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Topic: Advice on Ripping to WMA Lossless? (Read 7147 times) previous topic - next topic
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Advice on Ripping to WMA Lossless?

Apologies at the outset for being a complete newbie to this -- I'm a fairly tech-savvy person with a bit of audio knowledge, but I'm totally new the the specific software and techniques here.

I recently decided to finally get around to ripping my CD collection.  I decided to use WMA Lossless since it'll allow me to stream to my XBox 360 at CD-quality and it will give me "archival" rips to transcode from later if need be.

Newb that I am, I decided to use the Zune software for the ripping.  It was installed, it's pretty automatic, I'm thinking of buying a Zune, and I'd heard good things about its CD lookup abilities.

I ripped several dozen CDs, and had no problems whatsoever.  I had played a few of the rips and been pleased at the quality.  Then I tried playing one which had been ripped from a scratched disc: distortions!  Argh!  I had naively thought that a "lossless" rip would generate an error message if it wasn't reading perfectly.  Now I'm left with about 50-60 rips that MAY have errors and many more left to rip.

So, can anybody tell me what my next step should be?

1.  Is there any easy way to determine which of the already ripped albums might have errors?  Or should I start from scratch?
2.  Is there any software that can do a better job at finding / avoiding errors?  Can it generate WMA Lossless or will I have to transcode from another lossless format?
3.  Does the software used for lossless ripping make a difference, quality-wise?  I had assumed that lossless was lossless, but now I realize that accuracy in reading the disc matters.

Advice on Ripping to WMA Lossless?

Reply #1 –
As far as #2 and #3, dbpoweramp can detect errors with a variety of techniques, including accuraterip, is easy to use, and rips to wma lossless and, as far as I tell, every format in use, it also converts formats easily (very convenient for lossless on disk to lossy).  You can also try Exact Audio Copy, which is free and I think the beta also uses accuraterip, but doesn't have as many functions or ease of use.

I would keep using wma lossless, unless you need to go to non-windows systems, then use flac.

There may be a way to check the existing files against the accurate rip database without reripping the cd, but I haven't tried that.  You can also ask on the dbpoweramp forum for questions about their software, but I'm sure you'll get excellent replies here.

Advice on Ripping to WMA Lossless?

Reply #3 –
I'm not sure about using any special "script" to get WMA Lossless files.  I just downloaded EAC and Windows Media Encoder 9.  Install them both.  In EAC you will be able to choose an external program for compression.  Once WME 9 is installed, it will be an available option to use for compression and WMA Lossless will be one of the file choices.  It has worked great for me.  I haven't started using AccurateRip yet.  That is sort of the next step.  It will compare your rips using EAC to other peoples' rips and tell you if they're the same.

Advice on Ripping to WMA Lossless?

Reply #4 –
Quote from: X-ray Doc on
In EAC you will be able to choose an external program for compression.  Once WME 9 is installed, it will be an available option to use for compression and WMA Lossless will be one of the file choices.
Thanks for the tip. 

To clarify:
  • On the External Compression tab check Use external program for compression
  • Select "Microsoft WMA9 Encoder" from the Parameter passing scheme dropdown
  • Select "Lossless" from the Bit rate dropdown.
NB: I clarified, because I was expecting to find it using the dropdowns on the Waveform tab.

Edit:  As suspected, EAC opens a CSCRIPT console, so I guess it's just using the VBS script as well.  It's obviously easier to set up EAC this way though!  Thanks again.
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