|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
219.73.22.217
How long does it take to rip a music CD into highest quality possible audiophile lossless format? I have 300+ CDs in my collection and wonder if it's really a daunting task to rip each CD one by one. Thanks!
Follow Ups:
This is a serious point - why do people think that Cds from a computer or anything else is 'audiophile quality'. 16/44.1 IS NOT period.
"This is a serious point - why do people think that Cds from a computer or anything else is 'audiophile quality'. 16/44.1 IS NOT period."Maybe not, but I've yet to encounter a digital format that to me sounds better....
too bad hundreds of thousands of pieces of music aren't available in any other format. so unless you like to listen to "equipment" you're gonna have to accept 44/16 as the defacto standard.
EAC properly setup will not need to rip disks at 1x unless there is physical problem with the disk. If there is a problem, it will detect it and automatically slow down the ripping process (when EAC is configured correctly in Secure mode).The highest quality ripping using EAC can be achieved at rates between 8x-20x depending upon the features of your CD/DVD drive. For max speed using EAC, you want a drive that does NOT buffer data, and has reliable C2 error correction, and accuratestream. This will get you 12-20x. Drives without C2, and buffer data, are likely to perform in the 8-12x range.
Reviews at CDRINFO.com can help select a good drive.
Also, there are many web sites that have FAQ walkthrus on how to configure EAC, and it should take about 20 minutes to set it up.
Can you explain why it is better not to do this - I thought this helps keep errors less likelyI want to learn ??
Hi,EAC reads each sector of a CD several times, and compares the reads to ensure it has a bit perfect copy. With a hardware buffer it cannot rely on the data being read a second time from the CD, since the drive may just give EAC the data in the drive's hardware buffer from the first read. So, EAC must take an extra step to clear the hardware buffer before reading again. This slows down the process dramatically.
If a drive has reliable C2 hardware error detection/correction this issue is minimized. The problem is that most drives do not have reliable C2 detection/correction reading audio. The best drives are about 99.8% accurate detecting errors reading audio, and the worst less than 90% (and do not assume respected name brands are best in the area and every model is different and every driver update can change the behavior).
WWW.CDRINFO.COM tests drives for C2 (among other things), and you can verify your drive's ability in this area. However, with C2 varying in accuracy, many people prefer just using EAC's re-read method to verify accuracy.
A buffer is of benefit for improving the speed of reading data. In terms of reliablity, a hardware buffer for reading audio data usually is not a benefit since the drive is so much slower relative to the processing speed of most computers (the computer is waiting for the drive to give it more data).
However, when you write/burn a CD a buffer can help with reliability, since many drives cannot successfully write a disk if the data stream is interrupted for any reason.
Hard to give a definitive answer.If you've got a pristine, flawlessly-manufactured
CD, then Exact Audio Copy can rip a bit-perfect
WAV file at 20x (that's 20 times real-time, or 3
minutes for an hour-long CD) with a modern
CD/DVD reader/burner.If the CD has a bad spot (which might not always
be visible to the naked eye, and which is the
sort of thing that was more common in the early
days of CD manufacturing -- the bad old 80s),
and if you've got EAC set to it's maximum-quality
ripping, then EAC will do a heroic job of trying
to recover the CD. It can, for instance, rip
the first 90% of a CD in 3 minutes, and then
literally take overnight to finish the last track
(and it'll put a heck of a strain on your
optical drive while it's doing so). However,
I've had EAC perform miracles of recovery on
discs that would not play in a CD player (or
on a computer, for that matter) without skipping,
or would not play at all past a certain point.You may also spend a fair amount of time labelling
and tagging your files, as well. Again, it depends.
If it's a popular title, or a more-or-less "mainstream"
classical title (or even a more specialized
CD, these days -- the title databases have grown
enormously), then Freedb will probably save
you the typing (though you may have to correct
spelling mistakes, or remove characters that
Windows doesn't like in filenames, like colons).
