Time to re rip and import

Charlie do yourself a favour and don't look into XLD, its really cumbersome.

Music should be about fun. taking ones time is admirable, but if someone believed it was going to take two years to do, and had to be done in front of the computer to make sure none of the gosh darn bits go missing, the I rather fancy they would not bother.

I am starting to believe channel five could do a whole series on PCS's OCD.

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
Charlie do yourself a favour and don't look into XLD, its really cumbersome.

Sincerley,
The Linn Sondek LP12.

Dont do it then. But dont tell others it is irrelevant. Because it is not.

I cannot hear the difference between an LP12 and a Rega P3.

Is there one? Surely.

To each their own.

Just in case you were wondering.... you dont have to sit there and watch it rip. WHo cares how long it takes?

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
I am starting to believe channel five could do a whole series on PCS's OCD.

Whatever the hell that means....

Are Naim and the HDX equally guilty of the same thoroughness?

If so, I am happy to have things as good as can be.

I can rip, for free, as well as a $10,000 machine. Not bad.

If Itunes is SO fantastic, then why wouldn't the HDX use it?

Answer, because it is inherently and decidedly flawed.

Mac-addicts are hilarious. If Mac cant do it it must be irrelevant.

Keep in mind, I do own a Mac... two in fact. Never would let them anywhere near a bit of my music, unless the GF is loading up her Ipod and wants me to do it for her.

Garyi,

I have done plenty of suggesting then defending my process.

Can you please defend your method?

Please address the following for those who haven't already made up (closed) their minds.

1) How does Itunes handle gap detection?
2) How does Itunes deal with pre-track gaps WITH information?
3) How do you correct your drives "read offset" to get a bit perfect rip?
4) How can you re-create your original CD perfectly from an Itunes rip?
5) Does Itunes allow for secure mode ripping WITHOUT caching data. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT...
6) If you DO get errors, can you determine where they occur?
7) Does Itunes tell you when you have an error?


These are crucial to me and I imagine others as well.

Can you please explain this to me? Or do you simply ignore these issues because Itunes fails to address them?

What is the point of placing SO MUCH emphasis on the DAC aspect of distributed audio, while ignoring the ripping aspect of it?

Why is it SO hard to admit that Itunes is not the best ripper or player out there.

I surely wouldn't defend Windows Media Player to the same degree. It is a shitty program for those who dont care about doing it correctly.

Whoo there.

Its not me in denial.

You have stated on other threads an on this very thread that if the rip is good it does not matter, but that the rip might not be good. Others like myself have said repeatedly that 'clicks' 'pops' and 'digital noise' simply has not factored in their rips ever.

So I would content that you have a POS computer that has a POS DVD drive in it, that for shit cannot import a cd without you fawning it with fofo and magic trying to get it to work. And that because of this you believe everyone else is in the same boat.

Itunes is not the best player out there. I want them to strip out the ipod/iphone crap and bring it back home. That being said, its better than anything else.

If you can point me to a better product for organising and play back of video/podcast/audio files (I access these constantly for home use) then please point it out. PC or MAC, I have both.

Does the above mean you are not going to answer my questions?

Gary,

It takes me NO EFFORT, certainly no more than Itunes, to rip according to my method.

Why do you always intimate that I am "fretting" about anything?
You set up the program ONCE, it takes 3-4 minutes.
After ripping, you dont have to look at the log if you dont want to. If you do, all that is needed is to look at the end where it will either say
"No errors occurred"
or
"Errors occurred" and where they allegedly reside.


The actual rip takes longer, but if I set it up similar to Itunes the rips wuld take the same amount of time.

Burst mode is available for EAC although i would NEVER use it.

Addressing my hardware, my drives are fine. CDs are the usual source of any errors.

In my experience of thousands of rips, I have only ever had one disc I could never get to rip in secure mode. Too many uncorrectable errors.

So i did it in Itunes style, burst mode. No big deal.

About 5 out of 100 have errors. You can easily listen to the exact spot the error is to have occurred and decide for yourself if it bothers you or not. Some are inaudible to me. Most are not.

I am definitely done arguing about this. I will continue to address questions posed to the forum when I feel like I have something to offer. But i will not argue with you any longer.

Please answer the questions I asked you, as I am fairly sure I have addressed everything you have asked of me.

In the final analysis,
Use Itunes, it is wonderful, perfect, cannot be improved on, fun, free, and BEST OF ALL allows for easy purchasing of JayZ's newest in yummy 192 bit rate lossy compressed MP3.

Hopefully it also catalogs and sells all of your playing info to marketing companies so they can tell you what else to buy.

I've typically been using Max but had an interesting experience with iTunes recently. One track on a CD would not import with Max, regardless of what level of error correction was used. Trying the CD with iTunes on standard settings without error correction failed, but iTunes was able to rip the track with error correction enabled ... eventually. It slowed down to a crawl over what must have been the bad area of the disk, but kept at it until the rip was complete. I was impressed.

