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

[gabrielb]

Foobar2000 has a ripping engine which will rip, compress to flac and add tags.
I ripped all my CDs 20 years ago using EAC, but now I use foobar exclusively to rip all the new CDs I buy at concerts.
I never had an issue with foobar ripping, but the CDs are all brand new while EAC had to handle old scratched CDs.
I'm not sure if reading from a scratched media is still an issue with modern CD/DVD/BD-ROM like it was 25 years ago when most CD-READERS could not handle scratched media

 

[Goodname1]

Why is windows media player considered badly for ripping to flac? Views (preferably technical!)?
I think accuraterip is a bit unecessary and just tells you if your cd wasn't knackered in the first place. If wmp rips OK to flac then what you have is a lossless copy of the cd you were perfectly happy with in the first place and will thus play back exactly as the cd.

 

[Apesbrain]

Why is windows media player considered badly for ripping to flac?

For CDs from your own well-cared-for collection, WMP is fine for ripping to FLAC. AccurateRip becomes more important when working with borrowed or second-hand discs that are scratched. In fact, it's best to learn how to use CUETools for this as it can actually repair corrupt data.

 

[levimax]

I'm not sure if reading from a scratched media is still an issue with modern CD/DVD/BD-ROM like it was 25 years ago when most CD-READERS could not handle scratched media

My understanding is the opposite i.e. older high quality dedicated CD drives had better error correction built in and newer multi-format drives rely on downstream software error correction. Not 100% sure on this as not everything you read on the internet is true

My experience with ripping damaged CD's is that when EAC or dB Poweramp find a read error and go back to re-read the damaged section they seldom recover all the data and in addition to taking hours of time and burning up the drives in the process the end result is an audible "click" or other artifact on the rip. I have much better results using "burst mode" which relies on the drives built in error correction (In my case I use an older Liteon CD drive which supposedly had good error correction). While potentially not "bit perfect" for ripping damaged sections of the CD it almost always creates rips that play without any audible issues and does so quickly. YMMV.

 

[drallim]

My understanding is the opposite i.e. older high quality dedicated CD drives had better error correction built in and newer multi-format drives rely on downstream software error correction. Not 100% sure on this as not everything you read on the internet is true

My experience with ripping damaged CD's is that when EAC or dB Poweramp find a read error and go back to re-read the damaged section they seldom recover all the data and in addition to taking hours of time and burning up the drives in the process the end result is an audible "click" or other artifact on the rip. I have much better results using "burst mode" which relies on the drives built in error correction (In my case I use an older Liteon CD drive which supposedly had good error correction). While potentially not "bit perfect" for ripping damaged sections of the CD it almost always creates rips that play without any audible issues and does so quickly. YMMV.

For rips with only minor errors you can usually repair them with cuetools. It uses an online database of other people's rips to replace the faulty parts so your rip is bit perfect again.

 

[somebodyelse]

My understanding is the opposite i.e. older high quality dedicated CD drives had better error correction built in and newer multi-format drives rely on downstream software error correction. Not 100% sure on this as not everything you read on the internet is true

Evidence please. The only tests I have seen for error correction were for computer drives. I've never seen equivalent tests for CD players or transports. Anecdotally both were very inconsistent to the point where I don't think a generalisation about one or other being 'better' would be useful.

Once upon a time we had dedicated review sites that tested (among other things) the audio extraction and error correction capabilities of CD(R) and DVD drives. This was necessary because there were large variations in performance between drives, and often even between firmware versions. Few manufacturers were consistently good at audio extraction, Plextor being the only exception I remember. They used standard error test CDs that you'd rarely see outside manufacturers or repair shops - see this post for details. Those simulated various types of disc damage from low to high levels. They also used audio "CDs" with the different schemes record labels introduced to try to stop ripping. The best of the drives would sail through all of the error test levels and copy protection schemes while barely slowing down, but these were the minority. optional bits in the standarda for drives to indicate error states during audio extraction, but they were often so badly implemented as to be worse than useless. Because of this most extraction software makes using them a nondefault option. Unfortunately the sites closed, and I haven't found any archived versions.

@restorer-john has described the good CD transports and players saling through the error test discs much like the best of the drives. On the other hand we've all heard CD players skipping. Few players and transports include indicators for error correction being performed, whether fully or interpolating to make missing data less audible. Usually the first you would know is when it got bad enough that it would mute or stop playing, or the tracking would be lost and it would skip. The emphasis was on uninterrupted playback not strict correctness, and rereading troublesome sections wasn't an option.

 

[babayaga]

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.

I do the same thing. In addition to Picard, I also use Metadatics for metadata. I have ripped about 1200 this way with no problems. I used to use Minim Server but now I converted to Roon.

 

[Mnyb]

Why is windows media player considered badly for ripping to flac? Views (preferably technical!)?
I think accuraterip is a bit unecessary and just tells you if your cd wasn't knackered in the first place. If wmp rips OK to flac then what you have is a lossless copy of the cd you were perfectly happy with in the first place and will thus play back exactly as the cd.

The older versions did not have any ability to handle flac or metadata in the form of tags , it look up the cd when ripped and fetched the songs titles etc but only in its own database it never populated any tags so you only had a bunch of *.wav files .

And contemperary rippers had more and better features so you picked them and probably stayed with that habit

 

[gabrielb]

Evidence please. The only tests I have seen for error correction were for computer drives. I've never seen equivalent tests for CD players or transports. Anecdotally both were very inconsistent to the point where I don't think a generalisation about one or other being 'better' would be useful.

