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Topic: Converting a HUGE collection (Read 20059 times) previous topic - next topic
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Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #50
Freaky: Thanks for the specifics on this.  After further reflection, I guess I came to a few conclusions on my own about WAV vs. lossless compression.  Decoding speed, frankly, is not a big concern of mine.  But using a format that will be accepted by any device in the future with certainty IS a big deal to me.  For this reason alone, I hesitate to spend the time compressing WAVs if it only means I'll have to spend more time decompressing them in a few years (assuming some great hi-fi device only accepts WAV, or some lossless codec I didn't use).  My long-term plan is to go the hi-fi route when prices for integrated digital audio receivers specifically designed for hi-fi systems become more reasonable.  Also, the thought of simply ripping my 300 odd CDs turns my stomach.  In the past, tagging snafus alone have consumed more of my time than I planned, nevermind encoding.  Of course, I will (hopefully batch) encode a subset of my most relevant files for use on my iPod.  But basically, given the relatively modest size of my CD library, I'd rather spend extra money on storage and save time and heartache with the ripping/encoding process.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #51
Hi to everyone,

what a great forum this one is. Some serious stuff going on.

I feel that any encoding is just an obstacle to true audiophilia.

In any case someone could buy 500Gb drives or cheaper 320Gb all at 5400rpm.

I personally prefer to copy my CDs (I also have a few thousand) with Nero and store them as CD images on a set of IDE drives that I connect extrenally to my server through a SATA controller with a lonf 1m lead. The beauty of SATA is that you can attach and detach drives at will same as using USB2 drives.

In any case I would like to ask everyone if they know of any program that can deliver the following functionality.

I want a program to queue Nero CD images (.nrg or .iso files) to Nero ImageDrive for continous non-stop playing of my CD collection.
Basically I would like to automate the proccess of loading CD images to Nero ImageDrive like in a real jukebox.

If there is not such program do you know of a guru that could write such a program. I have lots of ideas on this front and I am looking for someone to help me get them to the web community.

Thanks to RaWShadow who directed me to this forum from the CDfreaks forum.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #52
Why don't you just use FLAC? Smaller, totallly loseless and no funky images to deal with.
Everything I've learned about space, I've learned from psytrance.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #53
Sounds like a good idea, however it is not an option for me for the following reasons.

My colection consists of 7436 CDs. It has taken me more than 2.5 years to copy them in the form of CD images. Encoding the CDs with FLAC would be a sizeable project for me and I do not see the point since disk space is not my concern. All my CDs are already stored on hard disks.

I want my CDs to be a single file when stored electronically, since it makes my life easier when I have to copy them on my notebook to take them around with me.

Can I play FLAC files through say WMP9?

Plus when I need to copy CDs to take with me on my notebook is easy because I only have one file to copy.

I have developed a very sophisticated multiroom system and this is the only functionality missing. Being able to play my CD images like having a giant jukebox.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #54
Quote
Audible!: Lossless would seem like the best answer for me (FLAC seems to be getting the most support- see [overpriced] AudioRequest device).  If not, is there ANY advantage to WAV whatsoever? Regarding AAC, I've got the "old" iPod for Windows- I bought a 20GB windows-compatible iPod last september straight from the first run of the assembly-line only to see it made obsolete with the 2003 iPod!! It's my understanding that mine doesn't support AAC. Even if a software upgrade could fix this, I'm worried about ubiquity of AAC vs. MP3 and also just don't feel like going through the hassle of educating myself on optimal AAC bitrates, etc. (I've spent a not-insignificant amount of time researching the optimal lame settings for MP3). That said, I'd be interested in people's thoughts on this decision point.

I believe firmware should be availible for your IPod (sounds like a v2) that will allow for AAC playback - and by virtue of being supported by the iPod (and being the format of iTunes), AAC should become significantly more popular over the next year or so.
And AAC sounds pretty darn good at 192kbps, though my experience is limited.
Quote
I currently have half a terabyte in my fileserver and in the next month or so will be upgrading to a full terabyte. I will be using Samsung 5400RPM 160GB drives managed by Linux software RAID. I don't care how slow it is since I'm mostly concerned with just the amount of storage I can get for my budget.