Slabwax - barring the whole "rip quality" discussion, another point to note on Max vs. iTunes is album art quality. I've found the quality to be consistent and significantly better with iTunes than that trawled from Amazon with Max. This and the ability of iTunes to rip my dud track has me re-considering my "workflow".

-Mark

pcstockton, I hate you!

Why? It's certainly neither your informative replies, nor your polite attitude that cause offense.

Nope. It's because you haven't told me what I wanted to hear.

Many years ago, I started the long process of ripping my CDs into iTunes (as an early adopter I started before iTunes, but things really heated up with the first couple of releases of iTunes on my 266MHz G3---yes, that long ago). I thought I was being clever ripping my mp3s (when iTunes started supporting the format) at 160kbps instead of 128kbps, with my desert-island discs ripped at 192kbps ('cos they're 'special'), even though my hard drive was only 4Gb. After lots of ripping and a hard disc upgrade, I'd built up a satisfyingly large mp3 collection...not all my CDs, but enough to offer a broad listening choice through my fancy yamaha computer speakers.

Then 2 things happen to upset my smugness:

1) Apple release a version of iTunes that offers gapless playback! Suddenly all those classical/live/opera/prog-rock albums can be played enjoyably on the computer.

2) Then those dastardly electrical engineers go and make big hard discs so cheap that I can no longer justify storing my music as mp3s when I know deep down, there's no way I'll ever throw away a CD unless it's copied perfectly, i.e. losslessly.

So I start ripping all new CDs losslessly in iTunes, and commence the task of selectively re-ripping some of my older albums.

And now you go and spoil my party by telling me that I must do better.

I hate you, but I know you're right.

So, EAC on windows or XLD on macos you say. Bugger it. It has to be done.

i started to rip some cd´s today in itunes...with all the setting people suggest on the forum here...but to wav

it´s strange but i heard a lot of pops...the sound quality is good, but a lot of pops...

...music should be fun and i like itunes for the simple way to rip,but please no pops...


newest powerbook 2,6 mhz with 4 gigs of ram

quote:

newest powerbook 2,6 mhz with 4 gigs of ram

Pylod,

My guess is there is something wrong with your optical drive. There are five macs in my household and not one produces pops and clicks.

Keith

I don't really quite get this whole error correction issue. If the pits (bits?) on the CD are obscured by a scratch, fingerprint, piece of marmite, how does re-reading the CD multiple times help? Are these the types of errors that are corrected? Is it that the rip reads full-speed until it encounters an error (I sort of understand the principle of checksums and error detection) then goes back and tries harder at slower rotational speeds? Kind of like the little engine that could?

What does it mean to "correct" an error? Does the software interpolate by some clever algorithm that best predicts the missing data? Or does the hardware actually eventually drill through the stuff-up to reveal the true underlying bits (pits)?

This makes a difference, I think. Some interpolation algorithms could be more musical than others. Some could introduce those dastardly clicks and pops. Some could introduce other audible artifacts. In any case, no interpolation could be as consistently accurate as true data recovery.

PCS, you seem to have done the research. What's the score here? Bit perfect - the goal; if the bits are basically unrecoverable due to physical barriers on the disc, how do we ever get there? If the bits are messed up because of poor read-control software, I can see how some programs are better than others. If it is an issue of the quality of interpolation, then that's a little like the analogue world, where valve aficionados don't claim that last word in accuracy and low THD, but simply that it sounds better. Interpolation is always a guess, by definition.

Your thoughts?

I posted this on another thread - this my current line of thinking:

With CD Audio it's hard to make accurate copies. By design CD Audio must give continuous playback in real-time without gaps; it doesn't provide a reliable stream of data to a computer. Also CD Audio covers up scratches by guessing what's there. My conjecture is data read from CD Audio is unlikely to be a faithful reproduction of the original. Moreover, we know different CD drives give varying quality for reading audio: some are fairly accurate while others do little error correction and don't report on the correction they have done. iTunes tries to correct errors when importing CDs, but I can't find how it works. I know iTunes does not report if it has to interpolate an error it can't correct (apparently you can get software that does, but I've not tried it).

None of which says anything about how enjoyable the listening experience is.

quote:

Originally posted by Nathaniel:

And now you go and spoil my party by telling me that I must do better.

I hate you, but I know you're right.

So, EAC on windows or XLD on macos you say. Bugger it. It has to be done.

Be a bit daft to go to that trouble without demonstrating to yourself that you can hear a difference. Why not rip some CDs using EAC and Apple Lossless then compare and let us know?

BTW I'm happy to arrange some double blind listening tests - £20 in the pot each.

Steve

quote:

Pylod,

My guess is there is something wrong with your optical drive. There are five macs in my household and not one produces pops and clicks.

