Previously, I used EAC with REACT to rip many of my CDs to FLAC images with a CUE sheet and also to AAC for iTunes and my iPod. It's been a while and I would like to start ripping the rest of my CDs. A lot has changed since then so I wanted to make sure I find the best solution so I don't have to do this again - I don't mind reripping anything I've done so far. Some of the problems I had previously were inaccurate tags from FreeDB. I also felt that if I had to change something on the FLAC side, it would be a pain to recreate the AAC files. Lastly, I now have a NAS and a different computer. My plan is to rip in Windows 7 running in VMware Fusion on my MacBook Pro. I'd still like to rip to FLAC for backup (in case I lose a CD, I can reburn it) even if I never need the file and store these on my NAS. I'd like to convert to AAC for my iPod and store locally on my MacBook Pro. My NAS is running Firefly and it would be great to stream from the FLAC files instead of having to store the AAC files on the NAS as well.

Which product (EAC or dbPowerAmp) would work best for me? Also should I rip to images or tracks? I'm familiar with both programs and don't have any concerns about configuring them correctly. Any thing else I should know or keep in mind? Thanks!

For what it is worth, I use dbpoweramp 13.3 reference in multi-encode mode and encode to flac (for storage) and aac (Nero encoder) for the iPod and this works brilliantly. I do not have to rip twice!

Have you considered transcoding on-the-fly? Keeping just a FLAC archive and whenever you want files for the iPod, you don't copy, you encode with target folder being your iPod? Then you don't need to re-rip your old FLAC files either.

As for the images vs. individual tracks: I abandoned the images idea because then you have an when you want to re-rip tracks with errors (then I use a different drive) -- and, having ripped som 6000 CDs, it turned to be lots of them. Also, dBpoweramp does not (yet) support images. (However, I guess you can concatenate to images afterwards.)

Also, dBpoweramp supports better metadata sources, including Allmusic.

Beware though, that dBpoweramp does not do de-emphasis, nor does it log that pre-emphasis has been detected. There is however a Track technical column which allows you to see -- when ripping -- that pre-emphasis was detected (but you need to adjust your GUI so that it is visible for you!). As far as I know, EAC writes to cuesheet that the track has pre-emphasis.

My recommendation would be dBpoweramp.

The tagging support is much better. They have "perfectmeta" as system that uses 4 different metadata providers; AMG, GD3, musicbrainz, and freedb. It compares the results of all 4 and looks for any problems and corrects most mistakes.

With regard to pre-emphasis, its very uncommon, but I would agree with Porcus, it should be supported. There is no logic as to why spoon hasn't added an option to flag tracks as having pre-emphasis. Hopefully R14 will have this feature as well as a DSP to use sox to de-emphasise discs with pre-emphasis.

dBpoweramp does support images, just not fully implemented cue sheets and it doesn't have gap detection (coming in R14).

I use iTunes to manage my iPod (iPhone) and sometimes listen to music when I have my laptop away from home so I don't mind encoding and then storing.

Thanks for the input on images. Is there any negatives to going to track based? Also what exactly is pre-emphasis. I haven't heard of that.



Thanks again. I think I'll go with dBpoweramp. Does any one know when R14 might be out? It might be worth it to wait if it's not that long.

Pre-emphasis is a nuissance. http://blowfish.be/eac/Rip/rip12-preemph.html

Negatives to track based ... well, at first I wanted images in order to have "one file per CD" rather than one folder per CD and lots of files (and sometimes too long file names for MS-Windows). But then, you should not use Windows explorer to pick tracks, you should have a media player with a library database (like foobar2000).

Also, there are issues with the "hidden track one audio" (in the pregap, which you need to rewind on your CD player in order to hear) -- dBpoweramp solves this by saving as track 0, which is perfectly OK with me, but I don't know precisely how this would work if you ever wanted to burn a CD from it. (You could convert to images, but it might be some extra work, I don't know).

And if you want a faithful copy with the damn pre-emph, then maybe it is easier with images. I keep one with and one converted just to be sure.

The only issue with this is that iPods often need to be restored and data cannot be copied off of them before the process. This means that one would have to re-encode all their FLAC files again if they ever wanted to restore their iPod (which will eventually happen). It is much better to keep the lossless and lossy files on their computer just in case anything like this happened.



I am not too sure about that, maybe by the end of the year. I haven't read any information regarding a beta release of R14 (a beta release would come before the final build). Then again, I don't visit dBpowerAMP's website much.

I hope to see alphas, maybe betas of R14 before year end. I highly doubt that it will be released by the years end. Only spoon has control over the schedule. On a positive note, spoon is pretty responsive to what his customers/users are looking for. Learn about the program and make suggestions where you think it can be improved.