Lossless CD ripping

[metallfan]

Hi all,

I have a lot of music CDs and recently decided to join 21 century and digitalise my collection. What software would you recommend for 'ripping' my collection if the storage space is not an issue but I'm mindful of the quality? What software and what format should I consider?

Thanks in advance

 

[oczdude8]

Im pretty sure you can just use windows media player and rip them as lossless wav files.

 

[kanewolf]

There are two factors, what ripping software and what format/compression. You can use Exact Audio Copy (EAC) -- http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ for ripping and a lossless codec like FLAC in an MP3 format -- https://xiph.org/flac/ .

 

[sizzling]

Tip from me, the big advantage of digital is music on mobile devices but the lossless cd rips can be anything between 200-450mb for a cd which can be quite limiting if you have a 16 or 32gb device. I did this as I am very fussy about audio but am now re-recording everything I have in 192 kbps to get albums down to a much smaller size so I can get a good selection on devices or micro SD cards without too much quality lost.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I always store the files on HD as SHN files.

http://www.etree.org/shncom.html

SHN player plugins

http://www.iwdownload.com/s/shn-file-plugin-windows-media-player
http://etree.org/cgi-bin/counter.cgi/software/shnamp300.exe
http://www.afterdawn.com/software/desktop/compression_tools/winrar.cfm

This is loss less compression but still files are larger than ya may want on mobile devices. Then again, the value of loss less files on mobile devices with a $8 audio subsystem system is suspect.

 

[Solandri]

There are two factors, what ripping software and what format/compression. You can use Exact Audio Copy (EAC) -- http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ for ripping and a lossless codec like FLAC in an MP3 format -- https://xiph.org/flac/ .

This. Use Exact Audio Copy, not something like Windows Media Center. Music CDs are encoded with a metric ton of error correction. That's why you can scratch it up and it'll still play perfectly. Unfortunately, the vast majority of CD playing (and ripping) software ignores all of this and relies on Windows to read the data off the CD cleanly. Windows treats the CD as a filesystem, and if it encounters errors, it tries to read it again a few more times, then gives up and tells you there's an error.

EAC gets the raw datastream read from the CD (if your CD reader allows it), giving it access to the pre-error corrected data. If it encounters an error that the error correction can't fix, it plays around with this raw data stream, trying to read it different ways in order to get a clean read. It has recovered clean rips off of CDs which wouldn't even play in my best audio CD player anymore.

Most rippers will default to WAV, which is a lossless format native to Windows. It doesn't have very good compression though (actually I don't think it has any compression), which is why most audiophiles convert it to FLAC, which is losses and will give you about a 2:1 compression ratio over WAV. The lossy formats of course get better compression ratios. But if the point of all this is to backup your CD collection, then you want your primary backup to be lossless.

 

[metallfan]

Thank you all so much for the imput. I just got my 2TB USB 3.0 external hard drive that I intend to use as a storage. The EAC sounds like the besg answer here, is it a free software? Also if FLAC is exactly same quality as WAV then no point in wasting space, is there?

 

[McHenryB]

I use WAV files which I rip with iTunes. Storage is so cheap nowadays that I don't see much point in compressed formats.

 

[skittle]

Cdparanoia and EAC are both free programs to give bit-bit exact copies of your cds. EAC is free as in free beer

Storage is so cheap nowadays that I don't see much point in compressed formats.

Flac gives you 50-70% more storage space for "free".

 

[McHenryB]

I really don't need more storage space. I store my audio files on a 500GB disk which is more than enough for any conceivable amount of music that I would wish to store. If I did need more I'd just buy a bigger disk; they cost next to nothing nowadays. Why waste CPU cycles compressing/uncompressing files?

 

[skittle]

they cost next to nothing nowadays

Applies to cpu cycle as well. Answered your own question
Same reason I use btrfs compression, faster to read and decode compressed file than to read non compressed!

I have 2x3tb drives almost full

 

[McHenryB]

I use a PPC Mac Mini to stream audio to my Hi Fi system. CPU cycles are precious but I can attach any cheap USB disk drive. There is no one size fits all solution to this question.

6TB of audio data is an unbelievable amount.

 

[bolean]

Does anyone know a linuxport of EAC ?