CD Ripping

[cranioscopical]

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.

-f0dder (February 13, 2007, 02:38 AM)

Off topic, I know, but it' nice to see another NAD aficionado.  Do you have the Master series?

[f0dder]

Nope, a second-hand NAD 314 stereo amp, and a NAD C521BEE CD player, which seemed like a good quality/price compromise. Hooked up with a couple of B&W DM601 S3 speakers, and a couple of (old!) Pioneer S-Z92 speakers (which deliver a the bass that the B&Ws lack). All in all produces pretty decent sound for our 50m² flat

Now, back on subject
Unfortunately dbPoweramp doesn't give identical rip results for the Iron Maiden CD on my LiteOn and my Plextor drive, and neither are matched in the AccurateRip database, and I haven't found a way to produce one big .wav + .cue sheet either

On the plus side, for non-protected CDs it rips very fast. It also rips lots faster than EAC for the protected IM CD, and while my results don't match AR, at least the results are *consistant* between rips on the plextor. Will have to look at the output waves with some editor, and listen for clicks and hisses as well.

[iphigenie]

When i did my CD collection (i have about 50Gb at a medium quality level) I tried a few and ended up using the jriver media center (or its previous version, i think jukebox might work in the same way on the ripping side).

Mostly because it offered a very slick workflow - it will do all the usual, look up in an online cddb, encode (does ogg too, which was a big plus for me), get cd cover picture if you're so inclined, save the files in a folder structure which you configure (i use artist - album) and with names you customise. And after you rip one CD and it ejects it, if you put another cd in the drive the program will just start ripping it with the same quality settings. So you can just keep it going while doing other stuff: put cd in, potter about, put next cd in, potter about.... and get through quite a lot of CDs that way.

It's not cheap but I did register it at the time, I was already quite pleased with it from the ripping but I also liked the dynamic playlists (I'm too lazy to handpick lists most of the time) and the media server modules, and tag management is not too bad either...

It also allowed copying files to my player device (rio karma) either song by song or via playlists, so turned out quite handy

And if you care about quality there are different codecs you can use etc. etc.

I know it's not perfect, quite quirky in some ways, and they are trying to make it do too much nowadays (manage photos and movie clips etc.) - but i suspect it's very likely that their older version "media jukebox" (http://www.mediajukebox.com/) might already have a ripping workflow much like the one media centre has, for a low cost.

Of course what you end up using and buying depends a lot on what you try and find at the time - there's probably even better tools out there, probably freeware.

[Lashiec]

f0dder, did you try using the "Burst" mode both in EAC and dbPowerAmp? Badly scratched CDs get ripped with amazing quality (considering the scratches) most times.

[f0dder]

Well, I don't have scratched CDs, but I do have copy-protected ones. No audible artifacts isn't not good enough, I want AccurateRip matches! . I know this is rather anal, but I rip to lossless format with archival in mind, so I want it to be as good as possible. Which is a bit hard with audio, since it's just about impossible to get 100% exact extraction.

I guess doing a burst extraction of the copy protected CDs could be interesting, to see just how bad it goes - but I'll still have to find some decent audio editor and do some analysis.

[Lashiec]

Ah, OK, your CDs are protected, not scratched. Against that, maybe you can do something fancy using Alcohol or Daemon Tools, as your Plextor drive can't do anything (Plextor is the best when it comes to skip protection software). I've never run into any issues with the few copy-protected CDs I have, but my drive is a generic one, so maybe there lies its power

[iphigenie]

The one thing i found to work to rip protected CDs is anyDVD from slysoft.

I own it to watch stupidly protected DVDs on my laptop, but when my dad complained about not being able to get his Celine Dion CDs on to his mp3 player i suggested we try installing anyDVD, and indeed it allowed the normal CD ripper tool suddenly worked perfectly.

[f0dder]

I'm not interested in ripping copy protected games or applications, only in gaining fair use of my legally purchased CDs - dunno if AnyDVD, CloneDVD/CD, Alcohol or whatever can help there; they seem focused on data. I want (as close to as possible) bit-perfect copies of my audio.

Plextools is supposed to be good, but even for non-protected CDs it gives me different results on every rip, and we're not just talking a few bits here and there. Pretty weird.

It should be noted that I don't have the usual problems with only one track showing up, only audio tracks showing up, or whatever - plextool's "enable single session" works pretty well for that, and so does EAC's alternate TOC detection. The problem is the actual ripping, which is damn slow, and doesn't seem to generate very good rips (well, exact rips - I don't seem to get pops and clicks, though).

Of course for non-protected CDs, everything flies. I wish I could get dbPoweramp to generate cue/wav though, it's pretty darn fast, and seems to have very intelligent error detection/handling, unlike EACs pretty bruteforce method. Would be worth registering if it did

[Carol Haynes]

How about ISO Buster ? There is a free version and it copies on a bit by bit basis if you want (and will even try to repair by multiple reading to try and recover damaged areas). The pro version adds some functions for $29.99 See www.isobuster.com

[iphigenie]

Anydvd is not a copy tool, it's just a software which allows whatever software you have to access copy protected CDs and DVDs which might not let you use them on a PC. So your software CD player, or a ripping tool, can get access to those CDs which would be unreadable to them.

I am not sure if it has any quality impact since I don't need perfection beyond what i can perceive and there is certainly no perceptible difference for me with the original CDs played on the stereo (pc output run to my stereo amp). But I am sure that pure signal comparison would probably find differences but I just listen to it. Note that although i am not an audio fanatic, i could hear the difference with mp3s generated by some other tools i had, but these I do now are fine.

And since I have all the CDs in boxes in the basement i can always rescan if needed if my hearing starts noticing a difference.