ExactAudioCopy ripping software

There is only one Exact Audio Copy and it is free. All of those other programs you see are advertisements from others selling other programs. Sogood is correct that you need to click the download link on the left then scroll to the bottom of that page for the download.

Google around and do some research on setting it up properly or you may end up with rips other than what you intended.

500 gig won't hold 1,500 Cds without compression and then it will be close. With lossless compression you could do it but you'll need 600-700 meg without. Don't forget you need a second drive for backing up as you go. EAC is slow so you'll be lucky to get 5 an hour ripped. That means 300 hours (over 3 months at 3 hours a day) to rip 1500 CDs and you don't want to get done and lose it all because your drive crashed.

Wav files are 10 meg a minute so about 450 Meg for a 45 minute CD. As far as "average" goes it depends on what kind of music you mainly have. A lot of rock and pop Cds come in well under 40 minutes and many classical are closer to 70. I'm using Apple Lossless and the average CD is about 300 Meg.

Compressed lossless means when it is played back that it reconstructs the original data perfectly so they are effectively the same, but compressed takes up less space.

That part of the equation is audiophile quality, and since you can feed that same data to any DAC on the market via a USD to spdif converter or directly from a computer to an audiophile USB DAC, that is also beyond reproach.

The weak link is getting from the compressed file on the computer to the DAC. If you are close (25 feet or so) enough to use a USB cable you are good to go via one of the methods above, but if you aren't or want to go wireless then you have a problem.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the only wireless solutions (Apple Airport, Squeezeboz, Sonos etc.) use their own DACs and I don't think they are considered audiophile quality. I would love to hear if I am wrong about this.

The problem today is that all USB audio is Isosynchronous and there are no wireless USB transmitters that handle it, they can only handle asynchronous. I traded some emails with Silex about http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=317840&pfp=SEARCH and they told me that they hope to have isosynchronous USB device servers later this year. That would be the last piece to the puzzle..

Thanks for the correction Kjg. At present I'm using a USB DAC so I'm tethered to my computer but I'm going to look into the Squeezebox. Do you have more info/links on the modifications?

It looks like the Sonos ZP-80 player has digital outputs so I don’t see why it would compromise the quality when fed to a good DAC. It isn’t clear from their literature what the output format is and I am no expert on these products, but if it works like the Squeezebox then it should be just fine.

Don’t take me as the final word on all of this. I’ve researched this stuff quite a bit but I’m still learning. I’m not saying it was a bad choice but I'm curious why you chose the Sonos over a Squeezebox? They look about the same to me and the Squeezebox is a bit cheaper. I would start googling both players and they both have user forums on their sites which have a lot of info.

I’m curious when you say you bought a Sonos system with a 500 gig drive. It looks to me that none of the Sonos systems have storage, they just get the data from your computer.

Isn't there some sort of loss in any compression/expansion scheme?

I don't think so. You can take a digital file like a picture or a music file or a spreadsheet or a Word document or whatever and compress it using a any of a wide variety of programs (like Zip) and when it is reconstructed it is exactly the same as the original file. Where is the loss?

Saffy, I looked at the Sonos website and it says their players do provide a digital output and that they can handle all manner of files. Perhaps you have an older model?

My opinion is that a USB DAC is the way to go. One of the weak links in digital playback has been the jitter introduced by the spdif interface and cables. USB supposedly takes care of this or at least greatly reduces it. The problem for now is that it can't go wireless. The USB device server I talked about has zero advantages because as I stated in the previous post it isn't compatible with USB DACs. Silex was telling me they hope to have a wireless server that can handle USB DACs very soon.