If I rip a CD to Monkey's audio (either high compression or fast and all in-between) or any other "lossless codec," am I guarenteed a bit-for-bit copy of that CD, or am I missing something. Please note I am a complete codec and other audio, DAC, etc. newb. Be kind

If the rip is exact, like a good EAC rip presumably should be, any lossless compression should preserve your rip bit-exact. What would be the point of lossless otherwise?

If you create a CUE sheet IMHO EAC's gap detection is the weakest link to getting bit exact copies your best bet is method A + secure & counter checking with another drive wouldn't hurt, of course you should set-up your drive with secure mode/T&C/NO C2.

IMO the easiest way to get an exact copy is to create an image but just as long as you create a CUE sheet on extraction you should have exactly what is on the CD or at least have a about a 99.5% chance, a little higher with T&C.

I really hate myself for increasing worthless paranoia, but, NO.

There really are no "perfect" copies.

No one here has mentioned the offset issue. You will lose information that way, that is for sure. Granted, it is non-audible, meaningless data, and it would take literally hundreds of "rip-and-burn" cycles to actually notice a difference but it will prevent any backup from being "perfect".

I don't care. I use EAC the recommended way. Monkey's Audio and FLAC (the two lossless codecs I have tried) both will give you bit-perfect streams of whatever CD rip you feed them with. So it should be enough.

Oh, and if you are wondering what "offsets" are, check out the FAQ

Yes of course you must set correct read/write offsets for your drive & it must support overreading into the corresponding value.

You'll loose less using the combined offset, since you loose samples anyway if you can't overwrite.

But anyway, ripping to wav or ripping to Monkey's audio is the same thing. You can be at piece on this point.

The loss because of offsets are a few samples at the start or at the end of the CD. 99 % of the time (and I mean it, I must have two CDs out of 200 not complying with it : Mike Oldfield - Discovery, and AmGod - Half Rotten and Decayed), commerical CDs are mastered with this loss in mind, since it also occurs in regular playback in a hifi player. So there is no musical information in the samples lost.

Gap detection and cusheet has nothing to do with audio data. You can faithfully copy all the audio content without worrying about cuesheets, or images. It deals with optional markers (index markers) nearly never used.

You lose the information in the sub channels:

These are:

- information about pre-emphasis (seldom used)
- information about copying (who cares?)
- CD-TEXT and relatives
- information about indices (seldom used)

Also often the exact track start points are often slighly shifted.


Is there any audio grabber generating grabbed files for every track/index combination?

Track01_00.wav
Track01_01.wav
Track02_00.wav
Track02_01.wav
Track03_00.wav
Track03_01.wav
Track03_02.wav
Track04_00.wav
...
TrackNN_00.wav
TrackNN_01.wav

Most audio grabbers do the following
- discard: Track01_00.wav
- combines: Track{N}_{01+}.wav and Track{N+1}_00.wav to Track{N}.wav
- especially on Live Tracks you often hear this merging. The old title ends with information of the next title.

Any remarks?

All that you have posted is correct, but I have two remarks.

I think that the original poster asked wether there was a problem using lossless compression versus not using it. All the problems you mentioned occurs wether you compress or not. What you have written is perfectly valid for wav files too.

To answer your question, yes EAC can generate wav files for every track/index combination. It is the action "copy selected tracks index based".



The "information of the next title" is not played when you listen to the "next title", on any CD Player. So it's highly debatable wether it actually belongs to it.

Yes.

As long as you re-extract the burned image and compare it to your original image and they match. (EAC > Tools > Compare wavs, you'll need to decode your ape to wav in order to do this).

This is not true for the very very rare CDs using preemphasis.
This information can't be stored in WAVE files.

To basically, to newb this up

Its not bit-for-bit, but the difference from the original and the INITIAL copy is non-audible

Correct?

I personally consider it bit for bit exact.
In theory, there is no agreement in the industry on where the CD starts and stops, so bit for bit exactness is left to the appreciation of the user.

... but it can (and is) stored within a properly authored CUE sheet. If you happen to have such a CD - and as Frank said, they are very very rare - the extracted CUE sheet will display the FLAGS PRE parameter.

WAVs extracted from a pre-emphasized disc can be compressed to APE or FLAC just as effectively as any other WAV audio... but for the pre-emphasis information to still be accessible on any new disc burned from those files, FLAGS PRE must once again be used in the CUE sheet when burning the disc.

- M.

If you don't keep gaps/pauses your not getting exactly what was on the CD & gaps can sometimes be hidden tracks so to get as close to what was on the CD I think keeping gaps is a must.