Lossless Ripping On Linux - Recomendations? Options

[Belak]

Hi,
I was looking into lossless backup when I was using Windows. I found EAC. I liked how it would rip images with the pregap for all the tracks. Then, if I wanted, I could burn back the CDExtra stuff. I liked this especially with Mmhmm by Relient K which had a pregap before the first track and CDExtra stuff.

Then EAC could burn pregap on the first track. The I could burn the CD extra with Nero.

Call me obsessive if you want, but I want perfect copies. EAC seemed to deliver.

Now I have moved to Linux. I really don't want to run Wine. Yes, it has gotten better, but I just don't want to run Windows software. What can I use to rip my CD's in Linux to a perfect copy?

I don't care if I need to use an alternate codec.

Now, what can I use to burn the backups made in linux with pregap and preferably with the CDExtra stuff too? I already have Nero Linux if it will help.

Thanks a lot,
-Belak

EDIT:
IDK if I posted this in the right forum... sorry.

This post has been edited by Belak: Nov 26 2008, 01:41

[Canar]

I moved the post for you. It might be worth noting that ripping is generally assumed to be lossless unless there are problems or you're encoding to lossy.

[Belak]

I moved the post for you. It might be worth noting that ripping is generally assumed to be lossless unless there are problems or you're encoding to lossy.

Thanks.

I really don't know how to refer to anything. I'm kinda new, so thanks...

[z420er]

Hi,
I was looking into lossless backup when I was using Windows. I found EAC. I liked how it would rip images with the pregap for all the tracks. Then, if I wanted, I could burn back the CDExtra stuff. I liked this especially with Mmhmm by Relient K which had a pregap before the first track and CDExtra stuff.

Then EAC could burn pregap on the first track. The I could burn the CD extra with Nero.

Call me obsessive if you want, but I want perfect copies. EAC seemed to deliver.

Now I have moved to Linux. I really don't want to run Wine. Yes, it has gotten better, but I just don't want to run Windows software. What can I use to rip my CD's in Linux to a perfect copy?

I don't care if I need to use an alternate codec.

Now, what can I use to burn the backups made in linux with pregap and preferably with the CDExtra stuff too? I already have Nero Linux if it will help.

Thanks a lot,
-Belak

EDIT:
IDK if I posted this in the right forum... sorry.

Hello Belak. I have been looking into this subject for the last year or so. There is Rubyripper. See here http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Rubyripper It is the closest thing I have found to EAC test and copy mode, but still no Accuraterip. I have used both EAC and dBpoweramp via Wine in Ubuntu and both seemed to work fine. Small quirks compared to running in Windows, but they both work ok. I personally dual boot and just revert back to Windows so I can take full advantage of dBpoweramp's tagging features (one of those small quirks I was talking about).

[Belak]

Hi,
I was looking into lossless backup when I was using Windows. I found EAC. I liked how it would rip images with the pregap for all the tracks. Then, if I wanted, I could burn back the CDExtra stuff. I liked this especially with Mmhmm by Relient K which had a pregap before the first track and CDExtra stuff.

Then EAC could burn pregap on the first track. The I could burn the CD extra with Nero.

Call me obsessive if you want, but I want perfect copies. EAC seemed to deliver.

Now I have moved to Linux. I really don't want to run Wine. Yes, it has gotten better, but I just don't want to run Windows software. What can I use to rip my CD's in Linux to a perfect copy?

I don't care if I need to use an alternate codec.

Now, what can I use to burn the backups made in linux with pregap and preferably with the CDExtra stuff too? I already have Nero Linux if it will help.

Thanks a lot,
-Belak

EDIT:
IDK if I posted this in the right forum... sorry.

Hello Belak. I have been looking into this subject for the last year or so. There is Rubyripper. See here http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Rubyripper It is the closest thing I have found to EAC test and copy mode, but still no Accuraterip. I have used both EAC and dBpoweramp via Wine in Ubuntu and both seemed to work fine. Small quirks compared to running in Windows, but they both work ok. I personally dual boot and just revert back to Windows so I can take full advantage of dBpoweramp's tagging features (one of those small quirks I was talking about).

I thought about dual booting, but I really don't want to... I don't really even want to use a virtual machine unless I absolutely have to.

I guess I'll try EAC with WINE. I was just hoping for something native to linux that could do pregap...

Does it work to burn inside of wine?

[z420er]

Does it work to burn inside of wine?

Not sure. Never tried. I use Serpentine.

[JEdwardP]

I can't say it has the accuracy of EAC, but my Linux ripper of choice is Asunder, primarily because it supports WavPack encoding, not just FLAC encoding, and WavPack has long been my favorite lossless codec.

The Author of asunder, Andrew Smith, has been known to at least occasionally post here, so perhaps he could speak to the accuracy of Asunder compared to that of EAC.

[Artemis3]

Asunder (like most free apps) use Cdparanoia, so the ripping is as good as cdparanoia can handle.

Now the question is, how good is the current Cdparanoia?

We see this in the announce ML:

Hello all,

I'm pleased to announce the release of cdparanoia 10.2. This is the
first release in several years to involve substantial new development
as opposed to simply 'keeping up' and vetting/adding contributed
patches.

In addition to regression testing and bugfixes, 10.2 includes major
drive cache handling improvements over previous versions. The short
story is that a sizable fraction of new cdrom drives that have
appeared since the last major read model update (in 2001) exhibit
cache behaviors or weirdnesses of which previous cdparanoia versions
are partly or fully unaware. These drives, when they skip, stand a
good chance of having the skip or glitch make it through verification
undetected because cdparanoia was not successfully defeating the
drive's data cache. 10.2 implements an improved caching model that
eliminates all the new cache behaviors I've observed.

