Time to re rip and import

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?

Gary,
Have you ever seen the counter on your CDP stay at 0:00 for a few seconds, maybe more, before a track starts?

Some pregaps are quite long although 2 second gaps are common.

Sometimes there is music on these pregaps. Why??? ask the artists....

Sometimes entire "hidden" songs. You of course hear all of this info if the CD is played on a CDP. But when ripped, they are not "seen" and not ripped. YOU LOSE MUSIC. Maybe James wont loose sleep over it. But he will lose some music.

It is important to me at least.

Also, gapless playback... which i MUCH more important to me. But that is a player issue.. not a ripping one.

-Patrick

Nathanial,

I feel your pain...

I ripped about 800 cds to 256, 320, and V0 as i learned the ropes. I never considered ripping to wav, or later, compressed Lossless. I just used whatever WMP had set as default.

It wasn't until i used these files in my home system thqat I found them to be unlistenable.

When on a portable player through earbuds or in the car, the mp3 were fine. But on a decent kit they were unbearable.

You can rip to any lossless codec of your choice. And convert them to any other without any loss. ALAC to FLAC to WAV to WMA lossless, back to FLAC then to wav then a CD, then reburn and reconvert again!!!

Provided you have a errorless rip and corrected drive offsets, you could go forever.

PC

Do you use a dedicated CD drive for rips or do you use your notebook/pc drive? Eventually I am planning on starting and am curious to know if my MacBook Pro laptop drive will be up to the task.

Gregg

Gregg,

I've ripped about 350 CDs with my MacBook and intend to do many more - no problems.

Steve

quote:

and am curious to know if my MacBook Pro laptop drive will be up to the task.

Most of the Matsushita low-profile drives used in MacBook Pro units are caching; few if any allow you to disable this.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve S1:
Gregg,

I've ripped about 350 CDs with my MacBook and intend to do many more - no problems.

Steve

Steve

I know you are using iTunes for the rips - have you had a look at XLD which was mentioned above? I am curious about adjusting the drive offset as that does seem to be an important component.

Regards
Gregg

Gregg,

While not all drives are made the same, I wouldn't worry about it unless your computer is really old.

I have used my laptop's drive, my tower's drive, and an external drive all with equal results.

The external is by far the fastest and performs the error correction (when it happens) really quickly.

The laptop's drive was used for 80% of my rips although it does make the laptop quite warm when doing a bunch successively.

The reason i used the laptop although maybe not the best for the job was because I could put the laptop in my office. My tower is in the listening room with all my music, and I'd rather not hear the drives spinning.

As long as you correct the drive's read offset and it seems to rip damaged discs I would assume all to be well. I am sure your Mac drive is perfect.

If ripped "properly" i imagine it will take maybe 10-20 minutes, depends on how many errors it has to attempt to fix. Dont worry about how long it takes. You are only going to do it once.

It took me years to rip everything, and it was a very pleasant process. You get a chance to revisit music you haven't heard in a while.

quote:

Originally posted by David Dever:

quote:

and am curious to know if my MacBook Pro laptop drive will be up to the task.

Most of the Matsushita low-profile drives used in MacBook Pro units are caching; few if any allow you to disable this.

Whoa. Didn't know that.... thanks dD.

This is worth looking into. If caches and this cannot be defeated, you must get an external drive.

In the end, it might not be a bad idea to get an external and save the wear and tear on both the notebook drive as well as the notebook itself.

Most certainly it will be faster.

-Patrick

quote:

Originally posted by David Dever:

quote:

and am curious to know if my MacBook Pro laptop drive will be up to the task.

Most of the Matsushita low-profile drives used in MacBook Pro units are caching; few if any allow you to disable this.

Thanks for the info.

This was also news to PCStockton. As such Dave what is your take on the disabling cache issue as posted above? If so then an external drive might be the answer (if one wants to take things to the extreme).

Gregg

So given a CD drive. How do you determine if its cache can be disabled? Go back to the drives technical specs?

Cheers

Richard

quote:

Originally posted by munch:
I have this covered,I already have a very good external drive thats only been used two or four times. Still in its box

Which one?

I know I missed something important here, but what is caching in terms of a DVD drive and what does this matter if it does or does not?

If you use a Darwin port of CD-Paranoia on a Mac then it will disable the SuperDrive cache while ripping - you will need to run this under X-Windows or command line interface.

You can do this on any standard Mac, but you need to understand the underlying operating system (basically Unix) or at least how to install Darwin ports to do this.

Good luck, I'm off to play some vinyl

Rotf

Caching... kind of technical.. let me see if I can break it down for you.

Basically....

As the CD drive reads the disc, if caching, it keeps the data in the RAM, where it can be accessed quicker and easier.

The problem with using a caching drive, or implementing a cache when ripping, occurs during any error correction.

Ok, sooooo error correction.

Every sector of the CD is read at least twice and then compared. If there is any kind of read or write error the software will read and re-read the sector in question until it can identically match a certain number of reads.

If your drive is caching data, the comparisons will be made against the original cached data which will obviously ALWAYS be the same.


The important thing is not whether your drive caches or not, in fact I thought all drives do.

It really matters that you ensure to "defeat" it, or guarantee the ripping software does not utilize it.

In EAC it is simple to set this up, and of course like the rest of the set-up, it only needs to be done once.

But Dave's comments re: drives that have undefeatable caching is new to me. Perhaps it is a Mac thing only. I am not sure. But it is just one more reason for me to use my PC for rips and not my Mac.

If you have a Mac and you CANNOT defeat the caching on your drive, I would simply rip in burst mode without any error correction, and most likely Itunes would then suffice.

Or get an external drive and rip "properly".

-Patrick

quote:

Originally posted by ROTF:
you will need to run this under X-Windows or command line interface.

Command line interface...

I've done this once on my mac under a heavy supervision of my geek god.

I'd hate to be doing that as a day gig, but I *felt* smarter.

I keep a Plextor on hand.

Me too.

The Plextor was highly recommended by my Geek Gods, as well. ( three seal of approvals )

The painful memory of HD shennanigan is now slowly coming back to me...

quote:

The painful memory of HD shennanigan is now slowly coming back to me...

Just by chance, burst mode and RAM cached ripping may work, like it does for millions and millions and millions of users.

quote:

Originally posted by Keith L:

Just by chance, burst mode and RAM cached ripping may work, like it does for millions and millions and millions of users.

That reminds me of the "Eat Shit. A Million Flies Cant Be Wrong" bumper sticker.

Why would you fight the opportunity to have virtually errorless rips?? I thought that was the goal of a nice CDP.

Extract the data with as few errors, and artifacts as possible, then DAC the data with as little jitter as you can.

Ignoring the "proper" rip method is like putting the 555's DAC in the 5i and expecting it to perform on the same level.

But in the event that a disc is damaged, as a bunch of mine from the mid 80s are, burst mode might be the only way to rip it at all. If in secure mode with test and copy etc, if you encounter really extreme damage it might never get past it.

quote:

Originally posted by Frank F:

My Laptop - a Sony Vaio VGN FZ21s that is 8 months old and includes Blu Ray does not have optical out. The digital out is via the HDMI socket and is there an adaptor so that can access the audio digital only??

Look into USB converters. Empirical Audio makes some VERY nice superclocked models.

As PC says either a USB or firewire alternative, or consider streaming.