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Ripping music CDs

AnalogSteph

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As stated in previous posts Exact Audio Copy is fantastic, it just usually take longer than Foobar, so I only use it when Foobar won't rip the disc without problems.
Actually, EAC is not necessarily slower - it depends on the drive settings chosen. You can set it to burst mode and rely only on AccurateRip and CTDB plugins to verify the rip, which often is going to be sufficient. Only in problematic cases do you need to switch back to secure mode ripping. If that still fails to return a perfect rip, repair via CUETools is still an option (assuming the disc is in CTDB, which rarely isn't the case).

BTW, I never rip above 24X in standard and 16X in slimline drives. The additional noise and wear at full speed just isn't worth it for the bit of time you save.

I have sucessfully repaired unreadable CDs by polishing the data side with a bit of toothpaste. It looked worse than before I started, but it read clean.
Yay for laser focus being on the data layer rather than the CD surface.

Still, I would rather recommend using Polywatch / Displex instead (which I reckon is the same stuff made by the same company). A small tube isn't expensive, and you do tend to run across some acrylic to be polished every once in a while.
 

Capitol C

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Hmm... not so good for longevity of the CD though;



JSmith
Yikes! I've been using a mist of Windex that I removed immediately with a soft cloth on the few CDs that are troublesome. Wiping radially (never circumferentially) is recommend because redundant bits are recorded "donwstream". Now I'm not sure about Windex, though--it always lowered the error rate, often to zero, but I don't know about long-term effects.
PS: I just found this useful document from NIST, posted below, about care and cleaning.
 

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tmtomh

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Yikes! I've been using a mist of Windex that I removed immediately with a soft cloth on the few CDs that are troublesome. Wiping radially (never circumferentially) is recommend because redundant bits are recorded "donwstream". Now I'm not sure about Windex, though--it always lowered the error rate, often to zero, but I don't know about long-term effects.
PS: I just found this useful document from NIST, posted below, about care and cleaning.

Don't worry about it. Don't touch it with acetone (or I guess bleach - but who would do that?). As for glass cleaners like Windex, some of them have ammonia in them, but in small amounts, and a brief wipe isn't going to hurt anything. I guess if you submerged the CD in a bowl of Windex and left it for a few days, that might mess it up. But a single cleaning with alcohol, dish soap, windex, etc. isn't going to hurt anything.
 

mansr

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Yikes! I've been using a mist of Windex that I removed immediately with a soft cloth on the few CDs that are troublesome. Wiping radially (never circumferentially) is recommend because redundant bits are recorded "donwstream". Now I'm not sure about Windex, though--it always lowered the error rate, often to zero, but I don't know about long-term effects.
PS: I just found this useful document from NIST, posted below, about care and cleaning.
I don't know what's in Windex, but I'd guess it's water, some surfactants, a mild acid, and maybe some alcohol. Nothing that will harm a CD if wiped off immediately.
 

tmtomh

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I don't know what's in Windex, but I'd guess it's water, some surfactants, a mild acid, and maybe some alcohol. Nothing that will harm a CD if wiped off immediately.

Some varieties of Windex and other glass cleaners have ammonia too, which is not great for polycarbonate - but they don't have much (as evidenced no ammonia smell, at least in my experience) and a quick spray and wipe won't hurt the polycarbonate in my experience. On the other hand, an ammonia-based glass cleaner will provide exactly zero extra cleaning power compared to one without ammonia, so I tend to avoid using ammonia glass cleaners on CDs. But I have done it before, with no ill effect.
 

MarnixM

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I have been using dBpoweramp CD Ripper for a long time and have been totally pleased with the results. In the past I've used EAC but I preferred dBpoweramp for ease of use. The downside of the dBpoweramp is that it isn't free; the one-time charge is US$39 which includes the CD Ripper and also dBpoweramps excellent Music Convert.

dBpoweramp CD Ripper does automatic metadata and artwork download, employs AccurateRip, and also provides various (optional) DSP options. DSP options include, e.g., conversion of HDCD encoded discs to 24 bit depth with a 6 dB gain increase.

FWIW, I have found that the occasional AccurateRip error is usually completely innocuous in terms of audibility. dBpoweramp ripper can do multiple passes and compare them to ensure its own accuracy.

If you listen to Classical music to any extent you may find basic metadata download by (for instance) dBpoweramp is inadequate so you will want some other tool to make you Classical metadata more accurate, complete, and consistent across your collection. A popular free metadata tag editor is MP3tag that does also do FLAC, ALAC, and most other music formats. There are others too.
Also using dBpoweramp for several years and also totally pleased. Often older CD's have failures, especially in the last tracks. Sometimes these are solved after a good handkerchief cleaning by reducing the read speed (easy in dBpoweramp) but not always. A “bad” CD is aways ripped using non-secure “burst ripping”; often provides sufficient quality to listen to. I find it very strange that Audio Science members are willing to pay a lot of money for (often) extreme small hardware improvements, while they ask for free versions of software with a lifetime subscription of say €50,-. For “messing up” with metadata, file names, track names and track numbering I use a combination of AudioRanger, Tagscanner and Advanced Renamer. Because I rip sometimes albums with up to 100 tracks I like software which can handle changes “batchwise”. Sometimes you rip albums “who are not in AccurateRip”; then you have to fill in all information yourself. Don’t forget after the ripping to send the data to the database (under “options”)!
 
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