Hi all;

I’m preparing to transfer our collection of ~500 - 700 CD-based music to digital storage. The immediate driver is to load up a portable music player so my wife can carry her music around with her. My “user” goals are to:
- (generally) rip each CD one time only,
- create an on-line (in-home) catalogue of music,
- create "playlists" targeted for different devices (portable player, CDs, home entertainment system /situations without being tied to artist-album restrictions.
- cull/trim our music collection down to the wanted stuff (keep the one-hit wonders and dump the rest of the album).
- as necessary, archive to off-line storage (DVD-?)
Nothing earth-shattering here, just clarifying that 1-to-1 CD copying and mass on-line file-sharing are not my goals.

Not exactly a "first adapter" on the portable music scene, I expected to be spoiled for choice for integrated SW packages that would meet my needs while focusing on maintaining the quality of the audio tracks and their metadata. Well, I’ve learned lots from the HA forums, about issues I didn’t know were “issues” ‘til I researched here. Thanks, (I think, inspite of the headaches .) And yet I have some nagging doubts of the necessity of wading into the arcanery of multiple apps., command lines and switches, and searching for (more) arcane usage info., I want to verify the need to do so. (Besides, my wife is gonna kill me if I don’t get this project underway quickly. “Why are you making this so complicated? Noone else I know has trouble getting their music on their players!?!” She’s still my sweetie though and she does agree that she wants her music as good as it can be.)

My initial and most fundamental question concerns CD ripping. Seems that until (circa 2000 ?) Andre Wiethoff developed an audio data “fetch” function that utilizied multiple read-and-compare, it was possible to acquire erroronous track copies. Here’s my understanding – cobbled together from my research -- of the technical basis of the problem:
- the storage format used on audio CDs does not include any data integrity info. Makes sense for the original purpose of linear time replay, but short-sighted from a track-as-digital-record perspective.
- The only way to (absolutely?) know if there is a read error of audio data is to do multiple read and compare. (And EAC’s secure method is the only, and propriatary, approach to the problem.)
- (put another way) there is no technical way (i.e. outside of the user making a knowledgeable assessment of the physical condition of the disc) for an application to “know” if a bad read is/will occur short of actually performing a read.
Therefore, you want an accurate track read, you need to use EAC.

But some, notably rjamorim (who does not seem to me to be complacent about audio quality ) argue(d at one time?) here, about whether EAC is “a good thing” for scratched CDs or a “bad thing” and vice versa as also for CDex, Fueria, dBpowerAmp’s ripper, etc. And yes, I understand that it is possible, and even right and good, to disagree an some issues, those that relate to individual values and preferences. But the subject here seems to me a fundamental issue for the digital audiophile.

So, is this a molehill or a mountain?
- Were all you practicing digital audiophiles plagued by inexplicably error-ridden audio tracks until EAC came along? Life is now good, sounds are all sweet?
- Is EAC finding “false positives” at least in the sense that most of the read errors do not result in audible errors (the only kind that matters in the end).
- Is my construction of the technical problem wrong? Do some rippers have some means of informing the user that a track read is, or might be wrong? (Only then turning to EAC to try again ….)
- Or, given that there are multiple rippers available, do you use EAC only when you expect there to be trouble with a disk? If so, what criteria do you use? (though I realise that could really be a can of worms so don’t kill yourself trying to answer that….)
I think I understand that one suggestion is that to use other rippers (reasons of ease, speed, etc.) for ripping but fall back to EAC for tracks that sound bad. While that is reasonable method in one rip sessions, I would wish to have the ripping work unattended, but maybe that a source of difference in approach (wish I had the equipment, ears, and time to follow that approach for my project )


Futurewise, if EAC is the needed, gold standard of ripper to guarantee a good data read, any further update on whether Andre would contemplate releasing his work under a GPL arrangement so that it could be incorporated elsewhere, e.g. dBpowerAmp?

Thanks for helping get set on the best direction.
Ciao for now.

Seems like you definitely did some research before you posted
The best (in my opinion) reason I have heard so far to use EAC is that it lets you know for sure that a track is correct (if it is correct), and if it isn't correct it will usually even tell you where the possible errors are. As far as I know most rippers do a reasonable job at ripping, but you won't know for sure until you listen to the ripped music.

The reason why many people and myself prefer EAC over other DAE tools is that it gives you security: If a properly configured EAC extracts the disc in secure mode without bitching about 'suspicious positions' you're save. I wouldn't trade this peace of mind against anything.
If EAC fails on a disk, other rippers most likely will too and I should consider how much time I want to spend on ripping with different tools to find the version with the least clicks or annoyances.
Luckily this hasn't happened to me yet and my PXW-1610A extracted even heavily scratched CDs flawlessly.

