[Zanth]

If it didn't rip perfectly you will know because the music will cut out and a high pitched or jagged sound will be audible in its place.

iTunes/ALAC sound identical to EAC/FLAC if/when ripped well. It's when there are problems, I've had some tracks sneak through on iTunes and then have the sonic problems which necessitate a rerip with EAC. Only once was a disc so bad that I had to replace it (again not my own, one of my kids' discs). Of my own discs, I have approaching 2000 CDs, 8 have scratches (all bought used) and 3 needed an EAC rip. Once I get into a groove I just go with it so I just kept up with EAC. For most iTunes/ALAC will be perfectly fine.

 

[paaj]

Just what I thought. For me, when I hear something, just rating the song a 1 star helps to remember. Then I just re-rip at a later time. Don't think it'd be as usefull with a 2000 CD collection, finding your bad-ripped CDs and all, but I've got a long way to go...

 

[Nocturnal310]

This is TRUE ... my ALAC ripped album had some songs which skipped & was choppy today.

Whereas the FLAC albums sound so damn good .

IS smthg wrong with iTunes or ALAC?

because iTunes ripped MP3 are all good.

Now i ll have to re-Rip the album...shame on you iTunes...the laggiest program on Windows.

 

[Mr_Junesequa]

i experienced the same bloody problem .... aaargh itunes!

 

[HeadphoneAddict]

With my 2Ghz Macbook I have never had a bad rip to ALAC in iTunes.

 

[ZephyrSapphire]

My friend ripped one of my albums (An acoustic session) to ALAC on his Macbook Pro. So we compared it to my FLAC rip of one of the songs using his MBP. He (a piano player) & I both heard some clear differences, with the FLAC rip clearly having more detailed & refined sound. :S

 

[Nocturnal310]

I re-ripped my ALAC track ..now its fine but clearly FLAC is much better.


Isnt there a Lossless format which works on both Foobar + iPod
?

 

[SR-71Panorama]

Sound Quality: Wav = Aiff = Flac = Alac.

File Size: Wav = Aiff > Alac >/=Flac.

Ripping Accuracy: E.A.C. > iTunes

Ripping Speed: iTunes > E.A.C.

/thread.

 

[Nocturnal310]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SR-71Panorama /img/forum/go_quote.gif Sound Quality: Wav = Aiff = Flac = Alac. File Size: Wav = Aiff > Alac >/=Flac. Ripping Accuracy: E.A.C. > iTunes Ripping Speed: iTunes > E.A.C. /thread.

By Low Ripping accuracy on iTunes do u mean high failure rate?

 

[xenithon]

I think the two separate issues must not be confused - that is, ripping and file formats.

Whilst I would agree that ripping can yield differences (with EAC being superior), the file formats yield no difference. That is why I rip with EAC (to FLAC), and use Max to convert these files to ALAC for use on the Mac with iTunes.

 

[bigshot]

Go to the prefs in iTunes and go to ADVANCED / IMPORTING and click on the box that says USE ERROR CORRECTION WHEN RIPPING CDS. Problem solved.

See ya
Steve

 

[Zanth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot /img/forum/go_quote.gif Go to the prefs in iTunes and go to ADVANCED / IMPORTING and click on the box that says USE ERROR CORRECTION WHEN RIPPING CDS. Problem solved. See ya Steve

This doesn't solve the problem. The point people are making is that despite iTunes having error correction, the error correction is not robust enough to catch all errors. For most cases, this error correction will be sufficient. EAC has better error correction and catches things iTunes will gloss over. Because of this EAC is much slower to rip and it also has the side issue of being far more complicated to setup in order to ensure maximum error correction.

Again, for most CD's iTunes/ALAC will be enough, but to be certain, EAC is the way to go with the built in FLAC encoder as an easy means of archiving files with metadata capabilities.

 

[jsaliga]

I have EAC but seldom use it because it is dirt slow. I actually prefer to use the DBpoweramp CD ripper in secure mode (it's about 20% to 30% faster than EAC on my hardware). I don't know if EAC is multi-threaded, but I do know that DBpoweramp is. I have ripped nearly my entire CD collection this way (about 2,700 discs) and have never had a problem...even with a scratched disc.

--Jerome

 

[Zanth]

dbpoweramp is very nice and I use it for batch conversions a lot. dbpoweramp has accurip as well, so it can match other rips online to determine if the two or more rips compare. This is a wonerful feature and one that EAC should implemement if not already done so. Likewise, EAC is so because it is determined to get the best rip so the error checking is insane. One can speed up the ripping by decreasing the level of checking but that would defeat the purpose. Not sure on the multithreaded part.

 

[scompton]

Lately, I've been buying CDs at thrift stores. iTunes has chocked on a few of the most scratched ones. EAC has ripped most of them, although I sometimes have to try a different drive to get it to work. I get a lot of sync errors from EAC. From a discussion on another thread, this weekend I downloaded dbPowerAmp with the Nero ALAC encoder. I don't think I'll ever go back. It doesn't hog resources like iTunes does. I was using itunesencoder with EAC. dbPowerAmp gets tagging correct more often than EAC does as well, especially for classical music.