Software RAID is probably the way to go for the absolute lowest possible price.
  Do the newer Samsung 5400's still carry the 3 year warranty? I almost picked up a Samsung 1203N OEM until I saw they also reduced their warranty period.
   
Quote
Grand total: $6258 Not bad for roughly 4TB of storage.

I suppose you can reduce the price either way by buying the most cost effective per GB drives, if you like, or using a particular controller. I personally would purchase the Samsung 1203N 120GB drives at ~$0.78 per GB over the IBM/HGS 180GXP at ~$0.86 per GB even given the IBM's longer warranty. But who has $6000+ for an array? Edit: In fact, who has enough drive bays to accomodate 24+ 3.5" HDDs?
You would likely need to buy external enclosures that translate to SCSI, or perhaps a large file server case.
  I have 2500 CDs, but I didnt buy them in a single year, and I didnt pay $15 on average for them (closer to $8). The original poster may be more into garage sales and used CD stores than I am, or (s)he may be into ***** or something like it...though that would probably exclude a lot of lossless files.
 
Quote
My colection consists of 7436 CDs. It has taken me more than 2.5 years to copy them in the form of CD images. Encoding the CDs with FLAC would be a sizeable project for me and I do not see the point since disk space is not my concern. All my CDs are already stored on hard disks.
I want my CDs to be a single file when stored electronically, since it makes my life easier when I have to copy them on my notebook to take them around with me.
Can I play FLAC files through say WMP9?

That's A Lot of storage!
    FLAC is lossless compression, meaning the data when decoded is identical to the parent Wav file so no quality loss is possible. WMP9 does not AFAIK have a FLAC plugin, but winamp does.
    Is your storage system redundant in any way? I hope so

MOD.: no links to or names of sharing groups, thank you.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #55
My storage system is not redundant. I do not need a redundant system since I still have the original CDs around and my CD images are spread over a number of disks. I am using 6.8 Tb storage space but not all of it is online. My hard disk drives are categorised on a gerne basis to make it easy to select the appropriate disk bank of CD images for playback. I do not have all 6.8Tb online. Only bring online stuff I want to play back. Simple and effective both from a cost and quality point of view.

My problem still remains. Any way to automate loading of Nero CD images to Nero ImageDrive or Daemon Tools, or whatever virtual CD drive technology.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #56
I will attempt to explain why I do not need redundancy.

First of all modern drives are quite reliable (even older ones are) and especially if they are not powered up 24x7. A modern desktop drive, especially the ones using fluid bearing motors should last virtually forever if they are not used continously.

I decided to use 200Gb drives. On a 200Gb drive you can fit approx. 300 CD images (this is uncompressed images that are an exact replica of the original, meaning no encoding, lossless or otherwise, of any sort).

Now, all my CD images are copies of my original CDs, which means I can re-image any CD at any time.

If I loose say one of the hard disks (i.e. 300 CDs) my worst case scenario is to re-image 300 CDs, which would take me approx. 3.5 days or 75 hours (assuming 10 minutes for the CD imaging process and 5 minutes to locate load and unload the CD for imaging purposes).

Since a RAID5 solution will not only be more expensive but also I will have to run the disks 24x7, I think I can forgo absolute redundancy (which by the way does not exist in the real world, remember fire, flood or just simply loosing two drives at the same time on a RAID5 array, etc.) and gain in costs and convenience.

I can plug these 200Gb drives on any of my systems being at home or away say in a friend's house using for e.g. IDE to USB or IDE to SATA conversion.

A RAID5 system is a very good option but quite monolithic in my opinion and I have setup huge SANs for clients in the past in the order of Pb.

Simple in my opinion is beautiful. This is why I am only after a solution to batch load my CD images in Nero ImageDrive/whatever virtual CD loader. Simple but quite effective.

If the right guru comes along to make this dream come true I have lots more ideas on this front. I believe that once people experience the simplicity of what I am after they will never want to go back to using encoding or whatever other technique (pure jukebox functionality is unsurpassed). Think again. Why has the jukebox technology survived for so many years? Simplicity, convenience and usability is the secret.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #57
Eh, those images are still about 40% bigger than FLAC's. You might not care about storage space, but a lot of us do, especially considering those sizes. Also, with just images you don't have tags and consequently, no ReplayGain.
Everything I've learned about space, I've learned from psytrance.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #58
vangelisv

Use Exact Audio Copy to make a wave file + cue sheet. You could compress the wave with monkeys audio to make it smaller. Play the wave or monkeys audio file in winamp with mp3cue. This way you will have just two files, a cue file and the audio. Name the audio and cue file to the name of the album and put it in its own folder. Then just add all the wav or ape files to winamps playlist. 