But if the CD is something obscure, like a Pearl
historical reissue, then be prepared to have
to label the tracks yourself, unless you're
satisfied with "Unknown Album" and "Track #1",
"Track #2", etc. ;->I use two programs in the process of ripping --
EAC to rip and label the files (via Freedb, if
possible), and then Musicmatch's "supertagging"
capability to put ID3v2 tags inside the files
(ID tags are nonstandard in the case of WAV files, which is
another nuisance). The tags allow you to later rename
the files very easily (at least, using Musicmatch)
if, for example, you decide you want the track number to
come first rather than last, or if some music-server
program you decide to use demands a certain file-name
format. I started using Musicmatch because the
cd3o music server software I was using once upon
a time required the tags for its own indexing.Ripping is still a PITA, if you're going to do
it right.And don't forget the necessity to back up your WAV
archive! You don't want to lose all that work
if a 300 GB hard drive dies on you (that's happened
to me -- fortunately I was backed up).
I transferred my entire CD collection (210 CDs) to the computer in 6 hours using cdda2wav, some shell scripts, Linux, and both DVD drives simultaneously. That's effectively under 2 minutes per CD. The result was 130GB of WAV files.
Ed
You can train some kids to do this. Far better than any McJobs.
it depends on the speed of your PC and the method selected.
But to give you an idea, on moderatelly fast PC (AMD 3400, 1gb RAM, sata drives) by using Apple Itunes ripping to Apple lossless it takes 3-5 minutes for an average CD. It translates to average speed of 12x. This is the fastest way. I guess it gets you 95% of possible quality."The highest quality possible" would require the other route. Ripping with EAC in 1x speed to WAV with all correction settings (may actually take slower than 1x speed), then using some program like WAVE to fix the errors, and then convert to lossless format of choice (e.g. FLAC)
If you take fast route, you need 15 hours to rip 300 CDs. If you take top quality route, you will need more than 500 hours. Is it worth it?
I guess not. Many of commercial CDs, especially from the 1980s sound awful, no matter how you rip them. With good PC-based playback, they become even more unlistenable because you hear them as they are.So, I would devise a plan: Select top sounding CDs and leave them aside. Rip everything else fast way. Then, rip the selected discs top quality way, one by one, when you have time.
Curious to know...except for correction programs to fix errors, which may require 1x burning...but that aside.....what does the speed have to do with the quality of a ripped copy to the hardrive? Don't they end up as 1's and 0's?
"Don't they end up as 1's and 0's"That's something that's been on my mind. If other computer data does not get corrupted at faster ripping/burning times, why should audio? That said, I've yet to take the time to set up EAC properly and compare the sound files. For the moment, I'm happy enough with my dbPowerAMP rips to FLAC (partly because it's so damn easy to use.)
marc g. - audiophile by day, music lover by night
Hi,The approach for reading audio data from a CD is different vs. a data CD in terms of error detection and correction.
Since you would not want your music interrupted when an error occurs reading the CD you are playing, an error detection/correction process attempts to recover from the error in the sample real-time while the music plays, and if it can't the sample is just dropped. If many consecutive samples are dropped, you will hear a pop or skip, but often samples can be dropped and you will not hear anything obvious.
This is why special programs are required to detect if a sample was dropped when you are reading an audio CD, and try to recover it if you are attempting to extract a bit perfect copy. Not all 'ripping' programs are designed to provide a bit perfect copy (and may focus on speed instead).
Data CDs must be 100% accurate, the error detection is more robust, and it will not just drop data if it cannot correct it internally (it stops and displays an error).
If you would like to understand the details, google 'Reed-Solomon CD encoding'.
I think if you rip an audio cd as an iso then it will copy it like it's a data cd. I'm not sure though.I think EAC is pretty good, that's what I always do. Google ripping with eac and FLAC and you can set it up to encode FLACs automatically.
On scratched cds, a bit brasso and a microfiber cloth will go a long way.
I am not sure it is possible since the data on an audio CD is stored differently. According to Cnet, a CD data format is a 'low-level standard for writing data to CD, written in smaller blocks than audio. Features more redundancy for error correction than on audio CDs.'
Good Idea....Then once you rip them put them on a seperate HD so if your OS crashes you wont loose all that work.
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: