Lord Chaos
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2007
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I've had some recent experiences with Exact Audio Copy I think some folks might be interested in.
My normal system is a Mac Powerbook, six years old, connected to a 1-terabyte RAID system that holds the music library. I rip in Apple Lossless using Itunes and play back through a Benchmark DAC-1.
My one real gripe with Itunes is that if there are flaws in the copy it gives me no warning. The only way to find out is with a "rip check:" listen to the whole CD. Almost all of the time it's fine.
Recently I was listening to "Music fo San Rocco," by the Gabrieli Consort and Players. Got to the Jubilate Deo and heard some skips. Found the CD, looked at it, couldn't see any problems. As I usually do in such cases I ran Itunes on the PC and ripped it there. Different drives have different capabilities. In this case it didn't help.
Well, I likeed the music. So, I downloaded Exact Audio Copy, installed it and used that to rip the CD to WAV files. That took about 20 minutes, and EAC reported no errors. I listed to the "Jubilate Deo" track and heard the same errors. OK... problem with the CD mastering, then. Further research yielded the information that the copy I had was by an outfit different from that which had originally done the disc. The new company had combined it with some other music and put it out as a box set. I looked around and bought an original Arkiv Produktion CD, ripped that, and there were no problems.
The second case involved two CDs I got from the library. 30-second samples just don't work for me, so I look in the library for items of interest and end up buying the ones I like. I found two by Indian guitarist Debashish Bhattacharya, who had been recommended by a friend. As is typical of library CDs these had some wear, and Itunes was unable to give me a clean rip, even after I washed the discs. So, I tried EAC on these. It reported errors, and fixed them. Clean rip on both. I still don't like the music, but the experiment was worthwhile. Oh, it's not that Bhattacharya is a bad guitarist. He's just too much of a show-off for the kind of music he's playing.
Third case involves a CD I found lying on a wall. I picked it up only because the jewel case was intact, and it's handy to have replacements. When I got home I found the CD inside. It was in rough shape. Kelly Joe Phelps, "Shine Eyed Mister Zen." I cleaned it and ripped it, and there were problems somewhat worse than the Bhattacharya discs. Ran it through EAC and it found errors, and fixed them. No audible faults.
So, EAC works when there's damage to the CD, but can't fix one that was engineered with mistakes. No surprise, that. I'm very pleased with how good a job EAC does fixing errors.
My normal system is a Mac Powerbook, six years old, connected to a 1-terabyte RAID system that holds the music library. I rip in Apple Lossless using Itunes and play back through a Benchmark DAC-1.
My one real gripe with Itunes is that if there are flaws in the copy it gives me no warning. The only way to find out is with a "rip check:" listen to the whole CD. Almost all of the time it's fine.
Recently I was listening to "Music fo San Rocco," by the Gabrieli Consort and Players. Got to the Jubilate Deo and heard some skips. Found the CD, looked at it, couldn't see any problems. As I usually do in such cases I ran Itunes on the PC and ripped it there. Different drives have different capabilities. In this case it didn't help.
Well, I likeed the music. So, I downloaded Exact Audio Copy, installed it and used that to rip the CD to WAV files. That took about 20 minutes, and EAC reported no errors. I listed to the "Jubilate Deo" track and heard the same errors. OK... problem with the CD mastering, then. Further research yielded the information that the copy I had was by an outfit different from that which had originally done the disc. The new company had combined it with some other music and put it out as a box set. I looked around and bought an original Arkiv Produktion CD, ripped that, and there were no problems.
The second case involved two CDs I got from the library. 30-second samples just don't work for me, so I look in the library for items of interest and end up buying the ones I like. I found two by Indian guitarist Debashish Bhattacharya, who had been recommended by a friend. As is typical of library CDs these had some wear, and Itunes was unable to give me a clean rip, even after I washed the discs. So, I tried EAC on these. It reported errors, and fixed them. Clean rip on both. I still don't like the music, but the experiment was worthwhile. Oh, it's not that Bhattacharya is a bad guitarist. He's just too much of a show-off for the kind of music he's playing.
Third case involves a CD I found lying on a wall. I picked it up only because the jewel case was intact, and it's handy to have replacements. When I got home I found the CD inside. It was in rough shape. Kelly Joe Phelps, "Shine Eyed Mister Zen." I cleaned it and ripped it, and there were problems somewhat worse than the Bhattacharya discs. Ran it through EAC and it found errors, and fixed them. No audible faults.
So, EAC works when there's damage to the CD, but can't fix one that was engineered with mistakes. No surprise, that. I'm very pleased with how good a job EAC does fixing errors.
