CD Ripping software

If you want a bit perfect rip then you need to use either EAC or dBpoweramp. Either of these programs will also verify your rip using the accurip database so you know the rip is perfect. I prefer Eac myself. Windows Media Player will not give you a bit perfect rip. You don't want to rip a bunch of CDs and then have to start all over because the rips where not right.

Accuraterip is the best for extracting the data from the disk. The developer(s) who built it went the extra mile for perfect rips.

The problems I had before were skipping like sounds when playing back ripped content. That is now completely gone.

The skipping sound reproduced when ripping from Windows Media Player and iTunes (even with its option to fix the skips).

Choices of software that include Accuraterip:
http://www.accuraterip.com/software.htm
Exact Audio Copy is great. Songbook was a complete non-starter on my Mac Book (Lion os) and was very dissapointing.

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.

Was introduced to a free software today at work, Audacity. Seemed pretty comprehensive.

Hope this helps.

Best,

Dave

*By far* the most popular proram is FooBar2000. It does ripping, it acts as modern-day jukebox - giving you access to ALL of your music without having to haul yer lazy are outta that Barcalounger. It does network streaming (look it up, good thing got the advanced audiophile)

BTW, it is TOTALLY, ABSOLUTELY, FREE and has the broadest support of any of the similar products. It uses plug-in technology allow developer to easily write and publish additional capabilitied to the product. Go take a look, it is *incredible* that software this good is truly free - there IS a God!

-RW-

Since posting I did a bit more research.

Mapman is right about EAC. Very difficult to understand (as the author is German and his English can be a bit confusing). Very complex program, hard to understand how to use it. It is free, however, donations are suggested.

dBpoweramp is pay for use. Better supported as there is a dedicated tech forum that is well moderated. Apparently this software came out of development at EAC, so they are similar. Both use that Acurrip data base for file comparison. I just wonder if any of the esoteric Japanese remasters or MFSL stuff is in that data base. If no more than 1 or two users have put data for these recordings in the acurrip database, it is useless.

The reason I mention scanning the CD source before ripping is that the secure ripping features are not really needed if there are no C2 errors on your disk. For those, a "burst" rip done by Win MP should be as good and error free. Its just that with MP you get no assurance or feedback that the digital copy is indeed error free (like you do with EAC or dBpoweramp). In fact, the most reliable error free copies are obtained by dBpoweramp when the CDROM has C2 error detection support.

That being said I have started scanning a number of my audio CDs and have found some with very low C1 error rates (under 30) and zero C2 errors to some with thousands of both. On the latter, I would not expect bit perfect copies with Media Player. But would with the former. dBpoweramp warns, however, that its software may cause premature wear on your CDROM if it has to do a lot of error correction for CDs with C2 errors.

Don't know much about Foobar, but I don't think it does "secure" ripping. So it would not be any better than Win MP for .WAV files.

Try ripping to WAV with J.River Media Center 16 in "Secure x4 max" mode.

J. River offers 30 days fully functional trial, so there is nothing to loose.

Hope this helps!

Alex Peychev

I'm not sure why you are insisting on WAV. You'll just make more work for yourself down the road if you ever want to tag your files.

When I ripped my MFSL and DCC discs a couple of years ago, almost all where in the accurp database. As I remember most had around 8 or 10 matches. I have about a hundred MFSL discs and I don't remember there being any that didn't have at least a few matches.

I don't have that many Japanese disc so I can say how many matches there might be. But accurip information is collected from around the world. And there are a lot of Audiophiles in Japan.

I always considered EAC to be pretty straight forward. Once it is set up. All you have to do is choose select all then test and copy. But I am a bit of a computer geek.

Upon further familiarization it appears the program I mentioned is only for creating, recording, editing and turning analog signals into digital ones.

Best,

Dave

But mapman is [i]not[/i] right about EAC being "old and unsupported". The last release was a couple weeks ago. There's a well-trafficked support forum. Why give out misinformation like that when it takes a few seconds to check the website?

@Lostbears

It's going to depend on what you're ripping. If you ripping more popular music, of course more of it is going to be in the AccurateRip database.

I'm not sure why you are insisting on WAV

If closest to original audio quality is required, WAV is a must. For convenience, any lossless will do. My favorite is APE or WMA. The latter is FBR, so it sounds best, IMO.

Best,
Alex Peychev

No it's not a must. A FLAC file has the same data. It's like saying you must leave your Word files unzipped if you want the best textual quality.

No it's not a must. A FLAC file has the same data.

Sure, theoretically FLAC has the same data. In practice, there is an audible difference between all lossless formats, and comparing them to uncompressed WAV or AIFF, at least to my ears in my system.

