Ripping CDs: Is AccurateRip really necessary, or just being anal?

You know that many of today's burners cannot even burn slow, and the discs are optimized to be burnt fast.

 

Yep, I know that. And I'm not advocating 1X reads and burns. Just use the slowest speed that your equipment supports. It 'usually' works best for audio data. At least from my experience, which has so far included 19 years of CD audio and DVD mastering...

 

I agree -- I look forward to making the switch. Though I still love Tag & Rename, which is only on Windows for now.

 

Ive never used anything other than audiograbber or dbpoweramp on full speed. Havent noticed any issues. But that could be my ears.

 

I'd say use the speed that gives lowest error rates (BLER). Some of my burners, depending on media, have a lower error rate at high speed than at low speed - then again if you go too high, errors also increase...while the red book spec on pressed CDs allows a BLER rate up to, I think, 220; a Taiyo Yuden CDR blank burned on my Plextor 8/20 at 8X usually has a rate of 5 to maximum 10. That's about twenty times lower than allowable on a commercial CD, which says something about the quality of the drive/media combination. I have printouts somewhere of some commercial CDR blanks' errors that I have used over the years, and off the top of my head, nothing ever beat the Taiyos. Stuff like CMC and Ritek was way, way higher, almost approaching the 100s in some cases. Just my experience, yours may vary.

 

That was my experience as well, and why I settled on a burn rate of somewhere between minimum and maximum. Generally, most disks and drives today are rated at 52X, so I think about 20X-26X works fine. Anything slower than that is crazy -- and this is verified by the links I posted a page or two back.

Note that this did not used to be the case in the 1990s. Once the manufacturers started optimizing blank disks for high-speed burning, I think the problem is that this made slow speeds obsolete over time. Even Taiyo-Yuden will tell you the same thing: that they don't recommend burning at ultra-slow speeds with modern disk media.

Ritek is a terrible, terrible brand, and you'd be amazed by how many famous-name companies slap their brand on Ritek media.

 

Ritek isn't as bad as it once was, but don't use them for anything important, or certainly not for archiving. Until I bought a car that plays USB, I would buy a pack of cheap Ritek brand CD-R on sale at Fry's Electronics for the car. I still buy packs of cheap Ritek DVD-R for the video recorder for time-shifting.

These days, the only CD-R I ever burn are for the occasional friend who wants a copy of something. Years ago I stocked up on lots of CD-R. but, since I started archiving to hard drives, I have lots of blanks sitting around that don't get used. I have several Verbatims, several of the original Kodak silver+gold CD-R, and even a couple of Mitsui still around. Unless I can adjust the speed of the burn in software, the Mitsui are totally useless now.

Years ago, I bought Taiyo Yuden blanks under the brand of Maxell Pro that I used to get at Staples. Those discs still hold up today.

Anyway, if I allow the burner/software to optimize the burn, it usually starts out at 24x and progresses to about 36x. So, that's about the medium between the lowest and fastest speed.

 

The original gold Kodak CD-Rs (and DVD-Rs) that the company actually made were great. Unfortunately, I think they switched to Ritek right around 2002-2003 or so, and it all went to hell.

It's scary when you use something like Nero to check the actual manufacturer of the blank disk you're about to burn. I think Sony, Maxell, TDK, and 3M all bailed on the blank disk media business a long time ago. Verbatim, Taiyo-Yuden, and Mitsui are still making discs and do OK. But I agree, it's kinda nutty to be burning discs in 2014.

 

They gor out od the CD-R/DCD-R business because it wasn't profitable for them anymore. It was around the same time they started talking about getting out of the film business too. It was a couple of years later that they started using central Asian manufactures. I do not trust their brand today.

But, an awful lot of people still do burn discs, especially for music. That's why they are still on the market.

 

It is nutty, but I'm a nut I do, partly out of nostalgia, partly because it can't hurt to have one extra backup, and it is the closest you can get to creating a playable physical medium on a budget. I can't afford a cutting lathe and a pressing plant ... Tape is expensive, hard disks and solid state are great for mass storage, but for single copies or small runs optical still has some life left in it. And it is kind of idiot proof too - closed write-once optical media are far less likely to be accidentally erased/corrupted/altered.

