Foobar2000 vs. EAC for FLAC ripping?, [moved from fb2k: General] Options

[binar]

Fellow Forum Members,
I'm using Foobar 2000 to rip my music collection over to FLAC format. I have it set to level 5 compression level. Is that all I need to concern myself with in order to get the best quality audio file? Are there any other parameters I should know about that require I tinker with in order to get best quality audio?

Lastly, many years ago I used EAC to rip some of my CDs over to Lame MP3. I remember EAC having some error correction feature. Does Foobar2000 have something similar? In short, if EAC and Foobar2000 are setup with the same FLAC ripping paremeters, and both rip the same CD on the same hardware. Will the resulting two sets of FLAC files be identical to each other or differ in quality? Just wondering how these two apps compare against each other when put head to head with the same parameters. Any info will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. :)

[eahm]

Make sure you read the offset correctly based on AccurateRip and set the Ripping Security on Standard at least.

EAC and dBpoweramp may be more professional for error corrections like you said but with all the test I did all three generally give the same result with the same audio checksum. I like CueTools as well for CD ripping but really all I ever use and need is foobar2000.

I've never tested any ripping software with scratched discs, there may be where you have to use EAC, I don't even rip a lot. Test them and see.

This post has been edited by eahm: Sep 11 2012, 05:31

[Michael Sargent]

... level 5 compression ... to get best quality audio?

FLAC is Lossless (that's the L in FLAC). The compression level has nothing to do whatsoever with the audio quality. It only affects the size of the file on disk. Most people have no problems with level 9 compression so you can save some disk space by using level 9. But it will sound identical.


Mike

[topshot]

Is there any reason why Fb2k would be so much slower than EAC? I only set security to standard and was using the same clean disc in the same drive. I used to use EAC all the time but haven't ripped anything in a few years until today and thought I'd give Fb2k a try. I downloaded the latest version of it and flac.

It took 29 minutes (just using the timestamps for first and last track) whereas EAC took only 6. Granted EAC rips everything to WAV first and kicks off external compression while it seems Fb2k is writing direct to flac. Both were set to level 5. Output depth auto and no dither. There was no replaygain processing. What else should I look at?

Also, the neither freedb or musicbrainz would connect while EAC had no problem and used the same server settings.

[db1989]

Was EAC also ripping in Secure mode?

Still, any secure mode should not take as long as 29 minutes. And really, if EAC were ripping in burst mode, that shouldn’t really take 6 minutes, either.

I’m going to move this to CD Hardware/Software in Hydrogenaudio’s main section, as it is not completely specific to fb2k and may get more views (and thus potentially responses) there.

This post has been edited by db1989: Jan 17 2013, 23:10

[Apesbrain]

Most people have no problems with level 9 compression

The maximum compression level in FLAC is 8. (There are nine compression levels including -0.) Use of -8 is not without risk as it requires more decoding power than does the default -5. For those using a low-power music server -- such as RPi or ARM-powered NAS -- this can cause playback problems particularly with "hi-res" files.

[marc2003]

Use of -8 is not without risk as it requires more decoding power than does the default -5.

benchmarks taken a few years ago on a sansa fuze running rockbox:

CODE

flac_5.flac     2936.56% realtime     Decode time - 5.99s     8.17MHz
flac_8.flac     2748.43% realtime     Decode time - 6.40s     8.73MHz

i don't think this difference will have much effect in the real world??

[topshot]

Was EAC also ripping in Secure mode?

Still, any secure mode should not take as long as 29 minutes. And really, if EAC were ripping in burst mode, that shouldn’t really take 6 minutes, either.

I’m going to move this to CD Hardware/Software in Hydrogenaudio’s main section, as it is not completely specific to fb2k and may get more views (and thus potentially responses) there.

Yes, EAC was in secure mode. I would think it's some setting in Fb2k I don't know about since everything else was identical. This was the first time I'd try ripping with Fb2k so I figure it's some kind of noob mistake. I did not update EAC so it was still running .95b4 though it used the same flac exe and compression level (5).

This is using an old PC, too (circa 2001), so it may very well take 6 minutes when running well. Drive is an old NEC 3520A I believe, which I recently cleaned. EAC reported mostly 100%, one track was 99.9 and one was 99.8.

I don't have a problem continuing to use EAC, but like to keep things simple and would have thought Fb2k would do a decent job as well. I was very disappointed with the speed and that it wouldn't connect with any lookup servers though I tried both no proxy and use IE settings under networking.

[Rollin]

About ripping with foobar2000 - http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...with_Foobar2000.
Also foobar can't rip HTOA ( http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=HTOA ) and doesn't support overreading.

This post has been edited by Rollin: Jan 18 2013, 14:31

[db1989]

Was EAC also ripping in Secure mode? […] if EAC were ripping in burst mode, that shouldn’t really take 6 minutes

Yes, EAC was in secure mode. […] This is using an old PC, too (circa 2001), so it may very well take 6 minutes when running well.

Nah, my comment about that being a bit slow was in reference only to Burst mode; for Secure mode, I think it’s a reasonable time.

This post has been edited by db1989: Jan 18 2013, 14:50