CD Ripping software

I rip with WMP and it seems to work well as best I can tell by just listening.

Based on time to rip, it appears to re-read data as needed in the interest of sound quality in that rip times can vary widely. If a disk is in very bad shape it can take a long time to complete a rip and sometimes appears to retry indefinitely even if perhaps in vain.

Definitely no clearly audible artifacts 99.9% of the time.

On occasion, from older CDs I have burned myself, an occasional hiccop perhaps, but I suspect that is largely due to major errors in the source that cannot be filled in an inaudible manner completely.

Is there a way to test to confirm if the results of a rip to .wav is not bit perfect?

I've tried EAC. A beast of a program. Horribly designed and poorly documented though supposedly meticulous in regards to copy quality. Not for the faint of heart. It also appears to be quite old and unsupported really for quite some time though now. I can see why. You have to be a real audiophile computer geek (like me) to like it and even I do not. There's gotta be better! I'm not even sure it runs cleanly anymore on some versions of Windows. IT was quirkier than prior last time I tried it. PRobably due to lack of ongoing support to keep it up to date with OS changes, etc.

Loosless compression is harmless if done correctly.

Squeezedevices convert to compressed FLAC to trasmit from server to player even if source is .wav. THat makes for better performance and should have no effect on sound quality.

If you rip to .wav, make sure you get the metadata ("tags")right before the rip in that i have yet to find any practical way to edit .wav "tags".

lossless is lossless even if compressed if done correctly. if one hears a difference from one lossless format tomanother, there is a reason other than format. not to y they are guaranteed to sound the same either. some software is better than others just like hardware.

Almarg's scenario is as likely as any I suppose for accounting for sonic differences associated with format.

But again, if so, it is not because the flac format looses anyting (when done correctly) but for other reasons associated with the playback.

I really like using network players, especially wireless ones, as the digital source feeding the DAC because a network player like a Squeezebox connected to wireless LAN has no electrical connection to the rest of the computer gear that it sources from. I like that level of isolation from the computer domain as an insurance policy against potential noise introduced by gear that is not designed necessarily for hifi audio.

Of course I have heard some say wireless lan does not sound as good either, however I would disagree from my experience. I have never heard a wireless source in my rig sound anything but spot on regardless of source format.