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RE: The result of ripping are files...

An accurate rip will produce accurate bits but to question the 'quality' of those bits is ridiculous.

Gosh. Another tautology. Note that fmak didn't question the "quality" of the bits - he asked "Is the quality of rip not dependent on how well the indentations on the discs are read, with in turns is dependent on how the drive is powered and controlled by the servo?"

Well, yes and no. I can't comment on dbPoweramp but EAC rips differently according to how it's configured: see link for differences between Burst, Secure and Paranoid mode and other settings. If, say, you use burst mode on a poor CD, there will be nothing wrong with the "bits" - all nice and shiny and perfectly round with it - but there's a good chance your data integrity will be be poor. Not the same thing.

A tolerant setting used to rip a poor CD might well mean less accurate data: when I ripped my core collection, I inadvertantly used Burst mode for a while and had to re-rip over 100 CDs as a few processed using the setting sounded awful.

fmak then asked How are the accurip and quality indicators derived? It's a fair question even if I'd have expected him to know the answer.

Accurip is of course a useful cross-check that your setup is working properly: if 100 or more people get the same checksum after ripping different copies of the same album, the chances of the data being incorrect are nil. If OTOH at least one other person gets the same checksum as you after ripping a more obscure CD, chances are you've both done it right.

My understanding is that EAC's "confidence" figure is the number of matching checksum reports in the database for the target CD and that its "quality" figure reflects how many re-reads the program performed over and above the minimum specified in the configuration to achieve the selected Error Recovery Quality. Don't quote me on that though.

I don't buy the notion that identical rips can sound different mainly because the "tests" purporting to support it were pitifully inept but OTOH I'd not dismiss the likes of SBGK's report on a different thread out of hand either. I have, of course, the advantage of having heard his program.

See: http://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/vt.mpl?f=pcaudio&m=141445

It doesn't hurt and it doesn't cost to stay agnostic on some questions pending meaningful data. Insert hackneyed Galileo quote here.

D



Edits: 12/16/14

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