Could you help me setup how to rip CDs into FLACs?

[Massiveattack]

Hello dudes,


Someone recommended this site to me for information, However, I decided to sign up because I could use a little help, please.

Been window shopping mp3 players (or i guess now they are DAPs.)
I fell into a rabbit hole of wanting to re-rip my small(?) CD collection of maybe 200ish+ cds into FLAC, vs the 192-320k mp3s I did years back.
So I've just been wanting to redo the whole thing over again, with better knowledge that I have now.

My setup was using EAC, with some specs I made for trying to get the best mp3 for sound.

I have twice now in my life, tried to use this website directions, which I believe I've also seen posted in this forum before:

How to setup Exact Audio Copy for FLAC ripping - captainrookie.com

This guide explains how to setup and configure Exact Audio Copy (EAC) for ripping audio CDs to the FLAC lossless format.

captainrookie.com

Please can someone fix my expectations, or maybe help tell me what I'm doing wrong, when I follow that website.


I can rip a 320k mp3 in maybe 15-20 mins. Even a FLAC setup on default EAC, it doesn't take me that long.
However using those directions outlined on that website, it would cost me almost 1-2 hours to rip a flac version of a cd. It will sit there for a while. With my size collection, that would be quite a while. The Mp3 project alone took a while.

Am I setting something up wrong, or is that really how long it takes to rip a FLAC?

I have access to two different drives, an (LG) bluray and then also a (plextor) cd/dvd drive, unsure if drives can make a difference for cds.
Also have a pretty competent up to date PC, so I don't think it's anything hardware limited like that, unless it's the drives themselves.


Really feel stumped and could use a little hand holding to build a better audio collection into flac.

Appreciate any help I can get.

 

[Chrispy]

I use EAC to rip my cds to flac, haven't really watched time a lot but 15-20 minutes is probably about right. 1-2 hours seems excessive but may depend on your settings for error correction and level of encoding.

 

[kemmler3D]

Welcome to ASR! Agree with Chrispy - unless you have switched CD drives since the last time around, it's probably down to error settings and the FLAC encoding level. If your CPU isn't super powerful it may take a long time to do the encoding.

 

[stoo23]

Perhaps Steve Hoffman's site might help ?"
Howto: Rip Pre-Emphasis CDs to Hi-Res FLAC in EAC

Or here:
How to rip your music CDs to FLAC

 

[Chrispy]

Perhaps Steve Hoffman's site might help ?"
Howto: Rip Pre-Emphasis CDs to Hi-Res FLAC in EAC

Or here:
How to rip your music CDs to FLAC

Steve Hoffman's site being useful? Wow.

 

[stoo23]

 

[GD Fan]

For me time spent is only one part of the equation. Another is the quality of the metadata which I consider pretty important.

The third issue is the handling by your player - my Denon 3700 just scrambles the order of every album on the USB drive, as does the stereo in my car. While typically only very annoying this is crucially prohibitive for Grateful Dead (or any other) live concert recordings.

 

[Chrispy]

For me time spent is only one part of the equation. Another is the quality of the metadata which I consider pretty important.

The third issue is the handling by your player - my Denon 3700 just scrambles the order of every album on the USB drive, as does the stereo in my car. While typically only very annoying this is crucially prohibitive for Grateful Dead (or any other) live concert recordings.

Use another way of steering the content towards your avr....

 

[Mnyb]

Use Accuraterip with EAC or as I do use dBpoweramp with Accuraterip then the rip can safely be done in faster modes and not take that long .

I use dBpoweramp and mp3tag for my tags .

Depending on you pickiness , tags and cover art may be what really takes time dBpoweramp automatically fetches cover art and embeds those in the FLAC files .

I usually just take quick peek with mp3tag and does some minor adjustments, so for me I rip rather quickly.

