It's quite good and stable.

A few things you should be very aware of tho.

The 'free' version is very bare bones.

The 'powerpack' version includes stuff like mp3 encoding and secure ripping, but you do not get C2 pointer support, 'ultra secure', logging options and several other important features.

The 'reference' version includes everything, and costs more and there is no lifetime upgrades for it. Minor version updates are free, however Major version upgrades will cost you.

None of the versions currently include cue sheet support, nor ripping to one file (ie cue + wave).

I highly recommend carefully reading the version comparison @ http://www.dbpoweramp.com/db-versions.htm before paying for anything, otherwise your at great risk of buying something you thought you were getting, but don't.

So you can guarantee me that I will get the same good rips as with EAC (or better) ?
And how long have this software been in testing/development ?

I doubt anyone, including the dbpoweramp developer, is going to guarantee anything.

It does have a trial time period, I suggest you make a few comparison rips with both eac and r12 and decide for yourself.

Does your drive provide C2 pointers?

If no then EAC is probably going to be your best bet for the money. If yes and depending on the condition of your CDs, then the reference version of R12 will be able to rip things accurately that EAC can't.

Based solely on accuracy, the power pack version of R12 isn't going to give you much (if anything at all) over EAC. In fact, you run a greater risk of having consistent errors get concealed with dBpowerAMP through improper configuration of the Maximum Re-Reads setting.

Use the search function and you will find your answer.

OK thanks for the information, it looks like the "reference" version is the one I interested in.
How much does the license cost to use this version ?

When I rip my cd collection I will use a 3-way system with drives and I plan to use EAC/dBpoweramp and Plexi tools if the two first rips (EAC/dBpoweramp) have conflicting CRC's.

The drives I got is supposed to my knowledge have a "reliable" DAE/C2

Plextor Px-708a
Plextor Px-230a (rebaged Benq version)
Lite-On SHM-165H6S

WOW, that sounds like overkill. BTW, if you have over-read into lead in/out configured your CRCs wount match on the last track (I think) since the 230 and lite on cant over-read (it may be the 1st track, you will have to check). Also, if accuraterip, in either dbamp or eac says its accurate, then it is. Also, you will need to check how CRCs are checked in each program *or are you going to check them manually on the wav?) as they may be calculated differently.

Also, the reference version is $28:
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc-power-register.htm

The first track is affected when the offset correction is a negative number, otherwise it is the last track.

The CRCs will be different if all of the following conditions are satisfied: 1) the drives have different offsets, 2) they can't be configured or aren't configured to overread, and 3) the samples in the area requiring overreading are non-silent.

There are more permutations when you consider EAC's "fill up missing offset samples with silence" and "no use of null samples in CRC calculations" settings. To avoid the hassle of incompatible CRC generation between platforms, check the first one and uncheck the second one. Furthermore, make sure that gaps are being appended to the previous track and that EAC's "delete leading and trailing silent blocks" setting is unchecked.

Finally, remember that the CRCs are generated from the raw PCM data only.

>Plextor Px-708a
>Plextor Px-230a (rebaged Benq version)

In my testing neither of these let through a single error (past the c2), and that was ripping 1000's of intentionally damged tracks.

Any chance the FLAC encoder will be upgraded to 1.1.4?

Also what version of LAME are you using now? Not still stuck at 3.96.1 I hope?

I am going to test the C2 reporting with Nero CD-DVD Speed in a few moments since I don't have the time to wait for Andre's tool to analyze the results obtained by his C2 extractor.

FLAC 1.1.4 shortly (our priority is filling some of the missing codec / DSPs).

Lame is the latest non-beta version, 3.97 off the top of my head.

Eli and greynol.

Yes I know it might be overkill, but I'm very paranoid and have no acceptance for inaccurate rips their is no room for that...it will not be any possibility for me to rip an CD twice once it's ripped.

Yes I'm aware that all three drives have different offsets, and that 708 is able to over-read and the others aren't. But what you are saying to me is something new, so please don't tell me now when I have bought 3 drives that it would be impossible to get an identical copy just because of px708a supports over-reading and the others aren't, I was certain that EAC/dBpoweramp would correct this somehow with filling up ill up missing offset samples with silence etc, which would make an identical copy/crc...

And one more question correct me if I'm wrong, the CRC's created in EAC/dBpoweramp will not match cause they are calculated with an different algorithm ?
Do I need to create external checksums with like HKSFV or any other software ?

Excellent thanks for the info

> CRC's created in EAC/dBpoweramp will not match cause they are calculated with an different algorithm ?