Keith

there it starts...i re-ripped some of the cd´s twice. all my cd´s looks like new. there are still clicks. i mean my records do that from time to time as well and i don´t bother.how can i find out , if my optical drive is broken...oh man...

my thoughts are just when it comes to ripping . we still standing in the beginning of the new era and it is moving fast. who knows what kind of discussions we will have in 2 years from now. so do the rips once proper they might hold for many years. that´s why i prefer to rip to wav and not apple lossless. i think wav is more universal. but maybe this are also just nerd thoughts

anyway...ripping ..what a f... liberty

There is a problem with your computer, or you have some mammouth other task going on, although I am struggling to think of what, I can happily import cds with a 1 gig older intel min whilst downloading via torrent and with drobo dash board running.

And as stated before never, ever had a click or pop. This is not an issue of error correction or file format.

quote:

Originally posted by pcstockton:

You would hear a difference in a rip from Itunes EVERY SINGLE TIME, if the CD had pre-emphasis. Or if there was a pre-track gap with info.

you would hear the difference every time. I would bet my life on it. Because you would hear NOTHING in the latter case, and unlistenable music in the former.

...

I would say about 10% on my CDs have some kind of pre gap track. You will NEVER see them in a Itunes rip. But you will surely wonder where the beginning of the song went.

In my experience I have found evidence to support what Patrick is saying here, and it is pretty much the decider for me. I have Itunes, MacG5 with upgraded DVD DL R/W and Max program. I usually use Itunes because it is quicker. I could hear no difference between Itunes ripping to WAV ("exact" copy mode) and Max-ripped music. UNTIL I got a real sinking spell when some of my itunes ripped music was strangely missing the first few seconds of songs on an entire album. I think one of them was The Byrds "Sweetheart of the Rodeo." Several others too. I thought it was a hardware playback error. You dont need a golden ear (I surely dont have one) to know when the first notes of your favorite tunes are missing. It is a jarring effect obviously. The "pre track gap with info" issue is not solvable currently with Itunes as I understand it, only with the other programs mentioned. Although it will take me longer, I am glad I caught it now before ripping another 100 gigs of music that did not have all the MUSIC, literally. Now that WOULD be a waste of time.

John

PC

Just pulled down XLD. Documentation isn't great What would your recommend settings be for most paranoid/accurate ripping?

Whilst I'm unlikely to move away from the iTunes player - (I just like it) - I'm interested in getting the ripping done as well as possible.

Intend to compare approaches in a couple of weeks - too busy with real work at present

Any guidance appreciated.


Thanks


Richard

John M, what you have there is an issue. Its nothing to do with using EAC either, but probably a problem with itunes.
Have you the latest itunes?

Having done google I am still non the wiser as to what exactly pre track gap info is? Is it useful on a standard red book CD player?

Here you go Gary

pre gap

I don't think i'll be having sleepless nights over it.

quote:

Originally posted by munch:
John have you got Skype yet?

yes but I dont have a proper way to use it, i.e. head set with mic. I can use my Isight camera maybe. I will email you off forum.

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
John M, what you have there is an issue. Its nothing to do with using EAC either, but probably a problem with itunes.
Have you the latest itunes?

Having done google I am still non the wiser as to what exactly pre track gap info is? Is it useful on a standard red book CD player?

I do have the latest. When I re rip with MAX it dissappeared. So there it is...

PS Gary, as you can see from the post you answered, i am a mac user, so EAC does not figure in anyway. Makes me wonder how you came to such a rapid diagnosis anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by winkyincanada:

PCS, you seem to have done the research. What's the score here? Bit perfect - the goal; if the bits are basically unrecoverable due to physical barriers on the disc, how do we ever get there? If the bits are messed up because of poor read-control software, I can see how some programs are better than others.

Your thoughts?

Winky,

Some errors are not correctable whether they are physical or not.

If an error is encountered hopefully it can be corrected. If not a log file tells you where it occurs, on which track at what time.

Of course some errors are not correctable, albeit rare. If it encounters an uncorrectable error it will not "guess". It basically reads the sector over and over comparing it back to itself until it comes up with a certain number of matches.

I think if you can achieve what the HDX, EAC, or XLD address, your rips will be as good as possible, given the source media.

Keep in mind... in the future you will buy the data directly from the artist without the middle step of extracting it from a disc of plastic.

Then DACing is the only concern.

quote:

Originally posted by paremus:
PC

Just pulled down XLD. Documentation isn't great What would your recommend settings be for most paranoid/accurate ripping?

Richard,

I would ensure the following:

- Secure Mode (NEVER BURST)
- Test and Copy
- DISABLE CACHE!!!
- Accurate stream if available
- No use of C2 pointers
- Correct your READ offset on your drive.. you can determine here: http://www.accuraterip.com/driveoffsets.htm
- Gap detection is most likely handled manually before you rip.


I haven't played around with it yet. But i look forward to.

You might need to look into another player though if you decide on FLAC as your codec of choice.

i hope this helps some.