Thats the only way i can see you doing it although you would need to convert all your cds and images to this though, and you can tell EAC to use online cddb to name all the tracks for you.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #59
Quote
First of all modern drives are quite reliable (even older ones are) and especially if they are not powered up 24x7. A modern desktop drive, especially the ones using fluid bearing motors should last virtually forever if they are not used continously.

Modern SCSI drives are extremely reliable and modern IDE/ATA drives are also very good. There was (perhaps still is) some debate on the role that constant powering up and down will have on the MTBF of modern drives relative to constant idling.
  Counting on modern hard drives being "so damn good" that none of them ever fails is IMHO, courting disaster, especially if one is using the IBM 75GXP series
I've had many modern hard drives fail on me from a variety of different brands, and I am quite anal about proper HDD cooling.
    Edit: I should also point out that the failure rate of hard drives is somewhat related to the number of platters a particular drive has - any ATA drive over 80GB in capacity is using at least two platters.
Quote
I decided to use 200Gb drives. On a 200Gb drive you can fit approx. 300 CD images (this is uncompressed images that are an exact replica of the original, meaning no encoding, lossless or otherwise, of any sort).

Again, lossless compression is in fact truly lossless - the data you get out is indeed an exact replica of what you put in. And you have more space per unit storage, meaning potentially fewer storage units, meaning a reduction in the potential for failure (and a concomitant increase in amount of data lost per possible failure).
  In fact, if absolute bit-for-bit accuracy is your goal, you really might consider a different ripping program like EAC or CDex with paranoia.

Quote
(which by the way does not exist in the real world, remember fire, flood or just simply loosing two drives at the same time on a RAID5 array, etc.)

Of course. But using a redundant array minimizes your potential losses from hard disk failure, and I bet you don't believe your HDD's are immortal
    I was recommending a full RAID 1 (mirroring) system for the first poster and the best quality lossy compression availible, which is extremely transparent, especially if not played through very very very expensive equipment (like, for instance, the sound card of a typical laptop). This minimizes cost and maximizes redundancy for an almost negligible loss of fidelity.
    In fact I should point out that the ideal case here is to store your CD's, or a backup hard disk copy of your rips, or both, in a safe deposit box in a high altitude bank surrounded by a four mile cushion of asbestos  edit for some syntax

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #60
Quote
Use Exact Audio Copy to make a wave file + cue sheet. You could compress the wave with monkeys audio to make it smaller.

Hasn't Monkeys Audio been known to break compatibility with older version files with new releases? If you're worried about long term archival, maybe the well defined open format would be a better choice, despite the slight increase in size that you'll likely see.  Especially when you can embed a cuesheet directly into the file metadata

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #61
you can embed a cuesheet directly into the file metadata with FLAC ???

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #62
"First of all modern drives are quite reliable (even older ones are) and especially if they are not powered up 24x7. A modern desktop drive, especially the ones using fluid bearing motors should last virtually forever if they are not used continously."

...  at least you have the orignal cds

"I suppose you can reduce the price either way by buying the most cost effective per GB drives, if you like, or using a particular controller. I personally would purchase the Samsung 1203N 120GB drives at ~$0.78 per GB over the IBM/HGS 180GXP at ~$0.86 per GB even given the IBM's longer warranty. But who has $6000+ for an array? Edit: In fact, who has enough drive bays to accomodate 24+ 3.5" HDDs?"

WD 200GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache HD $299 - 10% - $35 - $120 rebate = $114 shipped free. Item A0080840 from dell  $.57  (just saw it on techbargins)

Also you don't even need to have them all on 1 computer, 2 small file servers...  really do you want to listen to music on a computer wtih 18 harddrives whining? I dunno how well NFS works in winxp, linux can run the server pretty well tho.  The 2 file servers themselves could be made for <$300/fs (tho i don't mind using cardboard boxes as cases hehe)  If you didn't have any redundancy (yea it woudl be stupid but to see how cheap you could do it)  you could make a 3.6TB array for <$3000  And no i dunno who has money for building this type of array for real, but then again i dunno who has money for buying 10,000 cds  but i'm guessing they'd be the same person.

