What do you use to rip your CD's?

[10068]

Hi all,

I use EAC primarily but am wondering if there's any other good options out there for "Audiophile-approved CD ripping" (SQ and bit-to-bit accuracy etc.)

What about foobar2000? It's ripping functions seems to be more user-friendly and to my liking (GUI & UI) in some ways, but i'm not sure if the SQ and whatnot is equal to EAC. Also, EAC can be pretty slow even with CD's that have absolutely no flaws, which is irritating to say the least. Having one CD rip at about 12X or so with all the max settings, High/Paranoid whatever, then another one rip at less than 1X is dumb.

EDIT: Heck, if you want you can suggest a drive that doesn't have the massive speed variance as detailed above. That would rock like Jimi Hendrix.


Anyway, ideas welcomed based on what you use and your personal experience(s)

 

[Jaska]

foobar2000 will do accurate rips, but you have to make sure to set the drive's read offset properly first, choose the paranoid setting, and after each rip, open and view the console to see if any errors occurred (if it reports that it got a match after x number of re-reads, the rip won't be perfect). I have compared rips with fb2k extensively with known good/accurate rips (done with EAC and PlexTools), and gotten a perfect match every time the console showed clean reads.

As far as drives themselves go, I'm a firm believer in the Plextor PX-230A. I personally don't think there's a better drive out there for audio CD ripping.

 

[onurrus]

I use Db poweramp and it works ok.I recommend...

 

[Taikero]

Exact Audio Copy (EAC) or dbPowerAmp.

 

[panda]

foobar works great, only time i use eac is when i am trying to rip a badly scratched up disc, otherwise i just do burst mode with zero issues.

 

[krmathis]

I use Max, and find it really great.
Free (open-source), feature rich, and support the most popular codecs out there (Apple Lossless, FLAC, WavPack, AAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, ...).

 

[Signal2Noise]

EAC & LAME @ 256kbps VBR.

Tried & true.

EAC is slow on my Vista64 computers (yes, plural) and maybe 3x faster on my XP Pro desktop. Maybe it's the o/s, maybe it's the drive. Either way I get good results so haven't bothered trying anything else.

 

[Jaska]

Yeah, Max is a really great tool for transcoding files. It's for OS X only, though. It doesn't allow drive read offsets to be set, and therefore is incapable of accurate rips. Its console is also almost completely uninformative, so I would not recommend it as a CD ripper except to someone who has a Mac and refuses to install Windows on it (or to someone with a PPC Mac). As a batch file transcoder, though, I like it even more than fb2k.

 

[analogbox]

Easy CD-DA Extractor. One program to rule them all. However, it costs $35.

 

[10068]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaska /img/forum/go_quote.gif As far as drives themselves go, I'm a firm believer in the Plextor PX-230A. I personally don't think there's a better drive out there for audio CD ripping.

What kind of speeds do you get with this drive? And I am assuming we're talking about high-quality rips with some kind of sync & error correction when providing read/write speed(s)

 

[10068]

Quote:

Originally Posted by panda /img/forum/go_quote.gif only time i use eac is when i am trying to rip a badly scratched up disc

I have several scratched discs that won't even burn with EAC... usually it's the very last track of the disc. If I can get it to burn at all, it's in some kind of Burst mode, which of course ends up being chock full of glitchs and crackles

Maybe it's just the drive i'm using....

 

[Jaska]

About 7-8x with both EAC and PlexTools Professional LE. If you're interested, I can post the EAC output next time I rip a CD. The drive is incredibly good at ripping... Seriously, unless there is a very deep zipper-looking scratch (has anyone seen those on used discs?), or some kind of damage all the way through the disc, letting light through, it will just about always manage to get a perfect rip without even slowing down for re-reads. I've got a few other drives to compare performance with, and this is by far the best I have ever used.

Back to your original post, may I ask if you're using a laptop with a built-in drive? My ThinkPad has a Mat$hita drive, and it behaves similarly. I don't bother ripping CDs with it.

 

[Jaska]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sduibek /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have several scratched discs that won't even burn with EAC... usually it's the very last track of the disc.

That's the most likely area for scratches to be. Greatest surface area, plus the most prone to dragging across the outer edges of drive trays, getting chewed up by Apple (OK, and other) laptops with slot-loading drives, etc.

 

[mow_the_hawk]

EAC

 

[10068]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaska /img/forum/go_quote.gif About 7-8x with both EAC and PlexTools Professional LE. If you're interested, I can post the EAC output next time I rip a CD. The drive is incredibly good at ripping... Seriously, unless there is a very deep zipper-looking scratch (has anyone seen those on used discs?), or some kind of damage all the way through the disc, letting light through, it will just about always manage to get a perfect rip without even slowing down for re-reads. I've got a few other drives to compare performance with, and this is by far the best I have ever used.

Sure! And re: the rest of the post, that's pretty cool.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaska /img/forum/go_quote.gif Back to your original post, may I ask if you're using a laptop with a built-in drive?

Yes you may, and no I am not. Plextor PX-708A