IN SUMMARY: 10.2 ADDRESSES RIP CORRECTNESS ISSUES. YOU WANT TO UPGRADE.

10.2 also includes a nifty cache analysis utility via the -A option.
This runs an offline cache analysis of the drive, printing a summary
to the screen and dumping a detailed log to 'cdparanoia.log' in the
event that the test finds a problem, or cdparanoia is acting up in
some other way.

As always, the release can be downloaded from http://www.xiph.org/paranoia/

Cheers,
Monty
xiph.org

Would be nice if there were more tests. I have a Pioneer DVR-111D (L is same with different firmware ) which, according to EAC, caches audio data.

I use Ubuntu 8.10 which comes with cdparanoia 10.0, but the packages for the upcoming 9.04 work perfectly so i installed libparanoia and cdparanoia 10.2 to test.

cdparanoia -A shows this:

CODE

CDROM model sensed sensed: PIONEER DVD-RW  DVR-111L 8.29

Checking for SCSI emulation...
    Drive is ATAPI (using SG_IO host adaptor emulation)

Checking for MMC style command set...
    Drive is MMC style
    DMA scatter/gather table entries: 127
    table entry size: 131072 bytes
    maximum theoretical transfer: 6985 sectors
    Setting default read size to 27 sectors (63504 bytes).

Verifying CDDA command set...
    Expected command set reads OK.

Attempting to set cdrom to full speed...
    drive returned OK.

=================== Checking drive cache/timing behavior ===================

Seek/read timing:
    [16:51.65]:   51ms seek, 0.55ms/sec read [24.4x]                
    [10:00.00]:   56ms seek, 0.61ms/sec read [21.7x]                
    [00:00.00]:   67ms seek, 0.80ms/sec read [16.8x]                

Analyzing cache behavior...
    Approximate random access cache size: 139 sector(s)              
    Drive cache tests as contiguous                          
    Drive readahead past read cursor: 133 sector(s)                
    Cache tail rollbehind: 128 sector(s)                        
    Cache tail granularity: 0 sector(s)                      
    Cache size (considering rollbehind) too small to test cache speed.

Drive tests OK with Paranoia.

Apparently if this test fails, cdparanoia is unable to disable/negate the cache. Could some people verify?

Here is another project using libcdio (instead of libparanoia) claiming "compare 2 eac": https://gna.org/projects/cued

[JeanM]

I use RubyRipper to rip my audio CDs to WavPack, it works wonderfully for me.
You should give it a try

[Brent]

I simply use Soundjuicer. Not sexy, but gets the job done. Uses, as pretty much all apps, cdparanoia, so I assume all is OK.

[shadowking]

Rubyripper 0.54 even calculates album gain with flac - very handy.

[Artemis3]

I simply use Soundjuicer. Not sexy, but gets the job done. Uses, as pretty much all apps, cdparanoia, so I assume all is OK.

Well don't. Cdparanoia is only good if it passes the test, and your app is using paranoia 10.2 or newer.
So would you mind putting an audio disc, and type cdparanoia -A in a console?

Older versions are simply unreliable if your drive caches audio.

[HotshotGG]

Older versions are simply unreliable if your drive caches audio.

I am not saying that cdparanoia doesn't have a few problems here and there, but it's setbacks are greatly exegerated on this forum. I am hopeful most applications are using 10.2 with the cache analysis option. I obviously don't know enough about DAE tests, but I have used it before and never had a problem with it (my drive doesn't cache audio data). I have never had a problem with skips or glitches in the output. The way I see it if you can't succesfully blind-test with the original then it shouldn't be a problem. It doesn't have to be bit perfect to me. If you go and listen and there are skips and glitches in the output then of course there is a problem.

[Artemis3]

Well as i said, if your drive doesn't cache audio data, there is nothing to worry about. (and -A should tell its OK as well). The problem is when your drive caches audio AND cdparanoia -A tells you there is a problem (in which case it logs a text file you can send to Monty). With older versions, if the drive caches audio you are not getting reliable data. With 10.2, you get reliable data only if the -A test passes OK.

This means a good number of (audio caching) drives which used to be unreliable with older versions, can now rip safely. It would be of interest to build a database of them, or extend an existing one, such as http://www.daefeatures.co.uk to include a column with "Cdparanoia -A tests OK".

Because cdparanoia is so extensively used, and many could be doing rips with bad results without knowing until its too late and have to rerip their entire collection again...

[HotshotGG]

Well as i said, if your drive doesn't cache audio data, there is nothing to worry about. (and -A should tell its OK as well). The problem is when your drive caches audio AND cdparanoia -A tells you there is a problem (in which case it logs a text file you can send to Monty). With older versions, if the drive caches audio you are not getting reliable data. With 10.2, you get reliable data only if the -A test passes OK.

This means a good number of (audio caching) drives which used to be unreliable with older versions, can now rip safely. It would be of interest to build a database of them, or extend an existing one, such as http://www.daefeatures.co.uk to include a column with "Cdparanoia -A tests OK".

Because cdparanoia is so extensively used, and many could be doing rips with bad results without knowing until its too late and have to rerip their entire collection again...

That actually wouldn't be a bad idea. Somebody should P.M the database creater and ask him to write a page that includes that in the table. It seemed like a good idea at first, but more entries would be extremely beneficial for this kind of testing. A wiki page would be good, but only for a general overview of certain drives. A database would be even better and even a sticky thread. The first one I can do the later two are out of my hands.

This post has been edited by HotshotGG: Feb 3 2009, 21:15