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Topic: why not use Foobar to grab music? (Read 20821 times) previous topic - next topic
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why not use Foobar to grab music?

Hi!
while I see that EAC is still the prevailing audio grabber for CDs, I  found that Foobar bears the ability to grab music CD tracks to WAV files without the need of extra plugin.
It seems only a few users would consider using Foobar to grab music from audio CDs
Does EAC have any advantages over Foobar as an audio grabber?
前輩, 我是kitty喔.

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #1 –
I think it's just everybody's personal preference. None of them is better or worse.

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #2 –
I tried the fb2k ripper, but I'm not convinced about it. Sure it's secure, but VERY insecure if your drive caches, which my experience is quite a few. Edit: Fud (?) - Try yourself...

IMHO it needs a test/copy function, or better yet: The same ripping methods as dBpoweramp's Ultra Secure mode.
Can't wait for a HD-AAC encoder :P

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #3 –
I have tested EAC vs foobar2000 with several CDs. The CD images ripped by both programs are identical. So I think foobar2000 is actually not bad at ripping CDs. Of course those CDs are new, so secure mode features are not that useful as with older CDs.

However with EAC you get a "safe" feeling as you can see the CRC of the ripped CD, or use the "test and copy" feature. Also EAC has pre-gap detection and testing. These are the reasons that I use EAC instead.

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: odyssey on
I tried the fb2k ripper, but I'm not convinced about it. Sure it's secure, but VERY insecure if your drive caches, which my experience is quite a lot.

Would you please stop spreading FUD about the cache handling?

It has been explained to you how and why it works multiple times, in both the forum and our IRC channel.

Edit:
Quote
IMHO it needs a test/copy function

It already performs test and copy, as you have also been told before.

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: Frank Bicking on
Would you please stop spreading FUD about the cache handling?

I'm only telling what I've found out myself. I have been ripping some serious scratched CD's, and for that purpose I tried to give fb2k a chance to prove it's worths as a CD ripper. The console shows a great deal of information, compared to other rippers, which is great! However when I successfully ripped the same track TWICE and compared the two binary files - THEY WERE DIFFERENT. Fud or not, people can try this themselves. I tried this with a shitty NEC drive.
Can't wait for a HD-AAC encoder :P

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #6 –
Neither foobar2000 nor EAC have any immunity against consistent errors, but EAC has AccurateRip support and as such has an advantage that is considerable.  For drives that provide reliable C2 pointers which either don't cache or accept FUA, EAC again has an advantage.

With drives that provide C2 pointers (regardless of reliability), neither of these programs can compete with dBpowerAMP.

How exactly does Foobar2000 handle drives that cache (including during re-reads in the event of a mismatch)???
Knowing this, I may be able to make a case demonstrating even greater superiority with dBpowerAMP.

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #7 –
Correct me if I am wrong, foobar:

Reads in 'blocks' of 4MB, that is about 1700 sectors from the cd. Works sequentially like EAC (read block, re-read block).

If there is a miss-match on the re-read it will try the same block until the two get the same match. Upto 128 times. In paranoid mode it requires 4 matches.

My thoughts on this method:

Reading such large blocks on badly damaged CDs (assuming the blocks are not stored and smartly part compared) lessens the chance of recovering the cd, all you need is 100 sectors in that block to be right on the edge of recoverability (this happens, I have seen a drive return bad results 4000 times in a row, the 4001 try gave the right result), the chance of all 100 giving the right result at a given time is lower than reading those 100 sectors, 1 sector at a time.

There is a high chance that after 128 retries (if only 1 or 2 sectors were bad), that a consistant error is reproduced, after all if 1 sector is giving semi random results, 128 is a high number that 2 random results are going to match.

Now obviously I am not impartial, please Greynol verify these thoughts.

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #8 –
As far as I experienced, foobar can´t read CD-text yet. (I would be extremely happy if I´m wrong here) And EAC does.
For normal use foobar seems to be a little bit faster and in critical cases I prefer Samplitude for ripping...

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #9 –
Quote from: spoon on
Now obviously I am not impartial, please Greynol verify these thoughts.

Quote from: spoon on
Reads in 'blocks' of 4MB, that is about 1700 sectors from the cd. Works sequentially like EAC (read block, re-read block).

If there is a miss-match on the re-read it will try the same block until the two get the same match. Upto 128 times. In paranoid mode it requires 4 matches.
This is consistent with a post in the discussion linked in the thread cited earlier by Frank Bicking except that Peter used the term sector instead of block when talking about re-reads.  I'm not sure if this was an unfortunate choice of wording or whether it's a vague allusion to what's really going on.  For example, EAC compares 2MB blocks and when it finds a discrepancy it reads 27 frames beginning with the frame where the discrepancy occurred for each re-read.  If cache flushing is enabled, 2MB is read between each re-read.  If foobar really re-reads an entire 4MB block in order to "fix" an error that only exists in one frame, IMO, this is truly unfortunate.

