Alright, I’ve been reading this forum along with others for the last few weeks to determine my best options. Just when I think I have things figured out, I read another thread and that puts me in a different direction. I want to create a library that would consist of about 400 CD’s on an NAS. I’m planning on ripping to flac first and then will set up a second library of MP3’s for portables. I don’t care much about the music quality of the MP3’s, but I do want a very good quality flac library that would be integrated into my home stereo. I’m not sure if I would consider myself an audiophile, but I am pretty picky when it comes to playing music on my home stereo.

My drive is a Lite-on SOHR 5239V 06C so I don’t think it supports C2 well, and I will be using Accurate Rip. If I understand correctly, EAC would be a better option than the dBpoweramp Music Converter version 12 if you are using a burner that doesn’t handle C2 error detection well. Am I right or wrong? What are my best options for what I want to do? Would I be better off buying a different drive and using dBpoweramp? I currently have EAC configured based on the “Essential Guide for EAC”. If I rip in Secure mode (C2 unchecked and audio caching and accurate stream checked) and AccurateRip enabled, the Test and Copy mode takes about 15 to 20min. I can deal with the longer ripping time if it gives bme better certainty about the quality of the new files. Any comments would be very helpful.

AFAIK dBpoweramp is better than EAC only if your drive supports C2. If not - stay with EAC.

DBpoweramp is a lot quicker I use it as long as I get an accuraterip match if I don't I revert to EAC as my drive has mixed C2 support (DBpoweramp says it does EAC says it doesn't)

Even if a drive supports c2 poorly it is still a help to eliminate consistant errors which would slip through otherwise.

Even without C2 dBpoweramp is faster and still as secure as EAC. However, dBpoweramp does not support HTOA tracks, so you may miss a single track on a couple of your discs until HTOA support is added. Tagging is better in dBpowerAMP with AMG. My hope is that this tagging tool: http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=12424 will be added to dBpoweramp. R13 will have HTOA support.

I'd say in this situation that the two are comprable. Unlike EAC, dBpowerAMP has the ability to cross-check different parts from the first two passes against the AccurateRip database, though I'm not sure how often this is going to make a difference.

Depends on the condition of your CDs.

You can rely on EAC's test to determine if the audio caching setting needs to be selected. If it does truly cache audio data then you might want to use Burst mode with AccurateRip and then use a Test pass (F8) on discs for which AccurateRip doesn't have reliable information. For tracks that don't provide matching CRCs, try them again in Secure mode.

Your decision to buy dBpowerAMP and possibly a different drive should depend on how many tracks you can't rip accurately. There are people that swear by the DAE performance of the 5239V and the better the drive, the less difference your ripping program is going to make.

I would rip all you can with EAC and then try the trial version of dBpowerAMP on the rest. It would be a shame for you to spend money on a solution that doesn't give you any better results.

How so Eli?

Because it is often able to verify with AccurateRip on the first pass, negating the need for a long secure rip session that is not required. I should have been more specific, but the ripping process will tend to be faster.

EAC can do this also, just as I pointed out earlier:
F5 in burst mode, check AccurateRip and then F8 in burst mode if necessary to compare CRCs.

This is the very same procedure in dBpowerAMP with no C2 and no Ultra Secure passes (which slows things down even further), except that it is automated in dBpowerAMP. The speed difference really only comes in when there is a track with errors. How much of a difference depends on the drive and settings in the two programs.

As far as security is concerned there are differences between the two as well and without C2 pointers it is very easy to undermine dBpowerAMP's security by increasing the number of re-read atttempts. I also think EAC has an edge regarding secure re-reads when there aren't C2 pointers since it requires that at least 50% of the re-reads on any given pass match in order to not give you an error. In the event that less than half of the re-reads match on every pass, it will take the data that is most consistent beween all the re-reads. Contrast this with dBpowerAMP which only requires that 10 re-reads match regardless of the number of attempts.

Thanks for all the feedback. These forums have been very informative and helpful, albeit a little confusing at times. I have learned about things that I didn't even know I needed to know to make a good quality music library. It has probably saved me a lot of time and aggrevation.

My Lite-On SOHR 5238S has very good C2 support, however i prefer my Samsung DVDRW drive for ripping audio because it is much faster and performs much better on scratched discs.

Same drive here, it even supports C1 scans (e.g. with Nero CD-Speed). However I agree there are better drives for ripping. I can't remember the drive letting an error through C2 when testing with dbpoweramp, but it was unable to rip a certain scratched CD of my collection, after the maximum number of re-reads (around 500) there were still a few frames only read with error, and AccurateRip didn't match. The built-in drive of my laptop (Matshita UJ-841S) read this track accurately.