[bishop8000]

Dispite the advise you've received already.. It's important to stress that iTunes is an inherently terrible tool for audio extraction, regardless of the compression format chosen. I'd suggest following a EAC guide like the one at UberStandard.org. If you absolutely NEEd a lossless audio format, use Flac instead of Lame.

 

[bigshot]

This thread hasn't changed.

See ya
Steve

 

[emmodad]

"This thread hasn't changed."

gotta agree wholeheartedly with steve on this one.....

"It's important to stress that iTunes is an inherently terrible tool for audio extraction"

bishop8000, that's quite the declarative statement (and post #1, no less). There are of course many opinions (and many studies in knowledgeable communities such as hydrogenaudio, doom9, etc.) about favorite software, drives, and interactions thereof; general acknowledgement that EAC is a gold standard in extraction functionality; good work exploring cdparanoia in full paranoia mode, and how well it can perform...

so, I for one would like to be enlightened wrt the "inherently terrible" declaration of your post. Could you please provide some substantiating background wrt actual studies, results, and statistics? It would be very much appreciated.

 

[Zanth]

iTunes does rip accurately; when it rips accurately. I can count on one hand the number of discs from my own collection I've had trouble with, I can count on 2 hands and a foot the number of discs I've had trouble with that belong to my wife/kids.

How did I discover this? Upon a listen there would be very apparent artifacts present in the ALAC file. This could be that iTunes error checking is not as robust as EAC's, it could be that iTunes doesn't get a high enough priority in the cue and we get cpu hiccups, causing corruption, whatever the case, those few cds were unrippable and/or with errors with iTunes or anything other than EAC and with EAC, those discs took 10 to 20 hours to rip.

So where does this leave me? When I rip, I tend to do them in batches. I like the peace of mind using EAC because I know if the disc can't be ripped by EAC, then it needs to be replaced.

What I like about iTunes though is the ease of use. Set error flag to on, insert disc, iTunes autodetects, auto imports CDDB info, starts to rip to ALAC, automatically adds to library and automatically searches out album art. When it works, it is the smoothest slickest system I've yet dealt with.

Being paranoid, I never use this for lossless ripping, just AAC to the iPod. when I am ripping for archival purposes, EAC to FLAC, transcode with dbpoweramp. The next version of dbpoweramp is supposedly going to have error correction on par with EAC, if so, I'll be a dbpoweramp convert.

 

[Nocturnal310]

The thread made me panicky...because i ripped 2 albums last week into ALAC via iTunes

thanks for confirming though.

 

[Skylab]

If you have error correction checked, and you don't run other applications running while you rip, iTunes will rip accurately (bit-perfectly) 99.99% of the time. I, for one, cannot be bothered with worrying about the .01%.

 

[guyx1992]

so is ALAC lossless or not?

 

[torjeh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zanth /img/forum/go_quote.gif iTunes does rip accurately; when it rips accurately. I can count on one hand the number of discs from my own collection I've had trouble with, I can count on 2 hands and a foot the number of discs I've had trouble with that belong to my wife/kids. How did I discover this? Upon a listen there would be very apparent artifacts present in the ALAC file.

This reflects my own experience with iTunes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by guyx1992 /img/forum/go_quote.gif so is ALAC lossless or not?

ALAC is still lossless.

 

[jsaliga]

Is anyone saying anything new that hasn't already been said in the prior 165 posts in this thread before bishop8000 bumped it?

I just don't understand why someone posting on Head-Fi for the first time would choose to resurrect a thread like this.

--Jerome

 

[krmathis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by guyx1992 /img/forum/go_quote.gif so is ALAC lossless or not?

Oh my, oh my! *shakes head*
What do you think the name are short for? ALAC -> Apple Lossless Audio Codec.

 

[bigshot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zanth /img/forum/go_quote.gif iTunes does rip accurately; when it rips accurately. I can count on one hand the number of discs from my own collection I've had trouble with, I can count on 2 hands and a foot the number of discs I've had trouble with that belong to my wife/kids.

That's more a matter of the disks being beat up than it is the software. I always rip using error correction on in iTunes, and it has ripped some real beat up disks with no error at all. I suppose you could sit and wait 2 hours for some software to reconstruct all the missing info on a particularly abused disk, but it's easier just to spend 2 minutes with some plastic polish and buff the scratches out. If you keep an eye on the speed of the rip, you can easily see when it's having problems with a damaged disk.

See ya
Steve

 

[Zanth]

Steve, I do polish my discs, but sometimes (again, very few of my elaborate collection) discs were in need of something as robust as EAC. EAC is simply a more secure rip. It's error checking is intense and will go until it is pretty well impossible to go any further. iTunes on the other hand will deem something "perfect" when it simply is not. That is all I'm saying. Because of this, when I'm ripping to archive, I'll do EAC to FLAC because I want that extra assurance of everything working the first time. Otherwise, if I want something on my iPod, I drop the disc onto my Mac and just let iTunes do its thing.

 

[milkpowder]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zanth /img/forum/go_quote.gif iTunes on the other hand will deem something "perfect" when it simply is not.

And I think this is an important point. My experience with both iTunes and EAC is that iTunes does more aggressive error correction (read: data interpolation), much like a CD player does. It more or less guarantees smooth, flawless playback. On the other hand, EAC is guarantees, or strives to achieve data accuracy. I've had tracks ripped from iTunes play more smoothly than those ripped with EAC.

 

[Skylab]

Well, while that may be true, I have ripped a lot of CDs that were HDCD encoded into iTunes in ALAC, and when I playback those files on my Apple TV connected to my Rotel DAC, the DAC sees them as HDCD encoded and decodes them properly. Unless the ALAC files were 100% bit perfect copies of the CD tracks, this would not work, since the HDCD subcode is buried in the least significant bit of the CD data.

I admit, though, that my CDs are all in pristine condition.

 

[paaj]

So how does one actually hear if iTunes does not rip correctly? I've had some scratched disks which just had a skip in them (annoying as hell ofcourse, but hearable) for the rest, I don't hear anything not normal. Now I just rip my CDs right after I buy them, and I think it works perfect.

and with the bumping: what's the point of having a perfect rip if you encode to mp3 later?