They will match if you set EAC to use NULL samples for calculation.

dBpoweramp will generate identical files for all your drives (nb it is only the last track which is affected) as long as audio data is not present to the very last sample (which is quite rare).

Ah ok thanks.
But will dBpoweramp make identical files to EAC aswell, so I can compare them ?
The whole point is that I want to have as many references as possible.
And you say it's "quite" rare that audio data is present in the very last sample.
Exactly how common is it ? So I know when I get conflicting crc's. So I guess the best
thing to do when I get conflicting crc's in the last track on the cd, I will assume that my px708a is the most trustworthy CRC, since it over-read's on the last track.

Looking forward to these results, Sebastian.

spoon: Have downloaded the trial and am very impressed thus far. Thanks for your efforts.

Damn, either I scratch a CD too hard and it takes ages to read (10% in 2 hours) or I don't scratch it enough and there is no error.

Spoon, do you have any ETA on the new Sveta version?

It is difficult at this stage to say how much effort Sveta will require to play-ball with the new Converter.

Nope.

I thought you were also interested in ripping with PlexTools. Last time I checked it didn't generate checksums.

After some configuration changes, yes. dBpowerAMP adds metadata to wave files by default.

Spoon is "quite" wrong about this. Final tracks ending with non-silent samples are very far from rare.

What if the CRCs differ for some reason other than a lack of overreading?

Damn this is begin to get really confusing
Maybe I need to change my ripping strategy...
Well, why I did think about using 2(3) ripping softwares
is mainly cause the C2 correction is handled in a different way in each program, and they do not always generate an unambiguous result.
If I had 3 references, my idea was to be able to choose which is "correct", if I get the equal CRC's
with let's say EAC/Plextools, I will use these rips...and assume the dBpoweramp rip is not correct, since 2 weight more then 1.

And what metadata in dBpowerAMP are you talking about ?



And yes of course you are right..but this is an compromise.. since only px708a is able to overread, I will not be able to compare the crc's with the Lite-ON and px230A...what has the greatest weight in your opinion, ?
708a alone or Lite-ON px230a (we are talking about the last track here)

And I still would be interested to know how common it is that the last sample is filled with audio...

Crossreferencing between 3 drives??? I think your being overly paranoid. If you get matches for accuraterip, then your files are fine. If your files aren't in accurate rip, as long as there are no detected errors you should be fine.

>And what metadata in dBpowerAMP are you talking about ?

dBpoweramp is able to tag wave files, so when comparing audio files you should always compare the uncomrpessed audio, not the files (ie just running an audio file through CRC32 is wrong), dBpoweramp Reference has a [Calculate CRC] utility codec, select a bunch of file and a CRC32 & MD5 for those files (audio data only) is displayed.

Anyhow back to the point at hand - Accuraterip will help, even if the cd is not in the database, have dBpoweramp to write a ripping log file & check the CRCs from accuraterip, if you rip again, no matter what the drive is that crc is not affected by overreading. Or have dBpoweramp to write AccurateRip ID Tags and compare the CRC in the ID Tags (you cannot use wave as that cannot have accuraterip id tags, any lossless format will though).

Did a small test with my PX-230A and a CD-RW containing a straight line (made with a black marker; ~2mm) from one end of the CD to the other:



I don't get it. The number of compare errors, C2 errors and C2 errors missed are very strange IMO. I thought that the number of C2 errors missed would be compare errors - C2 errors.

Some tests with PX-755A and LG E10L will follow soon.

PX-755A:



E10L:



This is the test CD-RW: http://www.maresweb.de/miscellaneous/testcd.JPG

I would expect that the difference in errors would be a result of the laser and pickup mechanism.

Ie the drives have different lasers, of possibly different power level, and different ability to read the result of that laser.

Also, different drives might have different handling of error correction. I don't know how the drives actually do this (only read up about this a while ago), but drives could e.g. "spend" the ECC bytes differently on error detection/correction in C1/C2 stages.

Alright, thanks for the information. I think I maybe need to rethink my ripping method, I'm not sure how I will do, maybe I will only use dBpoweramp after all (if Im satisfied with it), it might be too much overkill... And I did mention earlier that the main reason to use multiple ripping software is because of the C2 correction, with an closer thought on the subject, I did realize that I will not rip scratchy cds (regularly). Once I buy a cd I will copy it to the computer (I don't even own an cd player), then I might not use it again.. So most of my cds are in a very good condition, so my need for c2 correction should be quite limited for the most parts. With scratchy cds, I might consider to use multiple ripping programs as an reference... But using 3 reliable drives with dBpoweramp should be enough.

