Friends,
I installed dbpoweramp and configured it to rip to Flac Level 5. I have now ripped a total of 5 CDs, all of which show a qualifier of .Flac. I then copied all of these files to a 16 GB thumb drive, all of which consumed a total of 1.1 GB of that drive. The albums, together with their file sizes, are as follows:
Willie Nelson: Stardust 221 MB
Beethoven: Symphony # 5 146 MB
Ronstadt: Silk Purse 168 MB
Bob Marley: Legend 373 MB
Vivaldi: Four Seasons 189 MB
By my count, that would mean that I could get approximately 70 CD quality albums on one 16 GB drive. I am having a crisis of confidence, here. Do these numbers sound correct to you--if not, what am I missing. My goal of course is to be certain I am getting CD quality rips.
Also, if anyone knows, after dbpoweramp rips an individual track, it either puts out an "Accurate" or "Inaccurate" messge by each one. Beside each of these messages, there is a number--the smallest number I have seen beside the "Accurate" message is "2". The largest is "17." Any idea what this number means?
Thanks and best regards,
Russ
Posted on: 04 November 2012 by Foxman50
Hi Russ
I set dbpoweramp to no compression, for not any real reason other than i think that the less work the player has to work the better for sound quality, so cant comment on file sizes as mine are larger.
However i asked the same question regarding the number at the end and i cant recal the exact reply except to say ignore it, its just to say how many others got the same reading as you with the same drive your using. As long as you dont get errors its fine.
Posted on: 04 November 2012 by Gale 401
Richard,
Please when you see this move it over to the Streaming Audio Room.
Russ needs some help to get his Flac sorted.
Then once he has that covered he will need help to convert the FLAC to WAV.
Because everyone knows WAV sounds better on Naim streamers.
Stu
Posted on: 04 November 2012 by DaveBk
The sizes look about right to me. And Foxman's right, the numbers just show how many people have reported an identical rip on AccurateRip. It's so unlikely that 2 people would get the same checksum if a real read error occurred, you can assume anything north of 2 is ok. On more popular CDs you can get large numbers - not sure if they limit it in the end, but I don't think I've ever seen a number over 99.
Posted on: 04 November 2012 by Russ
Thanks, Gentlemen. Just what I was looking for.
Stu: Wasn't really sure which forum my question belonged to--and I know it will get attention either place. I guess my thinking was that since I was ripping the material to a PC and putting it on a thumb drive, no streaming was involved. That's why I put it on the Hi Fi board. But in retrospect, I guess the Hi Fi forum is more appropriate for hardware, etc. Thanks.
Russ
Posted on: 04 November 2012 by Gale 401
Originally Posted by Russ:
Thanks, Gentlemen. Just what I was looking for.
Stu: Wasn't really sure which forum my question belonged to--and I know it will get attention either place. I guess my thinking was that since I was ripping the material to a PC and putting it on a thumb drive, no streaming was involved. That's why I put it on the Hi Fi board. But in retrospect, I guess the Hi Fi forum is more appropriate for hardware, etc. Thanks.
Russ
Russ,
You still might be better off having Richard move it over.
You will get more info over there on all aspects and changing from Flac to Wav on sticks.
Stu.
Posted on: 05 November 2012 by McGhie
Hi Russ
Uncompressed FLAC and Wav are about the same size, with the FLAC files being slightly (around 1%) bigger. A 'full' CD is in the order of 750MB (if the CD is only 45 mins long then uncompressed it will be less than 500MB - as a ballpark I tend to guess at 500MB per album, uncompressed). Your compressed FLAC files will be smaller still (I think if you look at the properties of one of your ripped files then it will indicate the percentage compression - it will be tens of percents), so low hundreds of MB sounds about right for lossless compressed albums.
dBpoweramp comes with a batch converter, so once you've got a lossless rip you can convert between lossless formats (e.g. FLAC to Wav or compressed FLAC to uncompressed FLAC), retaining all of the bits. You can do this for a track, an album or your whole collection. I've converted my whole collection a couple of times and it's taken a few hours with a three year old quad core processor (can't remember exactly how long - around three hours for around 750 disks).
dBpoweramp uses AccurateRip to compare a checksum (fingerprint) of your rip against checksums for other people's rips. If there's a match then you know you have a lossless rip since (with a very very high probability) you ripped exactly the same bits as someone else. The number indicates how many matches there were for the checksum (and therefore how confident you can be, though I'd say you can be very very confident with a score of one, though I haven't seen the maths).
Cheers
Ian
Posted on: 05 November 2012 by Peter_RN
Originally Posted by Foxman50:
Hi Russ
I set dbpoweramp to no compression, for not any real reason other than i think that the less work the player has to work the better for sound quality, so cant comment on file sizes as mine are larger.
However i asked the same question regarding the number at the end and i cant recal the exact reply except to say ignore it, its just to say how many others got the same reading as you with the same drive your using. As long as you dont get errors its fine.
Hi Foxman
Just to emphasise what others have said, if you are ripping to uncompressed flac you may as well be ripping to WAV. The file will be marginally smaller than the flac and all Naim streamers will prefer being fed WAV.
I too use dbPoweranp and I can assure you that it is perfectly able to retain all of your metadata; so there really is nothing stopping you from using the preferred WAV format.
Why not give it a try? You will save a little space as well if you convert all your files to WAV.
Regards
Peter
Posted on: 05 November 2012 by Foxman50
Hello Peter
My NAS transcodes to WAV before feeding my NDX. To be honest i had ripped everything into FLAC before really trying to see if i heard a difference between the two formats. Subsequently i have found i do indeed prefer WAV, it just seems more of a natural sound somehow.
Anyhow i do prefer the way FLACs appear in nStream, as i found it harder to get them right in WAV format. Maybe thats just me though.
I will probably keep everything in FLAC now ive started, and the extra storage it takes up isnt really of any great concern.
Definitely something everyone should try for themselves though, the WAV - FLAC comparison.
