do it as efficiently as possible. Priorities (in order): quality, ease, speed. Once this is done, I will likely not use the CDs at all, but listen to a mix of: FLAC from dedicated laptop to home stereo, and MP3 on portable player.

[LANjackal]

First of all, why would you want to rip at 1X? Rip quality is enforced by the ripping software, not by fixing your drive speed.

In response:

1 - Long story. See wiki.
a - See above
b - EAC is optimized to securely and accurately extract digital audio. Its emphasis is on these qualities instead of speed, hence the relative slow speed

2 - Highly dependent on you and what you're going for
a - EAC's the only one for that job, period (and dBPowerAmp R12, but that's still in development)

All of the rest is possible. I end my advice here since I don't use lossless for playback (archiving only on my end).

[Evil Overlord]

First of all, why would you want to rip at 1X? Rip quality is enforced by the ripping software, not by fixing your drive speed.

To clarify, I used '1x' in the sense of 'one time', meaning I want to rip from the CDs only once. For drive speed, I'll take whatever my drive+software will give me.

1 - Long story. See wiki.
a - See above

The wiki has good information about compression formats, but little about WAV - other than that it is a container, usually for PCM. It doesn't give any guidance about which of EAC's many WAV codecs to use. Anyone have advice on that?

[Synthetic Soul]

Several questions:
1. Is there a difference in WAV codecs? EAC offers a choice of 10+.
a) Is there a difference? If so, which gives the best quality? Which gives very good quality, rapid rip?
b) If not, why is EAC better than other rippers? Why is it so painfully slow?

Don't concern yourself with the Wave format dropdown. If you take a closer look you will notice that these are not all WAVE formats (e.g.: Windows Media Audio). Most of us use an external compressor with EAC (i.e.: the command line encoder).

EAC needn't be any slower than other rippers; it is only slower if you use it in secure mode or Test and Copy. If you use Burst mode it will act like any other ripper.

2. Better to do this in steps or as one piece?
Most rippers have not updated to FLAC 1.1.3. It seems the best plan may be to take this project in steps:
a) rip CDs to WAV using EAC, Roxio, or other ripper. This is easy, but files are large
b) convert WAVs to FLAC (or WAVpack) for permanent archiving. Delete WAVs.
c) grab album covers and info for FLAC files using Windows Media Player or other player.
d) convert FLAC to MP3 for portable use.

You could do this all in one step with REACT (search this forum). If you use an external compressor then you can use whatever version of FLAC.EXE (or WAVPACK.EXE) you want.

[Evil Overlord]

Don't concern yourself with the Wave format dropdown. If you take a closer look you will notice that these are not all WAVE formats (e.g.: Windows Media Audio). Most of us use an external compressor with EAC (i.e.: the command line encoder).

Many thanks. Forgive my ignorance, but it's not clear to me which I should use for straight WAV creation? Candidates seem to include:
Microsoft PCM converter
Microsoft IMA ADPCM codec
Microsoft ADPCM codec

[Synthetic Soul]

If you only want WAVE then you simply choose to rip uncompressed, instead of compressed. If you are ripping to tracks you can use the top button in the column of four, or if you are ripping to an image you can use the third.

If you use an external compressor that dropdown becomes disabled and irrelevant.

[kjoonlee]

If you're ripping ordinary CDs to uncompressed .wav files, you should always use 44.1kHz 16bit stereo PCM.

[Evil Overlord]

If you only want WAVE then you simply choose to rip uncompressed, instead of compressed. If you are ripping to tracks you can use the top button in the column of four, or if you are ripping to an image you can use the third.

If you use an external compressor that dropdown becomes disabled and irrelevant.

Thanks. It wasn't clear to me that clicking the WAV icon ignored the compression options set in the waveform tab, which I presume is what you mean. I chose Microsoft PCM converter in the waveform list just to be safe.

If you're ripping ordinary CDs to uncompressed .wav files, you should always use 44.1kHz 16bit stereo PCM.

Many thanks. That's what I was looking for.

[UrbanVoyeur]

It is better to do this in one step - there's really no point to Ripping to a wav with a cue sheet then encode as a separate step.

EAC can rip from the CD and encode it to the lossless format of your choice (FLAC, WavePAck, etc)

EAC can use the latest FLAC.

EAC is slow because it is a secure ripper - it takes pains to ensure that its getting the most accurate read possible form the cd. It can run faster, but then your lose the benefit of secure rips. See the wiki.

There are several add-ons and EAC related apps that can encode to both FLAC and LAME MP3 at the same time - Omni Encoder, AutoFlac, REACT, etc. You can also use MediaMonkey, dbPowerAmp or one of about a dozen programs to convert from FLAC to Mp3.

Getting album art is tricky. Several programs can do it, but most of them need to be monitored to make sure they retrieve the correct art. For mp3's or Apple Lossless, iTunes is accurate when it finds art, but often has trouble making a match.

This post has been edited by UrbanVoyeur: Jan 3 2007, 01:28

[Jebus]

Try Omni Encoder... you can rip right to FLAC using EAC with all the tag info downloaded from the net, even download album art, and then transcode to MP3 afterwards using the same program. And its pretty easy to use.

(yeah, i guess this is a plug since its my app, but it is free and I designed it specifically for what you describe).