Once upon a time we had dedicated review sites that tested (among other things) the audio extraction and error correction capabilities of CD(R) and DVD drives. This was necessary because there were large variations in performance between drives, and often even between firmware versions. Few manufacturers were consistently good at audio extraction, Plextor being the only exception I remember. They used standard error test CDs that you'd rarely see outside manufacturers or repair shops - see this post for details. Those simulated various types of disc damage from low to high levels. They also used audio "CDs" with the different schemes record labels introduced to try to stop ripping. The best of the drives would sail through all of the error test levels and copy protection schemes while barely slowing down, but these were the minority. optional bits in the standarda for drives to indicate error states during audio extraction, but they were often so badly implemented as to be worse than useless. Because of this most extraction software makes using them a nondefault option. Unfortunately the sites closed, and I haven't found any archived versions.

@restorer-john has described the good CD transports and players saling through the error test discs much like the best of the drives. On the other hand we've all heard CD players skipping. Few players and transports include indicators for error correction being performed, whether fully or interpolating to make missing data less audible. Usually the first you would know is when it got bad enough that it would mute or stop playing, or the tracking would be lost and it would skip. The emphasis was on uninterrupted playback not strict correctness, and rereading troublesome sections wasn't an option.

I started ripping all my CDs in the early 2000 and at the time most drives would generate errors even with good media.
Plextor was the undisputed king and charged a handsome price (My first Plextor costs more than $400).
Overtime other manufacturer caught up with it producing bit perfect rips.
After a few years it became standard and you could get bit perfect rip from a drive costing 30-40$
I believe that error correction technology which was SoTA 25 years ago exists today in the lowest of the lows as once you have done it right you can repeat it with every new product (this is what engineering is all about)
HIFI CD-Players are bad in managing error correction and even a simple correctable error can cause a hiss/crack.
At the time when a CD was starting to cause issues on my CDP I would have moved it to PLEXTOR ripping it bit perfect and creating a copy to another media.

A few years later I created 100% digital library with a USB DAC and FOOBAR2000 to manage it all.
Since then every new CD goes directly to the ripper and inserted into FOOBAR

 

[gabrielb]

My understanding is the opposite i.e. older high quality dedicated CD drives had better error correction built in and newer multi-format drives rely on downstream software error correction. Not 100% sure on this as not everything you read on the internet is true

My experience with ripping damaged CD's is that when EAC or dB Poweramp find a read error and go back to re-read the damaged section they seldom recover all the data and in addition to taking hours of time and burning up the drives in the process the end result is an audible "click" or other artifact on the rip. I have much better results using "burst mode" which relies on the drives built in error correction (In my case I use an older Liteon CD drive which supposedly had good error correction). While potentially not "bit perfect" for ripping damaged sections of the CD it almost always creates rips that play without any audible issues and does so quickly. YMMV.

It doesn't matter if you implement the ECC in SW or HW

 

[honn]

Any recommendation for the hardware drive for ripping CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays? I'll be using dBpoweramp's CD Ripper on MacBook Air M2/PC with it. Thanks!

 

[Chrispy]

Any recommendation for the hardware drive for ripping CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays? I'll be using dBpoweramp's CD Ripper on MacBook Air M2/PC with it. Thanks!

dBpoweramp can rip dvd and bluray? A bluray capable drive would be needed, tho.

 

[honn]

dBpoweramp can rip dvd and bluray? A bluray capable drive would be needed, tho.

Sorry, I mean only for CDs with dBpoweramp CD ripper

 

[Chrispy]

Sorry, I mean only for CDs with dBpoweramp CD ripper

You use other software for ripping dvd and bluray?

 

[hashhar]

I've always used these two guides for setting up EAC - https://flemmingss.com/perfect-cd-ripping-to-flac-with-exact-audio-copy/ and https://eacguide.github.io/.

Then it's just a routine of:

• Put the CD in.
• Hit Shift+Del to clear current metadata.
• Use CTDB to grab the correct release. Use MusicBrainz for the cover art.
• Hit F4 to detect gaps.
• Create a "non-compliant" CUE sheet.
• Shift+F6 to create FLACs.
• Use CueTools to fix the CUE sheet file names.

The speed of rip is mostly affected by whether you run in secure mode or burst mode. Also some disk drives are known to get stuck on low speeds once lowered for example. You'll observe that as quick rips toward the beginning but as soon as some error correction kicks in the drive will slow down to a crawl and get stuck at 2x for example.

 

[hashhar]

Regarding hardware I've had good luck with HP DVDRAM GT50N but in my experience it really doesn't matter unless the drive is actually shit. Most aren't.

 

[Mnyb]

Why is windows media player considered badly for ripping to flac? Views (preferably technical!)?
I think accuraterip is a bit unecessary and just tells you if your cd wasn't knackered in the first place. If wmp rips OK to flac then what you have is a lossless copy of the cd you were perfectly happy with in the first place and will thus play back exactly as the cd.

Historically it could not rip to flac and did not save tags, it stored metadata in its own dB so it looked like you had tags until you tried playback with something not wmp

After that many off us never used it again.
It’s possible that they improved over the years. I would not know.

 

[tgray]

Any recommendation for the hardware drive for ripping CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays? I'll be using dBpoweramp's CD Ripper on MacBook Air M2/PC with it. Thanks!

For those items I’ve used a Samsung USB drive (SE-506CB). Has worked fine for years. I can get you the model name but I’m sure it’s not made anymore - pretty much anything will work.

If you also want to do UHD discs, you will need very specific drives. I got and recommend a slot loading Pioneer purchased from one of the vendors on the MakeMKV forums. Note I also use this for all my other discs as well, except for DVDs that need the drive to be locked to my region (the first drive I mentioned has its region set).