Author Topic: CD Ripping (Read 35,729 times)

dMbTiger · « **on:** February 07, 2007, 04:01 PM »

Up to now I've occasionally ripped a CD or two with Windows Media Player. Anyone who's done this knows it's exceedingly slow. My girlfriend has a lot of CDs and I just bought her a new 30GB iPod. If she wants to rip her CD collection to put it on the iPOD, it will probably take well into the next century to fill it using Media Player. I'm hoping there is some really fast software out there that might make the job easier. Anyone have any suggestions?

dMb

Veign · « **Reply #1 on:** February 07, 2007, 04:09 PM »

I like CDex:
http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

Nighted · « **Reply #2 on:** February 07, 2007, 04:20 PM »

winLAME & Audiograbber are decent enough for what you want probably. You will get errors from time to time in your rips though.

If you want accurate, there is only one choice, Exact Audio Copy. Using this will require some reading on your part as you must ensure that you follow the proper steps setting it up to work properly.

mouser · « **Reply #3 on:** February 07, 2007, 06:32 PM »

While accurate, Exact Audio Copy can also be blazingly SLOW so that's probably not what you want.
Audiograbber is pretty fast.

Veign · « **Reply #4 on:** February 07, 2007, 06:40 PM »

CDex is fast and I have never had a hiccup with ripping. Once you get yourself a CDDB key (free) it will name all the tracks for you - probably done this way since its open source, not sure...

mouser · « **Reply #5 on:** February 07, 2007, 07:25 PM »

I just remembered the cd ripping software i liked the most:
Easy CD-DA Extractor
http://www.poikosoft.com/

Maybe we can try to get a discount on the best shareware rippers once we get a consensus about the top ones. Or maybe someone feels up to doing a big review comparing them all (free+shareware)?

f0dder · « **Reply #6 on:** February 07, 2007, 09:04 PM »

cdex is good for quick and dirty, although if you want really quick and don't have a fast processor, you'll want to use another mp3 encoder than LAME (and suffer worse quality).

In the old days, I used to use AudioCatalyst (which seemed very similar to AudioGrabber), which had blazing fast burst-mode rip speed and the pretty fast XING codec... quality kinda sucked though, compared to other solutions.

Personally, these days I wouldn't use anything but EAC+LAME+AccurateRip since I do archival-quality ripping (which also means I encode with the lossless FLAC, and will transcode from that when I get a new MP3 player, whenever that be).

kanomie · « **Reply #7 on:** February 07, 2007, 11:06 PM »

Easy CD-DA Extractor is a very easy to use and full featured audio software, it rips protected cd's to a lot of codecs and then burns it too if needed. (has lifetime updates which is very good)

However for the ripping part i think dbpoweramp reference version is the best, here is a link why http://www.dbpoweramp.com/secure-ripper.htm

Bad news is only the power pack version has lifetime updates and there is no burner included.

Also dbpoweramp uses and is the maker of accuraterip, Easy CD-DA Extractor has been excluded of accuraterip.

I use both programs and like them both very much

Josh · « **Reply #8 on:** February 07, 2007, 11:11 PM »

I also recommend Easy CD-DA extractor. This is by far the easiest, and most feature filled software available. If you want a freeware solution, EAC gets lots of raves, however I have not been able to get it to work on my computers. If you dont mind paying, Easy CD-DA is by far your best solution.

lanux128 · « **Reply #9 on:** February 08, 2007, 01:39 AM »

i'd go for AudioGrabber (freeware since v1.8x). but if you're in the browsing mood, check out, www.mp3machine.com and www.audioutilities.com. they've listed & categorized tons of tools..

DogMan · « **Reply #10 on:** February 08, 2007, 07:44 PM »

Easy CD-DA Extractor is the best one. It works great, has all the bells and whistles one needs, and they send out notices alerting one to upgrades available which are at no additional cost.

NigelH · « **Reply #11 on:** February 09, 2007, 02:12 AM »

These days I use VUPlayer. It's light and ripping is painless.
http://www.vuplayer.com/vuplayer.php
I particularly like it's mechanism of specifying codecs

jared1999 · « **Reply #12 on:** February 11, 2007, 02:13 PM »

If you have a Plextor drive, PlexTools is accurate and fast.

f0dder · « **Reply #13 on:** February 11, 2007, 02:19 PM »

Quote from: jared1999 on February 11, 2007, 02:13 PM

If you have a Plextor drive, PlexTools is accurate and fast.

Fast yes, accurate no, unfortunately.

Found out the hard way. Ripping the same (clean, perfect, non-copyprotected and unscracted) CD multiple times produced different .wav output. And it wasn't just a few bytes of header info, it was a lot of bytes. Nothing that I could hear, but definitely visible.

EAC, on the other hand, and how much I hate to admit it, produces perfect rips for me every time, and it's verifiable because it supports the AccurateRip plugin.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #14 on:** February 11, 2007, 05:01 PM »

Can some one explain why this happens? I have always been perplexed that CDs are capable of storing accurate digital data but ripping music seems to be prone to errors like this? If CD music data is just treated as digital data why are there errors cropping up all the time ?

mouser · « **Reply #15 on:** February 11, 2007, 07:56 PM »

I'd like to associate myself with Carol's question - to me this seems very weird concept and i'd like to know the answer too.

Ruffnekk · « **Reply #16 on:** February 11, 2007, 09:28 PM »

Seems like its more of a hardware related problem than software. The software tries to copy bit-by-bit perfect, but the hardware you use might be limited. This cdfreaks thread recommends using Plextor hardware and software for the least amount of CRC errors and best cd ripping.

mouser · « **Reply #17 on:** February 11, 2007, 09:52 PM »

Yeah but i guess the question still is:
Why does normal digital reading of FILES presumably almost NEVER lose a byte to corruption, while working with audio cd does. In other words, a cd filled with 700mb of mp3 files you dont EVER expect to read a corrupt bit from an mp3 file. But a cd filled with 700mb of audio cd data, you expect to get lots of corruption. If they are both digital, why is that?

Ruffnekk · « **Reply #18 on:** February 11, 2007, 10:02 PM »

It's mainly because audio CDs implement Philips Orange Book (not sure about the color though), which has no native error correction, unlike DVDs which do have that. You could check it by creating an audio DVD and check the copy result from that.

Lashiec · « **Reply #19 on:** February 12, 2007, 01:53 PM »

The question that mouser asks would take a bit to explain. There are very capable people in the Hydrogenaudio and CDFreaks forum who could explain the issue down to the most technical detail, but you would end just like at the beginning, since you'll be overwhelmed with information. I'm sure that's related to the standards, and that the Orange Book has something to do with it. Search around and I think you'll find some answers. I would explain the thing myself, but I'm STILL busy...

f0dder · « **Reply #20 on:** February 13, 2007, 08:38 AM »

Well, a guy that used to do plextor firmware recommended plextools as well, but my experience still stands - it wasn't able to accurately rip, at least not in burst mode. I rather prefer secure ripping over speed anyway, so EAC it is.

As to why audio data is hard to extract, iirc it is because audio CDs don't have some synchronization data (not error correction data) that data CDs have. I guess the reasoning was "music just needs to be played back at 1x speed, and we'd rather have more available space and do without the sync data". A CD usually has 74min capacity, which would be 74*60*44100*2*2 bytes, or ~746MB - when used for data, the capacity is only ~650MB.

There is some error-correction done in cd players, which is why a scratched CD I have plays perfectly in my NAD player, but can't be ripped 100% on my computer.

Ruffnekk · « **Reply #21 on:** February 13, 2007, 08:43 AM »

Thanks for the helpful insight f0dder!

MerleOne · « **Reply #22 on:** February 13, 2007, 12:48 PM »

It seems no one has mentioned iTunes !!! It includes a CD-Ripper, you can either chose AAC format (ipod only) or mp3 (ipod and all other players - but less compact than AAC for the same quality).

Besides, you usually need iTunes to transfer tracks to your ipod.

Lashiec · « **Reply #23 on:** February 13, 2007, 03:04 PM »

Well, most jukeboxes are fine for the casual ripping, and if your CDs are in perfect state, clean and pristine

. The error correction of iTunes, Windows Media Player, Real Player, and so on, it's terrible when they deal with scratched CDs. For quality, EAC is the best. It may be slower, but you can also activate the 'burst' mode and it'll be fast like no other, at the expense of possible problems in the ripped tracks. CDex was fine some years ago, but its compatibility is not the best, and it can't handle scratched CDs with some drives very well (like mine). AudioGrabber is good, but the interface is terrible, the programmer must had a lot of fun drawing it in the IDE

. dbPowerAmp R12 is the best of the best (only the reference version), but its interface is not standard, and weird things happen when you click on some of the elements of the GUI, like when you try to input your own tags.

And well, f0dder solved the riddle

f0dder · « **Reply #24 on:** February 15, 2007, 06:09 PM »

I've read a bit about dbPowerAmp, and it sounds pretty interesting - I don't think I'd use the standard version, but the one called "reference" with it's special error detection seems pretty interesting. I'll have to do some tests (especially with copy-protected CDs, which is the reason I even checked it out at all) and will get back later... it seems like dbPowerAmp ref is able to read my Iron Maiden: Dance of Death CD, which EAC estimated would take ~6 hours to rip, and probably didn't even handle error-free.