khaos974
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2008
- Posts
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- 120
Priorities in ripping music:
1. Highest quality (perfect transparency) - disk space no issue, no compromises here.
All lossless codecs (FLAC, ALAC, WMA Lossless) are perfectly transparent, uncompressed formats such as wav and aiff are a waste of disk space. Getting a perfect rip is a matter of getting an error-free rip of your CD player. EAC and dBPowerAmp both claim to be able to do this perfectly, anyway you can always check if your rip was perfect with the AccurateRip database, dBpoweramp does it directly, or you can use foobaar to do so afterwards.
2. Good tagging (artist, album, song & # or better)
dBpoweramp has the best database available (because it uses multiple databases actually, but it requires an annual subscription), EAC is limited to freedb which is so-so for classical. Both itunes and winamp use the gracenote database, which is pretty good, Windows media player has the best database for classical music. Anyway, you can use one program for ripping and another for tagging.
3. File format compatibility (preferably compatible with many devices and software players)
FLAC is supported everywhere except with iphones, itunes, ipod... ALAC is supported by Apple software and hardware, limited third party software support, almost no third party DAP supporting it. WMA lossless has the worst support.
Thing's I have heard: (and that need addressing)
With CDs in perfect condition, EAC = dbpoweramp = itunes..., with scratched CDs EAC and dbpoweramp read the scratched part until the software thinks it has managed to get the correct information.
Yes, aiff is wav with better tagging, but doesn't offer the flexibility of FLAC tagging.
All is equal with lossless, as explained above.
aiff is uncompressed data, no codec is used because it wasn't compressed in the first place. With a modern PC, you can decompress at 300x playback speed very easily, no issue on this side.
My scenario:
-I am just in the process of building my CD collection and want to rip it in the best way possible. Hard drive space is no issue.
-I use foobar2000 into a Cambridge Audio DAC for playback, but am open to consider any player.
Foobar can rip CDs too, I don't think there's error correction, but you can check accuracy with AccurateRip directly after ripping. It also has automatic tagging support, Wasapi support.
-I use portable music players like iPod's etc, so the file format must be compatible with these players OR able to be converted into .mp3 or .wav formats.
The best option IMHO is to have a lossless copy on your computer rig and directly transcode an mp3/aac copy on your DAP.
In short,
Answers in italic.
1. Highest quality (perfect transparency) - disk space no issue, no compromises here.
All lossless codecs (FLAC, ALAC, WMA Lossless) are perfectly transparent, uncompressed formats such as wav and aiff are a waste of disk space. Getting a perfect rip is a matter of getting an error-free rip of your CD player. EAC and dBPowerAmp both claim to be able to do this perfectly, anyway you can always check if your rip was perfect with the AccurateRip database, dBpoweramp does it directly, or you can use foobaar to do so afterwards.
2. Good tagging (artist, album, song & # or better)
dBpoweramp has the best database available (because it uses multiple databases actually, but it requires an annual subscription), EAC is limited to freedb which is so-so for classical. Both itunes and winamp use the gracenote database, which is pretty good, Windows media player has the best database for classical music. Anyway, you can use one program for ripping and another for tagging.
3. File format compatibility (preferably compatible with many devices and software players)
FLAC is supported everywhere except with iphones, itunes, ipod... ALAC is supported by Apple software and hardware, limited third party software support, almost no third party DAP supporting it. WMA lossless has the worst support.
Thing's I have heard: (and that need addressing)
- I can get better rip quality from programs like Exact Audio Copy etc vs. iTunes depending on how scratched my CD's are. (the reason apparently being better error correction etc)
With CDs in perfect condition, EAC = dbpoweramp = itunes..., with scratched CDs EAC and dbpoweramp read the scratched part until the software thinks it has managed to get the correct information.
- I heard .aiff is the same quality as .wav only with better tagging. (are they the same quality? - does .aiff have better tagging to this day still because .wav is a much more widely supported format)
Yes, aiff is wav with better tagging, but doesn't offer the flexibility of FLAC tagging.
- .aiff and .wav are the highest quality formats to rip using. (what about .flac etc?)
All is equal with lossless, as explained above.
- .aiff is the same codec as apple lossless, except that apple lossless is compressed for smaller sizes and decompressed on playback. The quality is the same as long as the processing is available to decompress in real time.
aiff is uncompressed data, no codec is used because it wasn't compressed in the first place. With a modern PC, you can decompress at 300x playback speed very easily, no issue on this side.
My scenario:
-I am just in the process of building my CD collection and want to rip it in the best way possible. Hard drive space is no issue.
-I use foobar2000 into a Cambridge Audio DAC for playback, but am open to consider any player.
Foobar can rip CDs too, I don't think there's error correction, but you can check accuracy with AccurateRip directly after ripping. It also has automatic tagging support, Wasapi support.
-I use portable music players like iPod's etc, so the file format must be compatible with these players OR able to be converted into .mp3 or .wav formats.
The best option IMHO is to have a lossless copy on your computer rig and directly transcode an mp3/aac copy on your DAP.
In short,
- Most convenient, absolute quality, all in one ripping/encoding/tagging solution, dBPoweramp, not free though.
- not as convenient, but the same, EAC for ripping/encoding, Winamp for tagging. (free)
- Most convenient, Foobar2k for ripping/encoding and tagging.
- My own preferred solution, foobar for ripping/encoding/tagging, check accuracy with AccurateRip to ensure the rip is error-free, if failure, re-rip with EAC then encode, re-check, if success, look at tags, if satisfactory, keep it, if not re-tag with Winamp/mp3tag or enter information manually.
Answers in italic.