Okay I forgot why i was gonna post...  this is always fun to think about.  A friend of mine works at a compnay that just builds linux clusters, they sell them mostly to the govt and colleges, but he gets to play with them while setting them up.  He always teases me with them hehe.  They got some order ofr 800 nodes...  dual xeon systems... shit even with 20GB HDs thats 16TBs  hehe but they don't get to do anything fun tho  weather modeling and crap.  Too bad they dont' put cdrom drives in them all or else it'd make easy work of a 10,000 cds to rip

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #63
Quote
I dunno how well NFS works in winxp, linux can run the server pretty well tho.

Geez...all the tech gurus just come out of the woodwork!   

(Just kidding, I'm one myself...12 years in IT.)

Something I can add here concerning NFS...I have many times successfully configured NFS for cross-platform enablement on several flavors of UNIX and Windows 2000.  It's my understanding that WinXP and Win2K are both very similar platforms, with very similar kernels for the most part, both having been derived mostly from NT.  I have not implemented NFS on Linux, though.  The product I have specifically used the most is Hummingbird NFS Maestro on Win2K, and simply configured an nfsmap file and an NFS daemon on the UNIX side (I've done Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX so far).

So there is a good chance that NFS would indeed work on XP as well for either Win-to-Win or Win-to-UNIX situations.  (Needs confirmation, though.)

>>>>>
vangelisv:

It sounds like you have a massive setup...is it all local, or partly distributed?  I agree with the concept of only settling for lossless archival once storage space is not an issue, and if you already have over 7000 CDs imaged on hard disks, then encoding all of them with even a lossless codec like FLAC would likely be an unmanageable and unreasonable pursuit.

But for someone not in that situation, I have to agree with Freaky...the most open, compressed, lossless solution is currently the best one in most cases...i.e., FLAC.  The codec is absolutely free, it's encode and decode speeds are unsurpassed among lossless codecs, there is a plethora of freeware (and growing licensed) support for it, and more and more devices nowadays can speak "FLAC".  For example, although Windows Media Player on my PC can't (yet), the Phatbox in my car can, as can it's associated PC-based music library management software.  Not that other lossless compression codecs are not very highly rated as well, such as Monkey's Audio, WavPack and La.  Most performance differences between them are subtle, with the most important consideration being the same as the most important one in the world of lossy as well...*compatibility*.

And where device compatiblity is not an issue, there are many other products (WinAMP, dBpowerAMP, etc.) that can take a plug-in for almost any codec.

As for the reliability of hard disks being powered down and up over time being higher than reliability of drives running 24x7, I'd have to say that's a debatable point (as others here have already said).  In my experience, even with superior bearings and other moving parts, the surge of a disk being powered up takes a toll on it in just a few seconds equal to perhaps several hours of continuous running time.  Hence reliability gained by letting the bearings and all other drive components "rest" for any period of time shorter than several days would likely be lost at each power-up.  Then again, wear is only one consideration for the proper care of so many units...there is also the consideration of heat management, alarm monitering for active drive units, increased power requirements for continual running, etc.  So I guess in the end, it's a toss up concerning continuous running vs. periodic shutdown when all of those aspects are taken into account.

>>>>>
As for our original poster, Zix,  I noticed that he had only two posts in his stats, the one that started this thread on July 3rd, and the "thanks for the info" post the next morning.  He was probably just passing through, and never expected his question to garner 62+ responses.  But if he's gone for good, I think he's missing out on a good in-depth discussion about how to manage the archival of very large CD collections.

I'm considering saving a copy of this thread as a reference manual... 

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #64
ScorLibran has hit the point with his excellent post. I agree with him 100%. For most people FLAC is possibly the only reasonable option.

For whatever is worth I have the following two points to make.

When I create CD images I like the image to be a single file. Having to manage a few thousand files is I think better than having to manage hundreds of thousands.

If there wes an application that could produce single file compressed images without loss of sound quality I would move my collection tomorrow, provided I could recreate the image on an actual CD without loss of sound quality (exact replica of original).

