Reasons to switch to EAC from foobar or winamp for ripping., was: "why is EAC the best?" Options

[airtas]

I have been using foobar and or winamp with lame to rip my mp3s and flacs.


What benefits do I get from EAC? Is it better error correction? If my cds have no scratches do I need EAC?

Please explain as when I looked into EAC settings I found a 6 page guide on customizing settings, and with winamp everything is auto, am I missing something, quality wise?

[Sycraft]

More or less EAC seems to do the most through job of checking for errors of any ripper out there. It does this in all kinds of ways like testing the CD-ROM to see how it rips, what kind of errors it can detect and so on, and also by checking against a database. If EAC says your rip is good, it is extremely likely it is good. If there's a problem, like damage to a disc that causes read problems, EAC very often can find a way to compensate for it and still get a good rip.

So it is kind of a quality assurance thing. Rip with EAC, you probably have no problems.

How much does this matter? Hard to say. It partially depends on your discs. If they are in good condition then there is less likely to be any trouble reading them and thus you are more likely to get a good rip regardless. However just because they look ok doesn't mean there isn't damage that you can't easily see with the naked eye. Remember that the pits on a CD are very small, so there could be damage smaller than you can see that still causes problems. It also partially depends on your drive. Some drives do a really good job reading audio CDs, others are very poor at it. So if you have a good drive, you aren't likely to have a problem, but if you don't you may.

As an example with drives back in the day they used to have real problems with accurate seeking. The computer would say "Go read data from this spot," and they'd just kinda go to the general area. That meant to get a good rip you had to have your program compensate for this, read more than it needed to, and correct all the read jitter. As far as I know, drives these days don't have that issue. The one I have doesn't at least. I'll seek accurate to a single sample and start reading again, meaning that no correction needs to be done.

I personally just use EAC because it is free, works well, and is the best way to guarantee a good rip. I probably don't need to, something else would probalby work fine, but since EAC doesn't cost anything, I figure why not?

The reason why this is necessary is that audio CDs don't have as good an error correction as data CDs. You can actually see this in sizes. A normal CD these days holds 700MB of data, or 80 minutes of audio. Well CD audio is 44.1kHz, 16-bit stereo. That equals 172 kilobytes per second, or about 10MB per minute. That means that 80 minutes of audio needs 800MB. So how's that work? Well in data mode that extra 100MB is used up in the additional error correction that is done. In audio mode, it isn't there. As such audio CDs can have errors much easier than data CDs that can't be corrected.

[Light-Fire]

... A normal CD these days holds 700MB of data, or 80 minutes of audio...

There is no such a thing as audio in a CD. The "audio" in the CD is actually data.

[westgroveg]

... A normal CD these days holds 700MB of data, or 80 minutes of audio...

There is no such a thing as audio in a CD. The "audio" in the CD is actually data.

Yes there is, "audio data" is recorded differently on CD's, thus why more fits. It's a method of recording & the standard for audio CD's, not that any of this is relevent...

EAC is the best as Sycraft said because you can be very sure, you don't need to rely on a database or anything like that althought you can you don't need to & don't get stuck if your CD isn't listed or the pressing is diffrent or if you have offset issues...

[spoon]

you don't need to rely on a database or anything like that althought you can you don't need to & don't get stuck if your CD isn't listed or the pressing is diffrent or if you have offset issues...

In that case the security of your Rips is much reduced. C2 pointers miss errors, re-reading also misses errors (when the wrong data is re-read the same both tries). This goes for Plextools also, the CD drive its self cannot detect all errors.

[airtas]

you don't need to rely on a database or anything like that althought you can you don't need to & don't get stuck if your CD isn't listed or the pressing is diffrent or if you have offset issues...

In that case the security of your Rips is much reduced. C2 pointers miss errors, re-reading also misses errors (when the wrong data is re-read the same both tries). This goes for Plextools also, the CD drive its self cannot detect all errors.

what would an error sound like?

[pdq]

what would an error sound like?

It would probably sound like a click or a pop.