Apple Lossless for Archival Purposes?

[Kabeer]

Like Dvessell said, itunes has error correction. Its not as strenuous as EAC's top mode.
But if your ripping good condition cd's I dont think it would make much of a difference.

If the CD is bad condition, just use EAC to rip it to WAV's with a .cue file. Load the .cue in Daemon tools and use itunes to rip the virtual CD to ALAC.

 

[Honkymagoo]

I second the folks suggesting dbPoweramp. I usually rip to flac, then use dbpoweramp to batch convert to ~400 bitrate AAC for my Ipod.

I like the warm secure feeling of having flac backups on an external drive, just in case.

 

[Zanth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Honkymagoo /img/forum/go_quote.gif I second the folks suggesting dbPoweramp. I usually rip to flac, then use dbpoweramp to batch convert to ~400 bitrate AAC for my Ipod. I like the warm secure feeling of having flac backups on an external drive, just in case.

This is how I do it. Lately, lossless has been a bit of a pain...the latest update from Sony broke transcoding on the PS3 and iPods don't do FLAC so I've been transcoding to AAC. However, having FLAC on my server is a good thing and I'm very very happy I have them.

 

[Elluzion]

Ok i am wondering the same thing. I have been using apple lossless (ripping in itunes for a while)

on one song or 2 songs, i have heard an imperfection, such as the bass sounds horrible (like distorted) on nelly furtado. I am wondering if it is itunes. i have error correction checked. would it better to rip to .flac with EAC then convert .flac to apple lossless with dbpoweramp? what will this improve? also this would be nice to have the .flac for storage...

 

[krmathis]

If your CD's are in nice condition, no major scratches or similar, then iTunes will do a great job ripping them. But if badly scratched, then you will want to use a dedicated audio CD ripper engine with error control.

Apple Lossless in itself are lossless (as the name say), so the codec/format is a safe choice.

 

[LnxPrgr3]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elluzion /img/forum/go_quote.gif on one song or 2 songs, i have heard an imperfection, such as the bass sounds horrible (like distorted) on nelly furtado. I am wondering if it is itunes. i have error correction checked. would it better to rip to .flac with EAC then convert .flac to apple lossless with dbpoweramp? what will this improve? also this would be nice to have the .flac for storage...

If it's throughout the song especially, it may be the CD... I've seen modern pop music let the bass go into outright clipping.

Of course, there's no harm in re-ripping to see if anything improves

 

[HipHopScribe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elluzion /img/forum/go_quote.gif Ok i am wondering the same thing. I have been using apple lossless (ripping in itunes for a while) on one song or 2 songs, i have heard an imperfection, such as the bass sounds horrible (like distorted) on nelly furtado. I am wondering if it is itunes. i have error correction checked. would it better to rip to .flac with EAC then convert .flac to apple lossless with dbpoweramp? what will this improve? also this would be nice to have the .flac for storage...

A ripping error would be like a pop, click, errant silence, or something like that, bass distorting on some songs would be either an issue of music quality, bad playback because of some problem with the program, or the equipment you're using to listen. My guess would be just poor sounding music, a lot of CDs just don't sound very good.

 

[Akabeth]

I didn't know even scratched CD's will affect rip quality

I usually just rip my music from CD's to ALAC with iTunes. My CD's are all in literally new conditions though, and I can't hear the difference between iTunes rip vs. EAC FLAC -> ALAC rip in my setup.

 

[Elluzion]

yeah i guess i'll just keep ripping with itunes...

 

[monolith]

I believe some of you are missing the point of archiving. It's not about whether you can hear the difference between an EAC rip and an iTunes rip. The point is that an EAC rip will always be equal to or more often better than an iTunes rip, and thus better for archiving.

 

[pcf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by monolith /img/forum/go_quote.gif I believe some of you are missing the point of archiving. It's not about whether you can hear the difference between an EAC rip and an iTunes rip. The point is that an EAC rip will always be equal to or more often better than an iTunes rip, and thus better for archiving.

You have a valid point and since this thread is about archiving, you are right in saying that the best method should be used whether we can hear the difference or not.
What gets me a littlle bit is that I heard so many people saying how bad iTunes is for ripping and EAC to FLAC is so much better-as if they can all hear the difference easily. I ripped 300g of music with iTunes and everything is fine. I did rip with EAC to FLAC and convert the files into apple lossless; listening to both versions through my speakers as well as my headphones. For the life of me I could not tell the difference in any of them and I don't think I have that bad a stereo system that cannot show up the "short comings" of the iTunes ripped files. Also, is EAC able to magically repair badly scratched cds with error corrections? Neither iTunes nor EAC managed to save my scratched cds.
I still see my cds as the originals and will never get rid of them. I only ripped music to the computer so I can listen to it without using the cd player. I guess I am not archiving my music as much. Maybe the thought of re ripping all my cds scares me so much that I refuse to admit that EAC is better!

-Paul

 

[michaelv20850]

if you rip CD using EAC. I can't tell the difference between WAV (using EAC) and AIFF (using Itunes) THe reason i use AIFF because i like the album art in my Ipod classic...it's cool to me

 

[Elluzion]

I am thinking about starting to re-rip allmy cds with EAC and rip them to .FLAC for archiving, just so i would never have to rip them again and I can convert them to whatever I want to...

 

[LnxPrgr3]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pcf /img/forum/go_quote.gif Maybe the thought of re ripping all my cds scares me so much that I refuse to admit that EAC is better!

Well, the only difference is the error correction, so if your CDs aren't in need of unusual error correction, then there is no difference.

Well, one member in another thread pointed out there can still be a small one -- EAC has the capability to correct for your drive's seek offset, which has the effect of fixing track boundaries that are normally very very slightly off (for my drive, the difference is apparently 12 samples). This won't hurt gapless CDs, because if this track starts late, the previous track also ended late. If this worries you, you might consider EAC. Personally, it worries me exactly none

 

[TMusic]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elluzion /img/forum/go_quote.gif I am thinking about starting to re-rip allmy cds with EAC and rip them to .FLAC for archiving, just so i would never have to rip them again and I can convert them to whatever I want to...

But you can transcode them to whatever you want from Apple Lossless the same way you would with FLAC. Is this a correct statement?