Hopefully dBpoweramp is as good as it seams to be, I have noticed that I have mostly heard opinions/recommendations from an impartial source (spoon), the risk might be that I fool myself into an "false safety". And of course he will talk warmly about his own program since he is the developer which makes him $$$...well..just something that struck me. It would be my biggest mistake to just trust it blindly, I don't want to take any chances. EAC has been under progress under a long time, and is considered to be very stable and reliable. So if I decide to switch to dBpoweramp as my primary cd ripper, I really need trust it's reliability fully, but at present the benefits with dBpoweramp seams overwhelming.

afaik dbpoweramp has been under dev also from a long time. You can also try the trial version. I really like dbpoweramp, i have been using it since a long time ago, and about 1 month ago, bought powerpack version.

My only problem with dbpoweramp is what the hell does "reference version" means? It is really a silly name. (basica, advanced and professional should have been much better names).

I know that Hi-Fi component manufacturers use the term "reference version" to denote a top-notch product.

What Spoon has to say about this is worth repeating:

Moving on...
Majority rule is not a good method of determining whether a rip is accurate or not. This is a major reason why Spoon has put so much effort into rewriting his ripping program and this is why his program is able to get more accurate results than EAC when using drives that provide C2 pointers.

Don't confuse C2 correction with C2 pointers. All drives will always perform C2 correction when needed regardless of how you have your software configured; it is done internally. Some drives have the ability to tell your ripping program that if C2 correction was performed as well as the result of the correction. This information that gets passed along is commonly referred to as a C2 pointer.

EAC has two problems when it comes to C2 pointers. First, errors that can't be corrected by C2 can go undetected. This seems to be largely dependent on the make and model of your drive. Second, when an error that the drive can't correct is detected, EAC will perform re-reads, but it no longer uses C2 pointers to determine whether any of the re-reads are accurate. Instead, it reverts back to relying on majority rule which does not guarantee good data.

The reference version of dBpowerAMP addresses both of these problems with Ultra-secure passes and the use of C2 pointers durning rereads.

Sebastian from this post: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=472405

Why is the c2 accuracy (as %) very low on the 230a when it let though very few c2 errrors (i comparison to the other drives)?

could be that then ... but for me "reference" sounds like "basic" ... probably cause english is not my natural language.

Reference as in true or exact; to which everything else is compared or referred (and I don't mean reefer ).

I have no idea - as I stated, all numbers there are very strange. What firmware version does your test unit have?

I am sure my 230a has the latest firmware (it is in another country to me right now ).

Can not convert mp3 to mp3 with the free version? The authors use Lame MP3 encoder, don't you?

You know, patent fees also apply that's why the free version does not feature an MP3 encoder.

any idea when the FLAC codec will be updated to 1.1.4?

I'd also like to know this too, 1.1.2 is so old now and 1.1.4 compresses much better and is lots faster too.

Should be within a week.

use the command line encoder, and the lame exe to get around that if you already have an mp3 license (and im sure everyone has probably payed for ~100 of them)

...or if you live in a country where software patents pose no legal problem

Edit: This information probably wrong :-(

Excellent news!

I think you should inform yourself more before starting to spread such false information. MP3 patents have nothing to do with software patents and they apply in almost (if not all) countries.

Sorry, I must have mixed up something then. Edited my post to prevent spreading this misunderstanding further.
Edit: Just googled around a bit, it's not too difficult to get the wrong impression. Fraunhofer's mp3-patents are often called software patents and in several places it was claimed that these patents are not valid in Germany, though Fraunhofer was trying to enforce them. However, a news report I found strongly suggested otherwise.

Quick question again. When was the plan to add image+cue support to dBpoweramp? That's the only thing holding me back from testing it versus EAC.

According to this thread http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=11658 not for maybe another YEAR. I was totally waiting for this also. Hard to understand since EAC has had cuesheet implementation for a long time, even plextools. Will have to wait and see I guess.

I had a couple of odd things happen with this.

I just got through converting over 8000 of my FLAC files to MP3 (after discovering the options for keeping folder structure are worded differently to the last release so I have all MP3s in one folder, grrr), for some reason it's lost the tag data on about 12 files?!

There's nothing wrong with these FLAC files, my whole collection has been verified but the converted MP3s had no tags at all for some reason.

Any thoughts?

Hold the mouse over the flac files, does dbpoweramp show the id tags in the popup?