Quote from: spoon on
Reading such large blocks on badly damaged CDs (assuming the blocks are not stored and smartly part compared) lessens the chance of recovering the cd, all you need is 100 sectors in that block to be right on the edge of recoverability (this happens, I have seen a drive return bad results 4000 times in a row, the 4001 try gave the right result), the chance of all 100 giving the right result at a given time is lower than reading those 100 sectors, 1 sector at a time.
This makes perfect sense to me, but there's still the troubling outcome of consistent errors as you mentioned...
Quote from: spoon on
There is a high chance that after 128 retries (if only 1 or 2 sectors were bad), that a consistant error is reproduced, after all if 1 sector is giving semi random results, 128 is a high number that 2 random results are going to match.
As has been mentioned here and at other forums already, many errors appear to give random results, but when the error only affects a small number of samples it's quite easy to get wrong results that are consistent.  Spath expressed an interest in writing an article about the subject a while back, but I haven't heard about it since.

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #10 –
In defense of foobar2000 over EAC when it comes to drives that cache, if foobar2000 only requests 2MB for each 1MB of secure data, it's certainly more efficient than EAC's requesting of 3MB for each 1MB of secure data.

Martin H. recently posted a request at Digital-Inn that EAC do away with block synchronization with drives configured as having the Accurate Stream feature.  This would do away with the need for the extra flushing that's involved.

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #11 –
Quote from: Frank Bicking on
Quote from: odyssey on
I tried the fb2k ripper, but I'm not convinced about it. Sure it's secure, but VERY insecure if your drive caches, which my experience is quite a lot.

Would you please stop spreading FUD about the cache handling?

It has been explained to you how and why it works multiple times, in both the forum and our IRC channel.

Edit:
Quote
IMHO it needs a test/copy function

It already performs test and copy, as you have also been told before.


Highlights from the IRC discussion:

Quote
<odys> Neptune: nevertheless, my terrible nec drive seems not to care, and i've ripped several tracks in no time with it in secure mode, that all ended up different

Quote
<odys> bottom line: with that drive i'm completely unable to get secure rips in foobar

Quote
<GenjuroXL> you can't get any secure rips with an NEC drive


I did not find any reference to an explanation why foobar fails to produce two exact rips from a scratched CD using the NEC drive.
Can't wait for a HD-AAC encoder :P

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #12 –
I really wish a logging function was added - similar to EAC's output....

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #13 –
Quote from: odyssey on
I did not find any reference to an explanation why foobar fails to produce two exact rips from a scratched CD using the NEC drive.
I can assure you that caching has nothing to do with it.

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #14 –
What I wanted to say: NEC drives suck for audio extraction. It's not a foobar problem, it's a general problem (had enough experience with bad NEC audio extraction...)

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #15 –
Depending on the disc and the way your drive interacts with the software you may get different results between different programs.  In accordance with what spoon has said earlier, as you narrow the focus of what you re-read, the ability to get consistent data increases; but consistent data most certainly does not mean error-free data.

It may even be worse than this. From what I've read, foobar2000 may only be searching for repeatable data rather than consistent data.  Who's to say that out of 128 attempts there aren't more than one set that can re-occur?  I can't be exactly sure but it seems that foobar2000 may simply move on once it finds the first set of data that satisfies its criteria.  This would be much less picky than the way EAC works, which itself is far from perfect.

Also, for NEC 3XXX drives and earlier, allowing EAC to rely on C2 pointers is a terrible idea.

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: odyssey on
IMHO it needs a test/copy function, or better yet: The same ripping methods as dBpoweramp's Ultra Secure mode.

Do a bitcompare between the cd tracks and the ripped tracks, it will show any differences (of course it only works if you ripped in lossless format).

But as it was said before, it already does test & copy so this may be redundant.

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #17 –
Can dbPoweramp rip image + cue files?  If so, I may want to try it again.
flac > schiit modi > schiit magni > hd650

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #18 –
Quote from: indybrett on
Can dbPoweramp rip image + cue files?  If so, I may want to try it again.

Though I haven't tried it, the new beta of R13 can.

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #19 –
Cue sheets are not in yet. Cue + image ripping will be done slightly differently.

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #20 –
Spoon & Greynol:

I'm new at this high-end audiophile stuff, so please bear with me as I ramble a bit.

I've recently decided to archive my large CD collection onto my two new 500GB hard drives. Up until not so long ago, I'd just bung a CD in my computer and let MediaMonkey rip the CD to MP3. But I've become dissatisfied with the quality of MP3, OGG or any other lossy format, so I've decided to start over from scratch and rip everything to lossless. The absolute top priority now is obtaining the highest possible quality rips of each individual track.

I'm really only starting out on this, but I really want to do it right this time around. So far, I've only ripped several hundred songs to WAV with EAC. It would be a real pain to have to start over again at some point in the future, after having ripped thousands of songs. It would be a lot easier to get things right at this early stage.

I use several different programs to playback music - MediaMonkey for general music management at home, and two different DJing programs at work - Traktor 3 and SAM Party DJ. I also have a DAP - a Cowon iAudio X5 (the 60GB version). I have my own little system for ripping music, which is probably a bit complex and convoluted, but it works for me:

I rip to WAV and keep the original non-normalized WAVs as backups on a separate hard drive.