To get it done you can set it up as a morning routine to rip 10 before breakfast

 

[recycle]

If talking about music available on the market, I recommend you buy 96/24 Flac, instead of ripping your CD collection: you will have better sound, pre-written metadata and zero hassle (especially when ripping 200 CDs)

 

[Miguelón]

If talking about music available on the market, I recommend you buy 96/24 Flac, instead of ripping your CD collection: you will have better sound, pre-written metadata and zero hassle (especially when ripping 200 CDs)

24/96 is not better quality than 16/44.1: just provides more unnecessary information. Rebuy 200 CDs will be expensive and on 24/96 it occupies same space as 600 CD with no additional quality (as much as 420 Gb).

For someone whose nickname is “recycle”, a full contradiction

 

[Raxumit]

If talking about music available on the market, I recommend you buy 96/24 Flac, instead of ripping your CD collection: you will have better sound, pre-written metadata and zero hassle (especially when ripping 200 CDs)

Cost is not a minor issue here. At $10 USD per disc that's over $2k USD, nothing to sneeze at if he already owns the music.

Very few, if any, of us would be able to pass a proper ABX test for 96/24 vs. Redbook. And if one did, the reason might well be that the 96/24 is a loudness-war victim with a post 2000 remaster that definitely sounds different, and arguably worse, than the original CD.

I use dbPoweramp to rip and Tag & Rename to check / clean up metadata, those are my suggestions.

(And lest I sound too high and mighty, I have bought high bit rate versions of things (can't recall hearing a difference), remasters (often headache inducing loudness increases, or pointless knob twiddling), and even bought something as a FLAC download just to save myself the effort of finding it in my many basement boxes of CDs.)

 

[stoo23]

I recommend you buy 96/24 Flac, instead of ripping your CD collection

Yeah in many ways, I agree, although as someone who doesn't need or make use of ANY 'Tags',.. I really don't understand the current continuing fascination with FLAC, especially as very Large, fast storage on almost All devices is now so cheap,.. I mean honestly, how much music do you people own and/or actually have the time to listen to ??

All up, I have 538 Folders using 171 gig and All WAV files, many at higher resolution,.. just seems odd, but I don't Stream stuff around the house, or 'build' endless playlists, I simply play tracks / albums, when I want, much like putting an album on a turntable, back in the day or playing a CD,..

What can I say,.. Old school Audio guy,..

Interestingly, coming from a Live music and Studio background where 48kHz was the Norm' and accepted standard, 44.1kHz just never really cut it for me, (plus, it was only Sony's damn eagerness to release units for sale that led it to re-nigging on it's deal with Philips and others and going with 44.1), let alone throwing half or most of the baby down the plug hole with mp3's,.. sigh

I'm not sure I can completely agree with the Squashed 'Loudness Wars' reference to 96/24 as so far none of my HiDef versions are of that 'ilk' thankfully and I'd almost argue that Squashing it to within an inch of it's life with compression and eq, is more of a way of making more money by re-issuing a 44.1kHz CD, that Sounds Amazing !!! ... yeah,.. right,.. NOT, than a well re-mastered 24 bit copy, that realistically can offer great Dynamic range

If you do a lot of work in the studio and use Plug-ins or Patch out to real analogue equipment, you would soon discover remaining in the 16bit 44.1kHz realm would not be ideal.

 

[JSmith]

I fell into a rabbit hole of wanting to re-rip my small(?) CD collection of maybe 200ish+ cds into FLAC, vs the 192-320k mp3s I did years back.

It is a bit of a rabbit hole... what's wrong with the MP3's you've already done? Most people won't be able to tell between 320kbps MP3 vs FLAC... choosing preference in a blind test, many will often prefer the MP3 anyway, if they can hear a difference. Plus you have the original CD's as a backup.


JSmith

 

[nerdstrike]

Am I setting something up wrong, or is that really how long it takes to rip a FLAC?

No.*

When I embarked on my rip-a-thon for NAS purposes, I was getting FLACs out in the region of 10-15 minutes, but I didn't follow that guide. I went for educated guess settings for EAC.