Best wishes,
Alex Peychev

If you are really hearing audible differences I'd say there was something wrong with your playback chain, not with the format.

If you are really hearing audible differences I'd say there was something wrong with your playback chain, not with the format.

Something wrong with my playback chain? Are you serious? :-)

I think Robin Whittle explains it well:

"Audio files contain a certain amount of information - "entropy" - so they cannot be compressed losslessly to any size smaller than that. So it is not realistic to expect an ever-increasing improvement in lossless compression algorithm performance. The performance can only approach more closely whatever the basic entropy of the file is. No-one quite knows what that entropy is of course . . . I think that would require understanding the datastream in a way which is exactly in tune with it's true nature. For instance a .jpg image of handwriting would appear to contain a lot of data, unless you could see and recognise the handwriting and record its characters in a suitably compressed format. The true nature of sound varies with its source, physical environment and recording method, and a lossless compression program cannot adapt itself entirely to the "true" nature of the sound in each piece of music. Therefore it is not surprising that different algorithms work best on different kinds of music."

Lossless? Not that I think so! :-)

Best wishes,
Alex Peychev

The text you quote doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. He's talking about how much we can compress a stream, and indeed the amount of FLAC compression possible depends on the type of data in audio files. He's not saying that FLAC does some kind of violence to the data that WAV does not do. FLAC compression is still a completely lossless process, as one can easily verify oneself by repeatedly compressing and decompressing the same file and comparing the PCM data.

FLAC decompression takes place at the application level. The same data gets sent to the soundcard driver whether originating from a WAV, AIFF, or FLAC file. (Jitter is not an issue at this level as long as the application can supply the data fast enough.)

Now some people will blame the difference on the processor load, but decoding of 24/96 FLAC files takes up only a few percent of total CPU load at real-time audio processing rates. And processor load is constantly fluctuating from second to second and minute to minute, so one would expect audio performance to be pretty arbitrary if playback was this delicate.

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".

The text you quote doesn't mean what you seem to think it means.

Sure, and a Radio Shack $49 CD transport is the best, but you need a Super Clock installed! :-)

Let me say this again; there is a good sound quality difference between "lossless" formats, and WAV is best, meaning it is closest to the original. Still there is no computer audio I am aware of that beats a well done CD transport.

For the record, I have used various PC and Mac systems ranging from Pentium 4 to Core i7, both desktops and laptops.

I hear what I hear, sorry! If this can help someone, I am happy. If not, that is fine too. Everyone is right, just avoid "lossless" if best possible is desired! :-)

Best wishes,
Alex Peychev

"Let me say this again; there is a good sound quality difference between "lossless" formats, and WAV is best, meaning it is closest to the original."

FLAC is as exactly as close to the original as WAV is. They both produce the same exact PCM data. What other criteria for "closeness" do you have?

"For the record, I have used various PC and Mac systems ranging from Pentium 4 to Core i7, both desktops and laptops."

But you don't seem to have any more insight into how these systems work than anyone else here.

I've been using dBpoweramp which was pre-installed on a SoundScience Music Vault. As one of your concerns is simplicity, I must say that dBpoweramp is relly quite simple for ripping and I have been most pleased with the results on well over 1000 ripped cd's. The accurate rip feature has also proven most helpful on less than perfect discs.

FLAC is as exactly as close to the original as WAV is. They both produce the same exact PCM data. What other criteria for "closeness" do you have?

And so is a $49 CD player from Radio Shack with a clean disk, right? The "closeness" is exactly the way you read it; closer audio quality to the original as if played on a well done CD transport.

But you don't seem to have any more insight into how these systems work than anyone else here.

Sure, I don't even know how to operate a computer, not to talk about being aware of the insights. :-)

Let me ask you this again; are you serious? :-)

Best wishes,
Alex Peychev

Alex,

Thanks! I had done some .wav vs. FLAC comparison on my Cowan portable player (a sonically auperior alternative to iPod) a few years ago using several different earphones ranging from Shure SE530 to Sennheiser HD 650. I was trying to determine which format to rip all my CDs into. I ripped a sample of tracks in both formats and put them on shuffle mode. I could always tell which format was playing for each song. The FLAC files sounded bright, lean, edgy, and harsh, in comparison to .WAV files. I did the comparison for a week and had no trouble identifying the format each time a song comes up..

I don't pretend to understand fully the technical part of the lossless format, but I am familiar with the concept as I have been using similar application to reduce large AutoCAD drawing files at work for transferring via discs, emails for years.

I had posted my findings a few years ago, but received the same type of responses that it is not possible to hear any difference between the two formats. But one person had indicated that this might be due to how the particular decoding program or the DAC respond to FLAC files. I see a lot of parallel between this debate and the "a bite is a bite" debate 20 years ago with digital. It turned out that jitter and how the pit is read on a disc impacts greatly on the digital sound quality. So there might be some elements here that is contributing to the sonic differences. It may be the few nanoseconds that the computer needs to reconvert the files?

FrankC

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.

Modern computer processors and motherboards dynamically vary both cpu voltage and cpu clock rate as processing requirements vary from instant to instant. It would seem conceivable, depending on the particular hardware, that noise transients associated with those abrupt changes in voltage and clock rate could contribute to jitter on the computer's digital output that is being used, with those noise transients essentially bypassing intervening circuitry. That kind of effect could conceivably be sensitive to the cpu's involvement in decompressing losslessly compressed audio files.

The fact that the decompression process does not represent a heavy load for the cpu may actually worsen the severity of this effect, because it could result in frequent SWITCHING of cpu voltage and clock rate that would not occur under an essentially continuous heavy load.

It would be interesting if those reporting sonic differences between playback of different lossless formats were to see if those differences persisted when all of the computer's power saving features are disabled. That would include "Intel SpeedStep," which can be disabled in the BIOS of many computers, and, for Windows 7 machines, the settings change I described here (which did in fact resolve the playback problem reported by the OP in that thread).

Regards,
-- Al

"And so is a $49 CD player from Radio Shack "

If I had to guess at what you're trying to say, you seem to feel that FLAC is "cheap" like a Ratshack CDP. This says a lot about your biases, but nothing about FLAC.

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.

10-10-11: Mapman
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.

Excellent point, Mapman.

I would imagine that in most cases wired as well as wireless network connections would provide effective isolation from the effects of computer-generated noise, despite the presence of an electrical interconnection in the case of wired ethernet. In both cases the packetizing and buffering of the data that is being communicated over the link mean that jitter at the computer interface becomes irrelevant.

All of which of course suggests another experiment those reporting sonic differences between lossless formats could do, especially if their computer does not have provisions for disabling the power saving features that cause cpu clock rates and voltages to fluctuate, as I described. :-)

Best regards,
-- Al

FrankC,

Thank you! This is exactly my point. FLAC sounds thin, bright and lifeless, IMO, regardless of computer type and operation system. Apple lossless MP4 sounds a lot better, so is WavPack and Monkey's Audio (APE). The latter was my favorite, but WMA lossless is what I like best, most likely due to the fact that, unlike the others mentioned, it is a fixed bitrate lossless compression, not variable.

Daverz,

Sorry, what I meant was that even a $49 CD player is absolutely bit-perfect and there are no losses, you can compare the output data with a high-end CD transport, and you will find out it is exactly the same. But how it sounds? What will really impress you is the fact that, even if you change DAC input format, you will still hear a sound quality difference, and that is with everything else the same.

Mapman,

I have installed a SB based upgrade to many customers inside their NWO Esoteric based players. I went to the extent of building linear power supplies (including removing the switching power supplies under the mini wi-fi card), four new low jitter clocks, sample rate converters, high speed buffers, etc. Sound improved by still nowhere near the VRDS-NEO transport on A-B test with the same disc. This is the reason adopting Marco's HiFace that is also highly upgraded (with its charge pumps removed too) and built into the NWO player and the DAC-S. The sound is much closer to the VRDS-NEO and much better than SB or Transporter with even the wildest upgrades installed.

Again, if someone has a benefit from this information, I am happy, if not, that is fine too!

Best wishes,
Alex Peychev

When looking up reviews of dBpoweramp, I came across one that compared all the lossless formats for encoding speed, file size, etc. As a test, the author encoded the same file through all 4 or 5 formats SEQUENTIALLY and then compared the final digital file and it was identical to his starting file.

However, that does not mean that the process to recover analog information from all file types is identical, just that the starting digital information is.

Its not like I have any idea what you guys are talking about, but I've gotten together with another good audiophile buddy, we copied redbook and downloaded wav vs flac. Only on the very best recordings at the highest bit/sample rates were there minor differences. Redbook to wav was noticeably better than redbook to flac. Can't tell you why, but we now both drop EVERYTHING to wav.

You can also try TunesKit Audio Converter. I use it to rip DRM from my iTunes music and Apple Music. After that, I can directly burn them into a CD.

bellasmith:

I'm afraid your information is about 11 years out of date.  While Apple originally sold music with DRM, this has not been the case since 2009:

https://www.wired.com/2014/03/kill-itunes-drm/%EF%BB%BF