[Soundbuff]

I read somewhere that Plextools is just as good for secure ripping as EAC, and that it's much faster than EAC with Plextor optical drives.

I'm experimenting with using it right now, and so far it looks really slick. Unless there is something bad about it I dont' know about, I may switch to using Plextools instead of EAC for ripping.

I'm sure EAC is still the best for anything but Plextor drives, but if you have a Plextor drive, Plextools may be the best ripping program available.

My question to veteran rippers is: what am I giving up if I switch to Plextools? For one thing, I'm wondering if tagging options are limited. I don't see anywhere where you enter tagging options similar to the "Additional Command Line Options" prompt in EAC.

Right now I'm using Plextools with Ogg Vorbis, Q7.

 

[Soundbuff]

Was able to answer my own question...yes there are tagging options for MP3 Lame, Ogg, and FLAC in Plextools but it's done in a separate screen...

This program looks excellent so far. Rips in half the time of EAC or less.

 

[NiceCans]

EAC is an awesome ripping program, particularly due to it's famous secure rip feature, but it is not the only game in town. I have found Plextools to do an excellent job.
Currently I am using neither of these as I use J.River Media Center, which also does a great job and does Secure Rip (and since it is my player it is very handy for ripping), otherwise I'd be using one of the above mentioned two.

 

[Soundbuff]

I'm really interested in J. River Media Center too, not for ripping because I think Plextools is hard to beat for that, but mostly as a file organizer and media player.

I'm not sure I have the patience to learn and configure Foobar (or maybe I do, but there are so many other things I need to learn first like using Nero, Plextools, etc. and my free time is limited) and J. River looks very good as a file organizer and player. It also looks very easy to use and set up.

 

[Soundbuff]

Question about tagging for anyone (hope this isn't a stupid question - maybe it is):

When you rip a CD of files and later on find the tags are not to your liking (mispellings, errors, etc.) do you have to change them and re-rip the whole CD again, or is there a way to change the tags on your existing rips to correct the errors in the tags?

Also, what is the difference between "encoding" and ripping? I thought they were the same thing but they seem to be different concepts in threads I have read.

 

[NiceCans]

Here's the quick answer:

The tags are written to the ends of the file and you can edit/change the tags without having to re-rip the CD.

Ripping is when the music is copied from the CD to your PC, encoding is when that new file is converted to a compressed format such as encoding to mp3 format or flac.