So much depends on the drive and the CD. I've had bad drive that would crap out on some CDs and spend ten minutes on a single track, reading and re-reading the blocks at minimum speed to get an accurate outcome. With another drive, the same CDs would go through at normal speed. Frankly, most PC DVD drives are utter crap these days, and I'm forced to use a USB-connected external one now after a succession of 5 1/4" internal drives just failed to work. Your time is precious, so slightly more relaxed settings could save you hours and hours.

I know the standards were lower, but I had a great time ripping to MP3 at 2 minutes a CD a couple of decades ago! Good ol' 40x CD drives howling away...

For me the biggest archival challenge was metadata for classical music. I spent quite some minutes per CD typing in track and album info.

 

[tgray]

I do my ripping on a Mac using XLD. It rips using the AccurateRip database which means it will rip once if it can verify the rip is good using the db. Otherwise it rips twice. I only rip at 1x if there’s some problem reading the CD otherwise it’s full speed which ends up being like 8-14x.

Then use Picard to add metadata.

I’m sure there’s a similar setup on PC.

 

[dualazmak]

My recommendation based on my long-year experiences of CD ripping and format conversion;
dBpoweramp CD Ripper
- https://www.dbpoweramp.com/cd-ripper.htm

 

[DonH56]

I also use dBpoweramp. Takes a few minutes to rip a CD to FLAC. Have not timed it, but certainly not 15-20 minutes, and that is on my 10+ year old notebook.

 

[TonyJZX]

yeah i think there's something wrong with that setup

i use any older laptop i have lying around - even if i restrict myself to just my huge fleet of Lenovo laptops I have enough for multiple lifetimes

even if its win7 you can rip cds using CDex in a few mins

copy the flacs to your nas

 

[Miguelón]

Yeah in many ways, I agree, although as someone who doesn't need or make use of ANY 'Tags',.. I really don't understand the current continuing fascination with FLAC, especially as very Large, fast storage on almost All devices is now so cheap,.. I mean honestly, how much music do you people own and/or actually have the time to listen to ??

All up, I have 538 Folders using 171 gig and All WAV files, many at higher resolution,.. just seems odd, but I don't Stream stuff around the house, or 'build' endless playlists, I simply play tracks / albums, when I want, much like putting an album on a turntable, back in the day or playing a CD,..

What can I say,.. Old school Audio guy,..

Interestingly, coming from a Live music and Studio background where 48kHz was the Norm' and accepted standard, 44.1kHz just never really cut it for me, (plus, it was only Sony's damn eagerness to release units for sale that led it to re-nigging on it's deal with Philips and others and going with 44.1), let alone throwing half or most of the baby down the plug hole with mp3's,.. sigh

I'm not sure I can completely agree with the Squashed 'Loudness Wars' reference to 96/24 as so far none of my HiDef versions are of that 'ilk' thankfully and I'd almost argue that Squashing it to within an inch of it's life with compression and eq, is more of a way of making more money by re-issuing a 44.1kHz CD, that Sounds Amazing !!! ... yeah,.. right,.. NOT, than a well re-mastered 24 bit copy, that realistically can offer great Dynamic range

If you do a lot of work in the studio and use Plug-ins or Patch out to real analogue equipment, you would soon discover remaining in the 16bit 44.1kHz realm would not be ideal.

I respect all opinions, but more dynamic range than 96 dB do anything? If you’re listening to peaks of 100 dB that means you can listen noise at 4 dBs at the same time?

Even knowing that downsamipling from 24 to 16 bits sounds awful and dithering is needed to smooth truncated sound, the result showed to be totally transparent for human ears.

I agree old CDs, very old, lacked on dynamic range but was a bad handling question, not a poor headroom from 16 bits.

Actual CD quality is impossible to distinguish from 24/96, if I find a proper blind test online I will share to you.

I can differentiate majority of mp3 against WAV uncompressed in those tests, specially in acoustic music, so I’m beyond average on critical listening but CD from DVD quality or 24/96? Let’s prove it!