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Topic: Best archiving strategy: Rippers & encoders (Read 6510 times) previous topic - next topic
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Best archiving strategy: Rippers & encoders

Time to archive my CD collection.
Will start ripping to FLAC; once done will encode FLACs to MP3 v0 or AAC 256.

Questions:

- What is the best Windows CD-to-FLAC ripper?
- Is there any advice regarding bad/good CD readers? For example, will my notebooks DVD/CD reader be reliable?
- What is the best tagging program?I'd like to start tagging FLACs. On the repository side I like MusicBrainz and lastFM genre finder
- What is the best album art importer? Once tagged FLACs, I would ike to import high quality album arts (minimum  500x500) possibly 900x900 (will help in the future browsing covers using a touch screen on large touch screen monitors!)
- Once done I would encode from FLAC to lossy for portability purposes: MP3 V0 or AAC 256?

Thanks for helping

Best archiving strategy: Rippers & encoders

Reply #1
Did you do any reading.....? All of these questions have been asked and answered many times......

1. EAC or dBPoweramp, because both use AccurateRip to check the rip.
2. Use an external USB drive rather than your notebook one, simply because it's much easier and cheaper to replace when it wears out.
3. EAC uses a couple of on-line databases to give you basic tagging, I'm sure dBPoweramp has a wider choice. Foobar, Cuetools and MP3Tag will also do lookups for you. MP3Tag or Foobar are good for manual retagging (which you will need to do - the on-line databases are all lowest common denominator).
4. EAC now does albumart lookups (if you pick the right metadata provider), as do dBPoweramp and Foobar.
5. Your choice - but I'm wondering why one of your options is VBR and the other CBR? I'd suggest VBR for both, at a setting that is transparent to your ears - so do a listening test. Many people find LAME V2 transparent in most circumstances, but you really need to listen for yourself. Also, pick the format that best matches your listening equipment. If your car only supports MP3, use MP3. If your players support both, do a listening test.

Best archiving strategy: Rippers & encoders

Reply #2
CUERipper also uses AccurateRip.

For CDs not in the AccurateRip database, the C2 error correction is often badly transmitted over USB bridges.

Best archiving strategy: Rippers & encoders

Reply #3
Did you do any reading.....?


Yes, but many articles are outdated, so you never know what is the current state of the art 

Thanks for replying

Best archiving strategy: Rippers & encoders

Reply #4
For CDs not in the AccurateRip database, the C2 error correction is often badly transmitted over USB bridges.
Good to know, but I've not kept on top of the C2 discussion. So should the modified advice be "use an external USB drive because it's much easier and cheaper to replace when it wears out ..... but if the CD you are ripping has no AR entries and your notebook CD drive supports C2 then rerip using the notebook drive, just to be sure."?

@Blutarsky: The date at the top of the post is usually a good clue to how current the advice is......

Best archiving strategy: Rippers & encoders

Reply #5
Well, one might of course check prices on replacement drives first. Then everything is about priorities, I guess. Myself I ripped most of my collection using a Sony XL1B 200-disc changer and dBpoweramp, which cannot extract C2 from this piece of hardware. Certainly a better choice than ripping everything manually, even before dBpoweramp was able to do cross-pressing AR verification.

Best archiving strategy: Rippers & encoders

Reply #6
C2 error correction is often badly transmitted over USB bridges.

Error correction is not transmitted, it is done within the drive. What you mean to say is C2 error information or C2 pointers.


Best archiving strategy: Rippers & encoders

Reply #8
2. Use an external USB drive rather than your notebook one, simply because it's much easier and cheaper to replace when it wears out.


I will hijack this thread slightly: is there some specific model of a external USB ripper that could be considered "best" for audio ripping? One which supports over-read, for example? I have recently switched to an ultraportable notebook, still using my old notebook for ripping, but I would prefer an external solution. Thanks for any tips

Best archiving strategy: Rippers & encoders

Reply #9
Error correction is not transmitted, it is done within the drive. What you mean to say is C2 error information or C2 pointers.


Greynol, what implications does that have?

Best archiving strategy: Rippers & encoders

Reply #10
Error correction is not transmitted, it is done within the drive. What you mean to say is C2 error information or C2 pointers.


Greynol, what implications does that have?


I was too sloppy when I posted, and Greynol made precise the distinction between correction within the drive, and reporting from the drive to the ripping application. At the risk of being too imprecise again:


C1 and C2 are not only 'checksums' flagging OK or not, they are redundancy correction bits (kinda like parity-protected memory or RAID5), i.e., if there is just a very few bits wrong now and then, there is redundant data enough to correct these. That is the 'error correction' Greynol refers to, and is done by the drive, regardless of the ripping application.

A 'secure' ripper re-reads doubtful frames. It needs to know -- from the drive -- what frames are doubtful. That is the 'error information' Greynol refers to.


More on the algorithms: http://www.usna.edu/Users/math/wdj/reed-sol.htm

 

Best archiving strategy: Rippers & encoders

Reply #11
Thanks for the explanation, Porcus.

Best archiving strategy: Rippers & encoders

Reply #12
>(kinda like parity-protected memory or RAID5)

Perhaps a raid comparison is not a good one, as RAID5 - it either works or it does not, if it does not you know about it (cannot read from 2 failed discs). Error detection from CD audio is different, in that there is a error detection hole through which errors can slip by, without the CD drive even knowing there is an error, c2 pointers or not.

Best archiving strategy: Rippers & encoders

Reply #13
I don't think errors slip by without the drive's knowledge all that easily, in fact I would wager to guess that internal collisions are extremely rare.  The fairly well-known problem with some drives and C2 pointers is that they do not report errors which I believe are for reasons other than collisions.

What I will say, finishing the thought as to why RAID isn't the best analogy because it either works or not is that errors in the audio stream can often be audibly concealed through interpolation.

Porcus did say it was only kinda like RAID5.

Best archiving strategy: Rippers & encoders

Reply #14
Just an attempt to provide an analogy to those who are not really familiar with the redundancy concept. I would suppose that the big surprise to anyone who has started to pick up secure ripping, is how many bits can actually be lost and corrected (and why the bl* h* many new CDs still contain errors).