2. pc-audio
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Ripping Speed? Wave Files/Sound Quality

I just started dumping alot of my music into my 750 gig external hard drive and was wondering if a slower ripping speed will have an effect on sound quality? I have been using J River Media Jukebox 12. My burner i don't think can rip any slower than 4x or 8X. The strange thing is that i have my CD-Rom set to rip at the slowest setting and i also have JRiver MJ 12 to rip at 8x, but when i see my ripping progress in MJ12 it regularly shows the CD's ripping at 14X and 15x? But once in awhile a CD will slow down from the beginning and rip at between 4x and 8x(fluctuates during the ripping process). Am i getting less fidelity with these higher speed rips and is there a way to correct this? I listened to a cd that just by chance the machine and program decided to rip at between 4x and 8x and it sounds really good. Just trying to get the best fidelity while taking all this time to rip my collection into the hard drive. Would prefer not to have to do this twice!
Thanks for any help.
seekburk

Showing 4 responses by drubin

drubin
3,285 posts
 
My question is this: if ripping speed doesn't matter and bit-perfect copying is assured so long as you rip with error correction, then why are so many audiophiles intent on using Exact Audio Copy and why does the Nova Physics Memory Player tout its Read Until Right methodology as a key component of its great sound? Something doesn't add up.
drubin
3,285 posts
 
Sorry, I still don't get it. Why put forth all that effort if it doesn't make any
difference? You said, "data programs - which are not allowed ANY errors
during the installation read - have no problem installing at high speed if the
disk isn't damaged. The error correction scheme in audio CDs isn't a robust as
for data, but it is still effective."

I've been trying to figure out to burn CDs with quality equal to the original.
Some people say you need a program like EAC, but I can't believe that is the key
to it.
drubin
3,285 posts
 
Thanks, very clear and helpful. And I'm sorry to be so dense about this, but would EAC be meaningfully better at capturing the data of an audio CD than, say, iTunes, which also rips at whatever speed it needs and uses error correction?

All of this argues for the inherent superiority -- theoretically at least -- of a hard drive based music system, doesn't it, since the data will be captured with whatever it takes to read it all, in contrast to the real-time reading of your typical CD transport (the new PS Audio transport will be an exception). Assuming jitter is managed sufficiently well.
drubin
3,285 posts
 
>Squeezebox and an external Lavry DA10 DAC

That's exactly what I'm running right now.
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