Best Thing for ripping Audio from CD's?

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EmptyWallet

Gawd
Joined
Jul 9, 2001
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Whats the best thing for ripping Audio from CD's? I usually use EAC (Exact Audio Copy), However I'm looking for soemthing maybe better?
 
CDEX, as far as I could tell, doesn't really have any way to correct for errors, while EAC does, so that's something to think about. EAC reads each bit several times to ensure the highest possible fidelity, at the expense of ripping speeds, but it still only takes about 10min to rip a whole CD to wave files. If you compress on the fly, that's not bad time at all really.
 
Works okay for me, windows media 10 player.

It will even convert a bunch of files, mp3s, a then
burn to my cds.

my 2 cents
 
EmptyWallet said:
For some reason, I just built this new rig, it rips CD's at a incredibly slow rate. What gives? I'm using a plextor PX-712A
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Audio caching. It doesn't work well with secure mode, and EAC takes time to flush the buffer after every frame. That really axes the speed. This is one of the reasons that my Lite-on LTD-163 DVD drive is one of the fastest at secure DAE, even though it is a rather old drive. Anyhow, do you want it fast, or do you want it secure? I've ripped scratched CDs at .1x for over 36 hours, but after I got the data off, I could burn a new CD that would play perfectly. Try to do that with CD-EX, WMP or ITunes. <pfft>
 
So can I turn off secure mode? Most of what I'm ripping is good quality CD's, then if its a hacked up CD I'm ripping from, turn it back on?
 
Secure mode isn't too slow normally, I can rip a new CD in ten minutes, so I wouldn't turn it off. Secure still reads each bit multiple times, and is really the reason for using EAC in the first place. If you are that concerned about 10 minutes, just use a burst mode reader like Audiograbber, cause you're already losing out on what makes EAC so great.
 
I just installed a new DVD burner in my rig, Lite-On SOHW-1633S. The speeds have just slowed down to a crawl even on good CD's.

I reformatted my computer and re-setup my EAC and for some reason it's going at around 2X. Whereas I used to be able to get around 20X using secure mode using a Lite-On LTC-4816H. Is there something I can do to speed up the process and use secure mode or do I just have to be patient and wait 30 minutes a CD?
 
xman Charlie said:
Works okay for me, windows media 10 player.

It will even convert a bunch of files, mp3s, a then
burn to my cds.

my 2 cents
Click to expand...


I cant stand MP3s or WMAs ripped with WMP. They have too much background hiss and just dont sound clear.


I cant tell the difference between a CD and an EAC ripped, LAME encoded MP3 unless I turn it up and really concentrate on the music.
 
EAC & Lame

Quick Setup....

EAC -> EAC Options -> Extraction ---->
Extraction and Compression Priority, HIGH;
Error Recovery Quality, High

EAC -> EAC Options -> Filename ---->
Set this up however you like

EAC -> Drive Options -> Extraction Method ---->
-Secure Mode with Accurate Stream (hopefully your drive has it)
-If it is a newer drive do "Drive is capable of retreiving C2 error info)
-NO "Drive Caches Audio Data"...DO NOT put this in for various reasons

EAC -> Drive Options -> Drive --->
Autodetect Read Command is fine

EAC -> Compression Options -> External Compression ---->
-Check use external program for compression
-Choose LAME MP3 ENCODER for Parameter passing scheme



-Program, including path, etc....Find the path to lame.exe
-Under addition command line options, put in the stuff above
--alt-preset extreme


-Bit rate doesnt matter, the command line overwrites it
-Delete wAVE after compression
-DO NOT use CRC Check....It add size to the file, and no players read it anyway
-Add ID3 Tag using CDDB, etc.
-High QUality should be checked, but again doesnt matter because the command line
overwrites it

EAC-> CDDB Database Options --->
-Put in an email address so EAC can access the CDDB database
 
I just use Windows Media Player, but I rip everything to WMA lossless which seems pretty good to me.
 
agentzero9 said:
-Program, including path, etc....Find the path to lame.exe
-Under addition command line options, put in the stuff above
--alt-preset extreme


-Bit rate doesnt matter, the command line overwrites it
-Delete wAVE after compression
-DO NOT use CRC Check....It add size to the file, and no players read it anyway
-Add ID3 Tag using CDDB, etc.
-High QUality should be checked, but again doesnt matter because the command line
overwrites it
Click to expand...
And what kind of MP3 will that command line produce, VBR, constant bit rate?
 
Puterguru said:
And what kind of MP3 will that command line produce, VBR, constant bit rate?
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--alt-preset extreme will produce VBR mp3's, which is definitely the best compromise if you aren't just going to rip things at 320kb/s.
 
CDex 1.51 is awesome. It even works great with it's native driver (which some people think is a problem because the program asks if you want to use the native SCSI library on firt start-up) I can't figure out why wnaspi32.dll doesn't work with it, but the native SCSI works fine.

-You can hook up to any CDDB, or enter names of album tracks before ripping and it automatially formats each track.
-Uses LAME encoding
-Full control of everything as far as I'm concerned

It also converts MP3 -> WAV and WAV -> MP3, or rip directly to either one, or extract sections of disc.
 