 

Trust me, they can and do get corrupted over time.

 

I used to work at a CD/DVD replication pressing plant. Unfortunately though, they shut down my site and moved it to Mexico. Prior to the relocation, we had to help tear down the equipment in our respective areas of the plant, and pack it for shipment to the new site. I had to disassemble all of our studio mastering gear, and our computer data test stations, and audio transfer stations. Once I finished our area, I went over to Glass Mastering, and helped dismantle the laser beam recorder cutting lathes (I had worked in Glass Mastering for 6 years, so I knew the equipment in that area too). The sickening thing was no one at the new facility wanted the audio cutting lathe. Just the 2 DVD cutting lathes were being saved. So, our audio lathe, and a cutting lathe, used for hologram discs, were junked!!! Sold as scrap metal! That sucked!

 

Just wanted to say that this is the thread that convinced me to switch from iTunes to XLD for ripping. It only took me a few CDs until I found one that wouldn't accurately rip the last track - and it was my pristine DCC Pet Sounds gold CD, a disc that for all intents and purposes should have worked flawlessly. Apparently not in that drive.

It is possible to get a perfect rip with iTunes, but the problem is that you won't know for sure if your rips are error-free. A previous poster said it; to know that you're getting the best possible rip you need good condition CDs, a good optical drive, and error-checking software. Some of the programs are free. If you're on the fence about this I would strongly recommend trying it out.

 

Just for kicks and giggles, I did a blind test between some ALAC ripped with iTunes 10.7 and some ALAC ripped with dBpoweramp. The iTunes rips all have pops in at least one of the tracks.

So just for those still interested in the thread, yes, AR is necessary. Get EAC, dBpoweramp or XLD and do it right the first time.

 

So, don't pay $135 for one of these ? I know...just thought it was funny: "Due to the rising price of gold, we were forced to raise the price of this item" ... I bet a classic TY blank would last just as long (and probably not even close to 300 years).

http://www.universityproducts.com/cart.php?m=product_list&c=260

 

When you consider how much R&D and work went into creating this technology over the years, you would think someone would step in and at least preserve, if not use it. A really depressing scenario.

 

Yes, I know. It was depressing. For a long time. And the thing that irked me most, was there was enough good equipment left behind, to be eventually sold or just scrapped, you could have started a new CD Audio/Rom pressing plant. Unbelievable.

 

They could've sold it on eBay for $399!

Guaranteed, Delkin does not make this "archival" disk -- they just buy it from somebody else and slap their name on it.

 

I could have gotten into the record business...cheap!

 

That's a great business to get into if you just plan to run it as a hobby and never actually make a profit.

 

FWIW, you can also look up the iTunes Encode program to run EAC through. It will simply use iTunes as the external encoder so you still get accurate rips but then it puts them all into your iTunes library for you and encodes them to 256k AAC.

I'm not sure how, but I'm sure there's a way you can run this so that it compresses to Apple Lossless or AIFF also instead of AAC.

http://jetshred.com/2008/04/10/perfect-aac-rips-with-eac-and-itunes/

 

Why not just do all the rips with dBPowerAmp, and then take the Apple Lossless files and make 256kbps AAC files within iTunes?

Or: do a two-pass conversion at one time within dBPowerAmp (which is available as a script), so that it rips the lossless file and then immediately makes a second copy as a 256kbps AAC. Works fine, though it takes a little more time.

 

I would do that if I actually bought dbPoweramp. I use the free version that won't let me do two streams of conversions simultaneously. I would buy it except that i've already done my ripping.

 

I might never finish my ripping, I mean really finish. The public library has a few things I want too.

But I have done the major bulk of it now. It's time for a high end DAC to be considered. I'm using the built in one in my onkyo receiver which is old by today's standards. It must be a weak link in the chain.

 

You're right. But the EAC/iTunes Encode might be useful for people who want to do this for free.