I make copies of these WAVs, which I put through Wavegain to even everything out at -89db.

From these copies, I convert to FLAC for use in MediaMonkey, Traktor 3, and on my Cowon iAudio X5, and to WMA Lossless for use in SAM Party DJ (doesn't support FLAC - yet - when it does, I can get rid of the WMAs). I then delete all the WAV copies to conserve space. The FLAC/WMA versions can be tagged, and take up less space. I don't need much in the line of tagging (although it's nice to have) - I'm generally only interested in Artist Name, Track Name, original Album Name, and Year.

In the vast majority of cases I rip individual tracks rather than whole albums at once. Most albums (with the exception of Best of/Greatest Hits) usually only contain several songs that I'd want to rip. And, as a DJ, I tend to organize my music more on an individual song basis rather than on an album basis. Would I be right in assuming that this method of ripping makes AccurateRip useless for my needs?

Finally, to bring this rambling post right back on topic (lest I be accused of hijacking the thread), the final BIG QUESTION: I've decided, for ripping purposes, to go for the best software available. I've narrowed it down to a choice between Foobar, EAC and dbPowerAmp. Given that my top priority is obtaining the highest quality audio extraction on an individual track basis (so I'd want extremely secure ripping of individual tracks), again followed by the ability to handle copy-protected CDs, and looking at how I do stuff as per the post above, which of these three programs would you recommend I use?

From what I've read in this thread so far, I'd reckon it comes down to a head-to-head between EAC and dbPowerAmp, as they seem to edge Foobar in some areas. What do you guys think?

Phil

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #21 –
Quote from: Phil Friel on
In the vast majority of cases I rip individual tracks rather than whole albums at once. [...] Would I be right in assuming that this method of ripping makes AccurateRip useless for my needs?
No.  AccurateRip works on a track-by-track basis.  Ripping an entire album is not necessary.

Quote from: Phil Friel on
Given that my top priority is obtaining the highest quality audio extraction on an individual track basis (so I'd want extremely secure ripping of individual tracks), again followed by the ability to handle copy-protected CDs, and looking at how I do stuff as per the post above, which of these three programs would you recommend I use?
The ability to successfully rip a copy-protected lies in the drive, not the software.

Quote from: Phil Friel on
From what I've read in this thread so far, I'd reckon it comes down to a head-to-head between EAC and dbPowerAmp, as they seem to edge Foobar in some areas. What do you guys think?
I'm guessing you're interested in other people's opinions besides Spoon and myself since I've already given my reasons as to why not to use foobar and Spoon is the author of dBpowerAMP.  I think he is justified in believing he has created the best program of the three and for drives that provide C2 pointers I have to agree with him.

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #22 –
Quote from: Phil Friel on
I make copies of these WAVs, which I put through Wavegain to even everything out at -89db.

I wouldn't do that. Wavegain is a lossy process. You reduce the SNR ratio (given you want the highest quality, that seems to defeat the purpose)
Quote from: Phil Friel on
I rip to WAV and keep the original non-normalized WAVs as backups on a separate hard drive.

From these copies, I convert to FLAC...

You can safely convert to FLAC and discard the WAV-files. The data is the same. When you decode a FLAC, the file is the exact same as you started with (hence the term "lossless")

When you created the FLAC, you can apply ReplayGain. I have no idea if MediaMonkey supports it, but both foobar2000 and Winamp does these days.

Quote from: Phil Friel on
From these copies, I convert to FLAC for use in MediaMonkey, Traktor 3, and on my Cowon iAudio X5, and to WMA Lossless for use in SAM Party DJ (doesn't support FLAC - yet - when it does, I can get rid of the WMAs).

At this stage you already has a lossless copy available. Why not just encode to lossy wma files until FLAC is supported?

Quote from: Phil Friel on
And, as a DJ, I tend to organize my music more on an individual song basis rather than on an album basis. Would I be right in assuming that this method of ripping makes AccurateRip useless for my needs?

No, AccurateRip helps you determine if your rip matches the rip other people have made. This has nothing to do with the organisation.
Can't wait for a HD-AAC encoder :P

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #23 –
Quote from: greynol on
The ability to successfully rip a copy-protected lies in the drive, not the software.


Not always, for some Copy protected CDs (R13 labels them as Defective by Design) they have the false second session in the TOC. A program can help by forcing the first session, but the deliberate wrong lead in or out from the false TOC will cause problems for CD drives which cannot read into the lead in or out.

why not use Foobar to grab music?

Reply #24 –
Right, I forgot about that type.

Is what you're describing the same protection that EAC used to be able to circumvent until Andre was forced to remove the feature by the German gov't as of V0.95b4 and the same protection that cannot not stand up to a black marker?  What you described sounds slightly different to me.

Edit: There's also the situation where an enhanced CD can install software that cripples your ability to extract audio amongst other things.  This is another example where the drive doesn't make a difference.