Hello audio experts. Do any of you think that iTunes is a good program to rip your CDs with? As of now I have it set to rip MP3s via "custom" at 320 KBPS. Makes things pretty simple, but not sure if it's as good as other ripping programs out there...

Your thoughts?

-Keith

iTunes is not properly a "ripper", but a media player with ripping capabilities. It means that it lacks a lot of useful and powerful options to personalize the rip. If you aren't an experienced user you may not need such options so that i think you should consider this:
- if you plan to rip your cds to aac iTunes may be the best choice: it has one of the best (maybe THE best) aac codec, so that it can make very good quality aac files;
- if you plan to rip to mp3 i suggest you to use a ripper based on the last version of LAME: i suggest you BonkEnc (http://www.bonkenc.org/), an open source full featured (yet simple) ripper avaiable for free.

Bye!

particularly on scratched cd's, eac is the best ripper. its alittle tricky at first, but there is plenty of help available here for setting it up. you can configure it to use any encoder (lame would be perferred for 320kbps mp3's).

Note that if you're after high-quality MP3s, you're most likely better off (than with iTunes MP3) using LAME at a lower bitrate, since LAME delivers transparency for most people on most samples with its --preset standard setting, which produces ~200 kbps VBR files. This will save you about 1/3 space compared to 320kbps CBR.

Ripping with EAC is just as simple (and powerful and customizable) once you have it set up, I think it's worth it.

Even iTunes aac encoder can be set up through a command line "frontend".

Check Rarewares' AAC section for a few options.

The best thing about EAC, in my opinion, is that it will let you know if any of your rips wnet band, which is invaluable in mass riping tasks in which you cannot listen to every sound file right away for errors.

Around here, I thought Nero HE-AAC would be considered the best AAC encoder. Not that I know much about AAC, though.

For rippers, however, I've tried many of them under windows, and by far EAC is the best. For some severely scratched CDs, Plextools Pro XL may have advantages in speed and accuracy, but only if you are using a Plextor drive. (and can part with 40 Euros or 55 USD)

EAC is very customizable, and it has a lot of capabilities that other programs don't even touch. It's also got a really slick internal database that can work with FreeDB to store your CDs' information. The user interface on EAC is very efficient and easy to use as well. The only thing that might put off a new user is the advanced options once you dig around in the menus, but there are lots of sites and people on the net that can help with that, to ensure that you have the optimal settings.

Also, EAC supports many presets that you can use to quickly change how you want to rip your CDs. It's just an amazing program, really. I've personally flipped Andre some money to express my thanks for his efforts.

It's free. So why not?
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

I would never trust any ripper other than EAC (since I don't have a Plextor drive, I don't use PlexTools).

HE-AAC is a codec specially designed for low bitrates and its related uses (like Internet broadcasting).
It cannot be the best codec, by definition.
Best quality comes from higher bitrates.

Not that it would be transparent for a lot of people, though...

I have no doubt that EAC is the best, I was just curious as to where iTunes comes in...

-Keith

iTunes should give good (if not perfect) results with modern drives and good-condition CDs. But as I said before, iTunes is not going to tell you if any of your rips went bad.
And that can be a pain.

EAC gives you just that: confidence. I find that priceless. I just do not have the time to listen right away to every track I rip. Most of the time I rip a lot of CDs, load them up on my Karma or burn then to CD to load on the computer at work or to listen to them on my MP3 car-stereo. I would be very angry if I found out, far away from home, that one song I am so liking has pops and clicks.

This should happen very few times, but it will still happen. And you don't want to put yourself in that position.

That is exactly right my friend... I have had that happen a few times with iTunes on my CDs that are kept in perfect condition... I'm talking right out of the case. It is annoying to find out 6 songs into an 80 minute mp3 that there is a chirp or hiss or something.

EAC is priceless for the confidence it allows.

-Keith

I don't know if it has something to do with my cd drive, but i have a cd (the vines - winning days) that i was unable to rip properly in EAC due to it's copy protection. Tried all setting, never getting it to work. I fired up itunes, and 5 minutes later i have a ripped vines cd. I'm no expert, i really don't know what happened, but itunes never gives me bad results.

Soren

It's never bad to have some alternative Rippers on HD, especially if it comes to the issue of copy protection. However, some CD's I can only rip (flawless) with EAC ... and like many others said, you know for sure if something went wrong!

I once ripped my entire collection with iTunes to AAC. The majority of my CDs are in really good condition and most don't have one scratch. iTunes ripped the majority of my collection perfectly. However, it screwed up rips on a handful of my CDs. The wierd part was the CDs it screwed up rips on were the CDs in really good condition - not one scratch. A pretty good job if you consider that hundreds of CDs were ripped and only a few rips were bad. However, when listening to those songs on my iPod I was greeted with hideous pops and clicks. That meant I had to go rerip those CDs later. Personally, I'm back to using the EAC/LAME combo and love the security I have with EAC that my rips are perfect so I'll never run into another "Was that a pop? Crap, I gotta rerip!" moment.