"Back in the day" I was indeed plagued by audible clicks in some CDs I ripped because of errors that occured during ripping. I didn't notice these until I had ripped several CDs erroneously. At that point, since it was before EAC existed, probably even before cdparanoia, "secure ripping" meant ripping and then very carefully listening to each ripped track for clicks or skips. That sucks in the extreme.

I do not use EAC because I'm running linux and I haven't gotten it to work under wine, but I do not trust a ripper to just "rip" without introducing errors. I've been using a hodge-podge of scripts to rip each track twice with cdparanoia and compare checksums before feeding it through the army of encoders.

Hi Rudi,
You're on the right track when you mention dBpoweramp! In fact, if you go to their website now (www.dbpoweramp.com) you'll see that you can download (free) Accurate Rip. This looks like being the definitive application for ripping one's CDs. Reading what is set down in the forum, it would appear that EAC will be incorporating the Accurate Rip algorithms (if I understand it correctly). It's a bit of a business to set up Accurate Rip - it calibrates your drive against a known database - but once that's done, you're away! All you have to do is place a CD in the loading drawer, wait for the "what do want to do" message box (by default, it will say 'copy CD with dB poweramp') and click the OK button. Accurate rip will open, read your disc and then rip to whatever format you instruct it. You will, of course, need also to have dBpoweramp music converter (free - excellent program) and load in whatever codecs you think you may need. Of these, there's a wide choice - in fact, just about every format available. Good luck, and (I know it will give you) Good Listening.
Tony (Totally independent, absolutely unpaid, highly satisfied user of dB's programs).

I started writing this out but why spend time on something already done.


From PCGuide - Ref - Compact Disk Formats

btw, What format will you be encoding to?

I always use EAC to rip my collection I remember having occasional problems years ago. Now I don't know of any disc ripped with the burst mode related errors I remember having previously. Poor quality rips can be just as irritating to me as encoder artifacts are. :s

In addition to the error correction algorithm of EAC I also use it for the features such as 'synchronize between tracks' ISRC/UPC along with cue sheets and many other features I'm too lazy to list right now.

Another option may be PlexTools, depending on your drive.


Shortly put, no, but its been answered and I don't want to go off-topic.

My advice is to not let the ripping become a chore. Try to find something to do while it is going on and check back in a bit to see if it is complete.
That's one of the reasons I like the eject tray when finished feature It's easier to spot when it is complete.

tec

p.s. petriburg, EAC 0.95 Pre-beta 5 has AccurateRip integrated.

Thanks for the input. Just wanted to be sure that EAC was an essential tool for my project. So I sadly wave good-bye to my dream of the all-in-one package, though given the EAC imperative, I have to study up and try its other features.

Tec9SD, thanks for the comparative explanatory info and URL re. CD formats. About Plextor CD drives:

I have on my new e-Machines PC, which is intended to be my “multimedia station” (away from my work office):
- SAMSUNG CD-R/RW SW-248F,
- SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-816B.

On my office workhouse PIII 350 mHz Gateway I’ve got a Matshita DVD-ROM SR-8582.

But I just realized I've got a Plextor Plexwriter 24/10/40 PX-W2410TA sitting in its retail box. (Purchase preceded the new machine, and I didn’t have an IDE slot to spare due to an internal ZIP drive which I needed.) I’ve noted Plextor mentioned in the forum threads. (Didn't pay too much attention as I forgot I had it, doh!) So, would it be a worthwhile step for me to swap the Plextor into my intended multimedia system? And is the advantage due to the Plextools SW or due to the error recovery capabilities of the drive itself, or both?

The choice of the lossless format I intend to use to store audio on-line is my next decision, but I think my choice may depend more on the quality of the preservation of source metadata (i.e. not just the track identifying info, but the source “object” info as well), and therefore whether or not to obtain an archival whole CD “image” as I think dev0 has advocated. For one thing, given that I’m not expecting to keep all of my CD content on-line all the time, the idea of archiving to DVD-R of integral whole CDs makes “sense” in terms of relating “cyberspace” to the physical world … “shelfspace” ?!? I.e. while I may have an “MDDB” containing metadata for all audio tracks I own on my PC, it would also be nice to have a simple album- DVD-R listing for the off-line archival storage.

My general conception of the process is to do an initial rip to lossless or to wav if a wav rip is required to get the full CD info (the TOC?), though my impression is that the TOC fetch can be accomplished without a wav file fetch. So, I’ll do a bit of thread studying and trialing with EAC, though I’ll be happy take any inputs you care to share.

Thanks.