Does it matter what type of program you use to rip cd to wav?

if its not itunes then it doesnt matter.

on windows platform i noticed itunes burned mp3 cd's have lot of errors and skip.

also, ripping lossless CD's have some errors as well.


so other than itunes i dont know if any other program is so fundamentally flawed

You can't go wrong with dBpoweramp. It's a secure ripper and converter, great for doing large batches of CDs too.

dBpoweramp: CD Ripper & Audio Converter. Secure ripping to mp3, FLAC, m4a, Apple Lossless & WMA

Basically any program that can rip in two or more passes will do accurate rips because the checksums of different passes are compared. EAC being the most notable ripper but some others do this as well (Unixes/linux: cdparanoia) and so on.

See answer in you other identical thread.

EAC or dBpoweramp properly configured to do secure rips

There shouldn't be any difference with ripping, it is just a process of reading raw data from the cd and write it to the hard drive.

What about encoding it to mp3? For example, will different type/brand mp3 encoders will end up different sound quality even at same bit rate?

yes, different encoders are better than others. also in some ripping programs (for example max) you can set the quality of the encoder for faster encoding, or for higher quality. also there are differences for reading the data because there can be read errors and not just ones introduced by a scratched cd. sometimes cd drives can read bits incorrectly, unlikely but possible. rippers with error correction or more than one pass will minimize the chance of errors.

Exact Audio Copy is the ideal.

Yeah, thats the target most strive after when it comes to secure audio CD ripping.
Too bad its limited to MS Windows only...

except....

that's just not true.

even different drive brands can generate different rips.

it DOES matter and even 'bit perfect' rip can have errors in them. the problem is redbook audio has NO crcs so you cannot KNOW if you got a clean rip or not.

its 100% impossible to know for sure.

all you can know is that the same block checksum you got before, you're getting now and again and again (on each read). but what if that data is wrong time and time again? see, that's my point.

that said, the best you can do is EAC, cdparanoia or cdex style ripping. others also have this 'read until it stabilizes' logic but don't bet your life on it since its 'still just unreliable redbook audio' ;(


I use a commercial (bought in 1998!) mp3 encoder from fraunhofer. it was their pro encoder back when they sold it. I have a linux version (a.out style!!) that I've kept working over the years. I now have it working on freebsd (don't ask...) and I continue to milk that $300 encoder since no other encoder SINCE has done a better job at 128k/cbr. fraun still wins even after 10+ yrs.

for flac, it does not matter - flac is flac

Thanks for the info. I thought reading a audio cd is the same as reading a data cd. Looks like I was wrong.

Btw, why are we still using this error prone audio format? It is kind of anti-HiFi... or maybe not, since that's why they can sell those expensive cd players.

audio is saved in what's called 'redbook' (it had a red cover, and was from ISO) audio format and its meant to be streamed from an 'old style' transport directly to your dac. there was no error correction beyond very mediocre stuff and not the level of crc's or checksums that 'data disks' tend to have.

now, in DVD they learned their lesson data-dvd and video-dvd both use a 'file structure' and so aren't strictly streaming disk formats. they are a lot more reliable than cd format is.

some people will save their ripped .wav files in a 'data cd' (iso9660 format) so that they can KNOW if their data is all there or if they had bit errors from the media. but regular audio players don't recognize ISO formated non-redbook audio cd's.

cd is a has-been. 'they' learned their lesson with dvd and it does have another reliability layer that cd-da did not have.

hey, even in the mp3 format they added a checksum so that you can know if your file is corrupt or not. most ignore that feature but its still there.

you used to have to pay $400 for a plextor scsi cdrom to be able to get quality cd-da rips. but now even a $20 dvdrom drive can do just about as well. this pretty much killed all commonplace use of cd 'transports' (for most of us; I do realize there are those that prefer old methods for various reasons...)