BO(V)BZ said:
--alt-preset extreme will produce VBR mp3's, which is definitely the best compromise if you aren't just going to rip things at 320kb/s.
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Actually --alt-preset extreme does 320VBR, and i would think its better then to use 320 CBR imho.
 
LAME does a pretty decent job of it. You should take a listen agian sometime. Ogg Vorbis is even better at VBR. VBR is the future, with AAC and OGG, the two more advanced lossy codecs, geared to do it exclusively.
 
charles555 said:
VBR SuX0rs - it sounds like shit.
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Funny thing... i was encoding some test mp3 files yesterday in advance (many differend bitrates and settings) for my Zen Micro i will get today . I could not honestly find "any" difference between original .ape/wav and mp3 encoded with LAME --alt-preset standard (vbr). I was using sennheiser hd595 for my listening tests.
 
So far I'm pretty happy with Windows Media Player 10 at 256. I rip them to MP3. I don't notice any major differences, but I'm not an audiophile either.

Lyquist
 
I don't think VBR sucks but uses space more economically parts of the song that contain little or no music will be encoding with a lower bitrate.
of course, with the low prices of hard drives today who cares!
 
johto said:
Actually --alt-preset extreme does 320VBR, and i would think its better then to use 320 CBR imho.
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I was under the impression that the absolute highest bitrate for MP3's is 320kbit/sec. If I watch the bitrate when playing back files that are encoded as VBR, I never see a bitrate higher than 320. However, sometime I'll encode some tracks to APE and see what I can see =]
 
johto said:
Actually --alt-preset extreme does 320VBR, and i would think its better then to use 320 CBR imho.
Click to expand...
It is --alt-preset insane that does 320, and it is cbr. --alt-preset exterme comes out to ~240kbps.
 
GodsMadClown said:
LAME does a pretty decent job of it. You should take a listen agian sometime. Ogg Vorbis is even better at VBR. VBR is the future, with AAC and OGG, the two more advanced lossy codecs, geared to do it exclusively.
Click to expand...
johto said:
Funny thing... i was encoding some test mp3 files yesterday in advance (many differend bitrates and settings) for my Zen Micro i will get today . I could not honestly find "any" difference between original .ape/wav and mp3 encoded with LAME --alt-preset standard (vbr). I was using sennheiser hd595 for my listening tests.
Click to expand...
BO(V)BZ said:
Care to qualify that assertion?
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LAME isn't lame. It does a clean, smooth job and I can really hear a difference when using Lame compared to Windows. So, maybe VBR sounds alright, but I haven't tried it. I like to listen to the quiet parts of songs, so I don't want them all colored. I also listen to alot of dynamic music. I tried VBR for Video encoding and it colors the picture a little. So, I imagine it does similarly to the little ghost notes in music, so CBR is what I prefer. I haven't really messed around with encoding a whole lot, I just use CDex with LAME at 256k If I had the money for some 590's or 650's I'd probably be more interested.

To BO(V)BZ - Hahaha, "assertion"; It was more like a cave-grunt. But any opinion we may have is qulaified no matter how rudimentary it is. In the free world we don't need to qualify what we say with anything or anybody.
 
charles555 said:
I tried VBR for Video encoding and it colors the picture a little. So, I imagine it does similarly to the little ghost notes in music, so CBR is what I prefer. I haven't really messed around with encoding a whole lot, I just use CDex with LAME at 256k If I had the money for some 590's or 650's I'd probably be more interested.

To BO(V)BZ - Hahaha, "assertion"; It was more like a cave-grunt. But any opinion we may have is qulaified no matter how rudimentary it is. In the free world we don't need to qualify what we say with anything or anybody.
Click to expand...

Video compression is a totally different animal than audio compression, and as such, generalizations should not be drawn between the two. You can't have macroblocking in audio, you can't have quantization noise and treble ringing in video.

I would argue that because you can state whatever pops into your mind, regardless of its factual basis, isn't the right choice to make. We are trying to help people make informed decisions here, just throwing out random derision when you yourself admit to not doing any formal testing helps no one.
 
dotZIP said:
I just installed a new DVD burner in my rig, Lite-On SOHW-1633S. The speeds have just slowed down to a crawl even on good CD's.

I reformatted my computer and re-setup my EAC and for some reason it's going at around 2X. Whereas I used to be able to get around 20X using secure mode using a Lite-On LTC-4816H. Is there something I can do to speed up the process and use secure mode or do I just have to be patient and wait 30 minutes a CD?
Click to expand...

Can anyone help me with my problem?
 
Yeah, my guess is that the new lite-On can't read that brand of media, so it has to slow down. I have heard tales of Lite-On heading for the easy money.
 
but all of them that slow? I've tried 20+ discs and none of them go faster than 2.5x... usually around 2x sometimes down to 1.5x
 
no then I am probably wrong. I have never run into that problem... I would make sure the hardware device manager says everythings Kosher first thing,

and then I'd try a new version of ASPI.
 
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