Being able to mount a CD image as an actual CD in my system is of paramount importance.

My perfect application would be say a player like WMP9, but being able to:

1. Play any number of CD images from a queue, with no need for encoding etc. Being able to say add this CD image then this, etc. and then clicking on play is a dream come true, I hope soon with your help guys.
2. Create playlists that do not depend on encoded tracks, but rather being references to actual tracks on my CD images. Imagine having a library of CD images and being able to say create this playlist from tracks on this CD image then that CD image, etc. without having to extract the tracks.

I cannot understand why we have to go in such pain today to encode our CDs. Surely someone can overlay a virtual file system on top of say a huge collection of single file CD images. Simplicity, convenience and a time saver.

Now this is what I call a true Media Player. What I cannot understand is why no software publisher has come up with such a solution so far.

Do you guys think that such functionality is not worth pursuing?

I am willing to pay for such functionality and I am able to market such a product as well. It has been some time since I last programmed at a low level, this is why I am looking for a guru on media programming stuff. Lets elevate ourselves to the next level. Free your time for other more important things. Or am I totally wrong... I hope not.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #65
vangelisv

Like i said you can use EAC to make a WAVE + cue image and play them with winamp + mp3cue plugin.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #66
RawShadow

Is my understanding correct that this process (EAC, etc.) involves the creation of multiple files per CD, which is NOT what I want. A single file image is my goal, which the Nero Imaging process currently gives me.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #67
Quote
With all the time you saved by not archiving all your CD's, you'll have plenty of opportunities to sit back, relax, and listen.

I haven't ripped my CDs yet (still!), and I don't have time to sit back, relax, and listen!

Well, OK, I listened to a Beatles LP last night - but that's the first propper listening in weeks!


You have to prioratise your life, and decide how seriously you want to take each part of it. It would be a shame to die, having never seen the world or your friends because you were too busy looking after the 2nd redundant back-up of your music collection. The illusion of certainty that everyone is looking at in this thread ignores the general pattern of life - that you can't predict tomorrow. You might not have the money to buy a new PC, or the time to listen. Or you might become so rich that you pay your favourite artists to perform live for you.  If you enjoy ripping, encoding, audio etc that's one thing, but if you want to archive xx thousand CDs, there must be a library or national archive in your country - go and work there!

Cheers,
David.
P.S. don't take this post too seriously - I fully intend to encode my collection one day. But I'll try and only back-up the meta data - the original CDs are the primary back up.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #68
Quote
RawShadow

Is my understanding correct that this process (EAC, etc.) involves the creation of multiple files per CD, which is NOT what I want. A single file image is my goal, which the Nero Imaging process currently gives me.

It only makes two files !! And EAC can use offset correction which nero does not have.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #69
Quote
RawShadow

Is my understanding correct that this process (EAC, etc.) involves the creation of multiple files per CD, which is NOT what I want. A single file image is my goal, which the Nero Imaging process currently gives me.

WIth just an image file, you get no information about the CD other than what you can divine from the file name.  WIth track tags you have a lot more choices in searching.  THis is especially useful with CD's that have different artists on each track, or with collections of,
say,  10,000 CD's.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #70
I might be mistaken, but I think we are missing the point.

The extra track information is of no use to me, since if I play my CD say in WMP9 the CD information is overlayed with no problems.

Secondly to someone a bit out of touch with technology like myself. Why is offset correction useful? I have never had any problems with any of my Nero images (please remember I have a collection of 7000+ CDs).

I love my music and the only thing I want is to listen non-stop. My opinion is the technology should be there to help me not hinder me which is the case now.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #71
Quote
The extra track information is of no use to me, since if I play my CD say in WMP9 the CD information is overlayed with no problems.

The CD information is displayed once you have selected the CD, but what if you want to
find, say, 1950's rock & roll, or anything sung by Pavarotti, or a particular song title?

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #72
You would need to make a program to do this. There is alot of developers on these forums that might be able to help make one? Seeing as there is easier and better ways to store your music already, so thats why sumthin like this has not been made? Maybe you can make a wmp 9 plugin so that wmp 9 can directly load and play from your cd images instead of using nero image drive.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #73
First, here is a post to the flac developers mailing list from someone who is actually using flac to back up 40,000 audio CD's - http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.p...9&forum_id=6312

Now, my comment on this thread is that the best way to back up your metadata is to make use of MusicBrainz.org as it provides redundant, off-site storage as well as thousands of people to help you out with filling in and correcting the data. A definite time (and therefore money) saver.

