Ripping CDs to FLAC

[varsas]

davek_964 said:

I have used EAC for years - I use it to rip to FLAC for the home hi-fi and then again to MP3 for ipods / phone.

That's what I do, except I use .wav for my high quality version, just because I find it plays on a wider veriety of devices.

[legzr1]

Isn't tagging with .wav a bit of a pain compared to FLAC?

[Funk]

davek_964 said:

I have used EAC for years - I use it to rip to FLAC for the home hi-fi and then again to MP3 for ipods / phone.

EAC every time.

[varsas]

legzr1 said:

Isn't tagging with .wav a bit of a pain compared to FLAC?

Oh, probably. I don't tag so wouldn't know. Clearly not as heavy/demanding a user as most on here!

[anonymous-user]

Ballistic said:

TonyRPH said:

Another topic entirely, but the rip cannot be better quality than the original CD, that's impossible.

Even ripping to a higher bit rate won't improve the quality, as you cannot put there what wasn't there in the first place.

You are likely hearing the difference between the DAC in the CD player and the DAC you play your ripped tracks through.

My CD player and Streamer are both being fed through the same DAC.
I've done back to back comparisons of a few of my favourite tracks and the ripped track on the Streamer edges it.
Coffin Dodger explains well why the error correction is better on a rip compared to playing the same track in real-time.

I've been reading that utter nonsense about CD players leaning on their error correction causing audible changes in sound quality in some of the more wooly audio magazines (What Hi-Fi with their refusal to perform any objective measurement on equipment for example) for many years.

It was total nonsense in the 80s and it's total nonsense now.

It reminds me of the chap from Linn who insisted in the 80s that firstly he could easily tell the superior quality of an LP and also that an unloaded transducer of any sort in the room (like the beeper in your watch) affected audio quality.

Obviously both claims were easily debunked with a proper ABX test.
http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/abx_...

You can also read about why the current crazy for "hi resolution" audio is a load of ill informed ste here:
https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young....

Back on topic. EAC is very good but in the "secure ripping" modes can be slow. It does a very good job of getting as much as possible off a scratched or damaged CD to minimize pops, clicks, and dropouts however.

[dvshannow]

It's kinda true a poor CD player can have errors on the fly while ripping can error correct better so a well designed ripper will perform as well as a very good CD player.

The dac is the important bit...dbpoweramp is great

Also has a comparison room that will encode a segment to many different compressions flac vs mp3 vs wav and the mp3 really does sound horrible particularly under 256kbit

I play into a fab using asynchronous sub and pc is a great audio source used this way

[C&C]

As has already been said, EAC on a PC platform. I used this for the majority of my CDs and it works really well, although can take a while re-reading multiple times if the CD is scratched. It managed to get a good RIP from some CDs that my CD played wouldn't even load.

I was disappointed when I moved to a Mac, as EAC is not available on OSX. Switched to DbPowerAmp and this is also excellent. Better user interface and easier dealing with album art. RIPs are also really good. So either of these products works well.