Has anyone compared the accuracy of JRiver Mediacenter secure rips to EAC secure rips? I'm archiving a few hundred cds to my pc, and it would be conveniet to use MC for ripping as well as playback.

Thanks,

Jonathan

If JRM were worthy of comparison to EAC, it would be talked about a lot here. It isn't, and thus it isn't discussed much.

Hi Jonathan,

EAC is pretty much the gold standard for CD ripping apps here at HA, and though a lot of apps like dBPowerAmp, foobar now offer secure ripping options, EAC has gained such a following that it'd be hard to tear people (including myself) away from it. I don't think you're going to find enough people here that have/use JRiver Mediacenter to get a good answer to your question.

That said, the MC may suit your needs fine. Does it come with documentation as to how it's "secure method" is secure? For comparisson, the HA wiki page for EAC explains it's secure extraction technology.

A couple of things you might want to consider:

What are you looking for in your rips? Some people want a bit-perfect (or as close to) copy of the original CD, wheras others are just content that the ripped file is free of errors and glitches. What do you plan to do with the ripped audio - compress it to lossy (mp3, ogg, aac, etc.), lossless (flac, wavpack) or both? Does MC encode to your desired file type(s)? For example, if you use mp3 for your portable, can MC be configured to use Lame (tested to be the best mp3 encoder in terms of quality) like EAC can?

This is a forum populated by EAC users. Try the J. River forums to hear from J. River users. Audio Asylum has regular posts by Media Center 11 users too.

I have compared results with EAC using Test & Copy secure mode and J. River Media Center 11 in secure mode. Brief results:

- no difference on files that MC 11 ripped with reliable results. Files were byte for byte the same.

- Whenever MC 11 gets unreliable results, I try to rip those tracks with EAC. EAC has NEVER been able to rip any of those problem tracks with confidence. Sometimes the glitches are quite audible, sometimes not. I have not found any improvement in sound for the EAC ripped problem tracks relative to Media Center 11.

- Speed has been about the same.

- MC 11 supports a wider set of standard tags and custom tags.

- MC 11 doesn't use AccurateRip so that might be a reason to prefer EAC.

Bill

While I think that it's possible for a little groupthink influence to be going on here, I don't believe that Hydrogenaudio is grossly biased. There is no reason for undue favoritism. Applications that rival EAC get fair and objective consideration. And I, for one, would be happy if JRMC was proven by factual evidence to be a secure ripper (on par with EAC). The more options, the better.

From your first post:

"If JRM were worthy of comparison to EAC, it would be talked about a lot here. It isn't, and thus it isn't discussed much."

You didn't post any factual evidence. You simply tried to dismiss a program without providing any evidence based on your own use. In my first post, I stated my experience without comment on your post. Since you responded, I will comment: your first post is hardly an example of "fair and objective consideration".

Have you ever done comparisons of the files produced by EAC and any other ripper with a secure mode?

Bill

dbpoweramp has had ALOT of discussion here and didnt get much if any any attention before the new secure ripper. The community here is open to new better apps.

Give the new dbpoweramp alpha a try. Its much easier then EAC and gets as good if not better results.

True, I am being dismissive. Based on the fact that Hydogenaudio is not EAC fanboy central, but rather a community that is open to any software that gets the job done. I sincerely would be happy to learn that JRMC is in fact a highly secure ripper, and merely has no reputation at HA.org due simply to a lack of attention.

OK, I admit that I passed judgment without conclusive evidence. That doesn't mean that HA.org, on the whole, is not fair and objective.

Yes. But since it's not about JRMC, I fail to see the point of this question. I'll try to test JRMC when I get a chance, out of curiosity.

So if I wanted to do a factual comparison, what is the correct way to determine accuracy of rip between EAC and JRMC given that JRMC doesn't work with Accuraterip? I'd be happy to rip a number of CDs and compare the results between the two if someone can suggest a test methodology.

You can compare ripped (uncompressed) files in EAC with Tools -> Compare WAVs. (Set EAC's read offset correction to 0 before ripping, or otherwise offset samples must be considered) To test for ''secureness'', you'll of course need to test with discs that actually give read errors.

I'm considering doing such a test with some tracks that I have which are difficult to extract correctly but I'm not sure if I really want to install such a bloated piece of software on my system, especially if it decides to hijack my file associations and install stuff in the system32 directory which it won't remove when I decide to uninstall it. Not to mention that the 30-day trial will probably keep me from trying my tests again at a later date.

Some numbers:

Just now, Media Center 11 was using 16,536 KB of virtual memory playing a 8 min. FLAC file. At idle, it is using 5,144 KB of virtual memory.

Mediacenter.exe file - 5,145 KB

C:\Program files\J. River\ directory - 48 MB

You can make your own decision whether that is bloated. Maybe you already knew how big MC 11 was.

You can decide which file associations to let MC 11 control when you install it or at any time afterward.

I recently installed MC 11 on a newly built PC with little else installed. I looked in Windows\system32 and didn't see anything obvious that the MC 11 install had added. I could clearly see many files that an Intel driver and BIOS update package had installed. The MC 11 install certainly might have overwritten some Microsoft DLLs or added some DLLs with dates earlier than the date on the MC 11 install. I don't know whether your concern would prove to be borne out.

Your choice whether to do comparisons or not. I doubt that Media Center will do much better than EAC on problem disks. I used EAC on disks that MC 11 ripped with unreliable results. I would guess that trying MC 11 on disks that EAC couldn't rip reliably would not work any better.

I tried CDex on a few problem disks as well. It was able to rip two disks that neither EAC nor MC 11 would even start to rip. One of those disks seemed to have some copy protection like tinkering to the TOC on the disk. The other disk had severe problems on the first track.

Bill

I was suggesting it's bloated based on the size of the installation file.

Back on topic, thanks for telling us it you don't think it's any more secure than EAC at ripping. Why didn't you mention this earlier while you were defending the program from Cosmo?

As for CDex, I've pretty much demonstrated to my own satisfaction that it is not as secure as EAC given my collection of problematic discs and my hardware. Considering that EAC isn't exactly as secure as it's made out to be, this really doesn't say a lot, but I guess this all depends on your definition of secure.

> Back on topic, thanks for telling us it you don't think it's any more secure than EAC at ripping.
> Why didn't you mention this earlier while you were defending the program from Cosmo?

Read what I said. In my first post, I didn't claim that MC 11 was more secure than EAC. I reported my experience. In my last post, I said that I doubted that MC 11 would prove to rip disks reliably when EAC could not. I then make it clear that my own experiments were not intended to show that MC 11 could

> As for CDex, I've pretty much demonstrated to my own satisfaction that it is not as secure
> as EAC given my collection of problematic discs and my hardware.

CDex isn't my regular ripper but it is sometimes a useful alternative for a few problem disks. Ripping with a different drive has worked for a couple of disks too.

> Considering that EAC isn't exactly as secure as it's made out to be,
> this really doesn't say a lot, but I guess this all depends on your definition of secure.

What's the point? Are you now dismissing EAC as not secure? Do you have a superior alternative in mind? Or do you want to argue about the use of the word secure?

Bill

Depends on your definition of secure.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do...

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=441155

I've been following that thread, the technology discussion thread and web page on the dBpowerforums and the thread titled "Discussion of dMC R12 Alpha " on that forum. The word Alpha in the title suggested to me that I might wait a bit to try it. And I need to buy more CDs to rip. <g>

Early in the thread you cited, you said that EAC was giving better results than the dbPowerAmp R12 ripper on some disks. Later you said that Plextools was giving better results on some disks than the dbPowerAmp R12 ripper. Have your results changed recently?

Bill

While it is "alpha" I cant say the stability or technology behind EAC ever proved to be more then alpha itselft. dMC 12 has already performed VERY well for myself and many other users.

I'm guessing you probably haven't read Post #134 yet.


My link to apha 7 was very much intentional.

I did see your post but it seems to be a preliminary comment. Are you now using the DbPowerAmp R12 alpha as your ripper of choice to make keeper copies of CDs?

I noticed posts commenting on variable implementation of C2 pointers in different drives, limitations on C2 info from USB drives and questions about modes of use for Plextor and other drives. It sounds to me as if the original technology page and instructions for use need to be updated.

Bill

Fair enough.

Yes.

In so far as how C2 is being used for re-reads, I'd have to agree with you.

J. River introduced secure ripping with Media Jukebox v. 8 in early 2002. They developed it further in Media Center v. 9-11.1 (v. 12 beta may be ready for release soon). I have used all those versions.

I see its secure ripping mode like a straightforward, minimalist version of EAC's secure mode. It re-reads up to 16 times when needed. It has an automatic mechanism for disabling drive's cache. It creates rip logs that contain information about the re-read attempts and unrecoverable errors. In my experience it works fine. If MC reports problems normally the same problems can be seen in EAC's log. EAC has more options for tweakers, but it cannot do miracles. Both programs have correctly reported my few bad CDs similarly bad.

Personally I rip mostly with EAC in single file & cue mode. MC has a cue option too, but this mode does not detect and write pregap information. It creates only the INDEX01 lines. The mode is intended for ripping disc images for playback purposes only, not for creating exact disc image backups. MC itself does not need disc images for gapless playback, though it understands also cue sheets. It supports most gapless file formats natively including MP3 with LAME info headers.

I have often recommended MC to my non-technical friends for ripping standard track files instead of common programs like iTunes or WMP. Usually they have also liked the all-in-one approach. They have not called MC bloatware after finding out what it can do in all areas. Its installer is about 13.5 MB. The installer is small when compared with some other programs, like iTunes (35 MB) or Nero (xxx MB).

In my experience - the JRMC rip log can claim that it made up to 16 read attempts to get "good data", but the data may in fact be very unreliable (even if re-reads were few). It took all of one scratched test disc to encounter a track that produced inconsistent read errors which were consistently recovered by EAC (& verified by AR), but not by JRMC.

To JRMC's credit, the program offered custom install options (incl. file assoc.), and when uninstalling claims to clear it's registry entries. (some %user% data remained)