Even if it's not in the exact format you want and none of the tagging options suit you, it's far easier to massage data coming out of an honest-to-goodness database, than it is to muck around with flat files, cddb info and Perl, or whatever.

My own CD ripping adventure is about to start, having been held up by a lack of secure rippers for the Mac and waiting for a few other technical stars to come into alignment. With a need to have both mp3 and AAC/mp4 versions of my tunes (and to keep my options open), flac was an easy choice.

Converting a HUGE collection

Reply #74
Quote
I might be mistaken, but I think we are missing the point.

The extra track information is of no use to me, since if I play my CD say in WMP9 the CD information is overlayed with no problems.

Secondly to someone a bit out of touch with technology like myself. Why is offset correction useful? I have never had any problems with any of my Nero images (please remember I have a collection of 7000+ CDs).

I love my music and the only thing I want is to listen non-stop. My opinion is the technology should be there to help me not hinder me which is the case now.

The extra track info also serves to tell WinAMP how to view the single WAV file containing all tracks on the entire CD as separate tracks for the purposes of playback or playlist management.  It does this by using the MP3cue plugin to look at the cuesheet file generated by Exact Audio Copy (EAC) upon ripping.  Any data in the cue file that you don't want, just ignore.  The whole cue file takes less than a kilobyte in most cases.  The two files RaWShadow is referring to is (1)  the cuesheet file and (2) the one WAV file which comprises the CD image.

CD Read Offsets in a Nutshell----------

Almost every CD/DVD drive in the world doesn't start reading a track on a disc at exactly the first sample of that track.  Most drives start reading a few hundred samples earlier than the actual beginning of a track.  Those drives have a negative offset.  A few drives start reading a little later than the beginning of a track.  Those drives have a positive offset.

A sample is the smallest bit of music data on an audio track.  A sample is to digital music what an atom is to matter.  You've seen that the standard CD sampling frequency is 44,100 Hz, or 44.1kHz, right?  And keep in mind that one hertz = one cycle per second.  What this means is that the music is "sampled", or defined as, 44,100 units of data per second of audio.  And since one second equals 44,100 samples, don't sweat it if your drive is reading a few hundred "off center"...they all do that.  Well, almost all do that, as a few drives in the world may have a read offset of "0", but this is unlikely, and since the read offset of your drive can be compensated for by good ripping software, it's also irrelevant.

A full description of the concept of CD read offsets can be found here.  Also, if you end up using Exact Audio Copy, use that site's tutorial index at the top of the page for a complete walk-through of EAC, including recommended configuration settings.  It's considered one of the best tutorials for that product.

You basically want to have an accurate read offset correction so that you can ensure the error-free copying of a CD.  Offset correction combined with error-checking and verification is what "secure mode" ripping means.  Not that if your drive's offset is not compensated for that you'll have "bad copies"...you'll likely never even hear any discrepencies, with a few extreme exceptions.  A good "secure mode" ripping tool can even compensate for moderately scratched CDs, making the digital copy sound as though it came from a perfect (unscratched) CD.

So, if it's important to you to have *perfectly* accurate copies of your CDs, and be able to even compensate for scratches on a CD, then you'll want to use a ripping tool with error-correction and offset correction capabilities.  Offset correction is not as complex as it sounds.  All you do is grab a couple of CDs from your collection that match the correct pressing of the same CDs in the ripping product's "key CD database", and the product will automatically calculate your drive's read offset.  The offset correction number is the negative of the offset.  I.e., a read offset of -116 samples = an offset correction of +116 samples.  Plug the resulting correction number into a configuration window of the ripping software, and you're good to go.

Either of the following products can rip with error-correction and a read offset correction to provide perfectly accurate copies:

Exact Audio Copy
dBpowerAMP Music Converter with AccurateRip

CDex may also provide "secure mode" ripping, but I haven't used it, so I don't know if it does or not.

Hope this helps clarify things...


[Edit: Added a reference to The Coaster Factory's EAC tutorial.]