Ripping CD's - Is iTunes good enough?

The data you’re feeding it is not identical the original CD so it can’t match it to the original CD to begin with - this is not a problem you’d be having if the disc was ripped following the correct procedure. If you do anything to alter the data, it is no longer “that disc” - so how can it even find “that disc” in the database? It’s now your own creation. No match.

 

I'm not interested in making an investigation out of it. I'm satisfied with my perception of the facts.

 

Not the case; as I've said at least twice, I've compared FRESH dbPoweramp logs with CT immediately after ripping; no editing, no variance from the secure ripping procedure, no NOTHING.

CT's figures from AR are inaccurate.

Please let it drop, in accordance with my reply re: "investigation".

 

About ten years ago I ripped everything to Apple Lossless and haven't looked back. My ears are pleased.

Michael

 

Glad you’re liking it! I used dbpoweramp exclusively for years until recently when I switched to XLD. I needed the log function of XLD and dbpoweramp either didn’t generate the logs or produced ones in a different format than what I needed, I can’t remember. Both are excellent programs. You may want to check out XLD before you pay cash for dbpoweramp since XLD is free. I’m sure there are good guides online that can walk you through the settings.

 

The only thing iTunes is good for is Apple and their profits.

 

I'm not familiar with either of these methods, but I'll look into it some more before asking questions. Thanks for the info

 

What is meant in this context by "robust?" Does it mean less chance for file corruption?

 

I think you can do this with xAct http://xact.scottcbrown.org/ but it's Mac based only.

Handy program to have for a few reasons but especially if you have legacy lossless formats to deal with e.g. shn.

 

What you are up against are the crowd who think they can hear one bit error in 65000 in a second of audio.

Oh and they can also hear well over 45kHz too.

 

Ok, how about I show you something contrary to your perception. Does this change your perception?

EAC Log from 24 Oct 2015

Code:

Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 4 from 7. December 2014

EAC extraction logfile from 24. October 2015, 23:04

Belle and Sebastian / If You're Feeling Sinister

Used drive  : HL-DT-STDVD-ROM GDR8161B   Adapter: 1  ID: 0

Read mode : Burst

Read offset correction                      : 102
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out          : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks   : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations       : Yes
Used interface                              : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000

Used output format              : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate                : 1024 kBit/s
Quality                         : High
Add ID3 tag                     : No
Command line compressor         : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "COMMENT=%comment%" -T "TOTALTRACKS=%numtracks%" %source% -o %dest%


TOC of the extracted CD

     Track |   Start  |  Length  | Start sector | End sector
    ---------------------------------------------------------
        1  |  0:00.32 |  4:48.43 |        32    |    21674
        2  |  4:49.00 |  3:48.02 |     21675    |    38776
        3  |  8:37.02 |  3:51.65 |     38777    |    56166
        4  | 12:28.67 |  4:14.53 |     56167    |    75269
        5  | 16:43.45 |  4:11.05 |     75270    |    94099
        6  | 20:54.50 |  3:25.37 |     94100    |   109511
        7  | 24:20.12 |  5:21.15 |    109512    |   133601
        8  | 29:41.27 |  3:42.08 |    133602    |   150259
        9  | 33:23.35 |  4:17.52 |    150260    |   169586
       10  | 37:41.12 |  3:41.40 |    169587    |   186201


Range status and errors

Selected range

     Filename C:\EAC Temp\Belle and Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister.wav

     Peak level 99.9 %
     Extraction speed 25.3 X
     Test CRC 4C2DE7E1
     Copy CRC 4C2DE7E1
     Copy OK

No errors occurred

 
AccurateRip summary
 
Track  1  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [003B17A8]  (AR v2)
Track  2  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [E07BB5D3]  (AR v2)
Track  3  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [FA2590E3]  (AR v2)
Track  4  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [23871983]  (AR v2)
Track  5  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [CE9CB139]  (AR v2)
Track  6  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [DA908AF0]  (AR v2)
Track  7  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [BA391066]  (AR v2)
Track  8  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [F75A6505]  (AR v2)
Track  9  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [B37C26E7]  (AR v2)
Track 10  accurately ripped (confidence 3)  [69C28C47]  (AR v2)
 
All tracks accurately ripped

End of status report

---- CUETools DB Plugin V2.1.4

[CTDB TOCID: GVkn5qaYSAEFxue6FXkysVB52Pk-] found
Submit result: GVkn5qaYSAEFxue6FXkysVB52Pk- has been confirmed
Track | CTDB Status
  1   | (39/39) Accurately ripped
  2   | (38/39) Accurately ripped
  3   | (38/39) Accurately ripped
  4   | (38/39) Accurately ripped
  5   | (38/39) Accurately ripped
  6   | (38/39) Accurately ripped
  7   | (38/39) Accurately ripped
  8   | (39/39) Accurately ripped
  9   | (39/39) Accurately ripped
 10   | (39/39) Accurately ripped


==== Log checksum 4F3A1AC37B090994EF5D6BB018A2B4A97B33DDAE09BDEE56EC7CBF1993E09A8D ====

CUETools Log from 2 Nov 2015

Code:

[CUETools log; Date: 2/11/2015 1:44:21 AM; Version: 2.1.4]
Pregap length 00:00:32.
[CTDB TOCID: GVkn5qaYSAEFxue6FXkysVB52Pk-] found.
Track | CTDB Status
  1   | (40/40) Accurately ripped
  2   | (39/40) Accurately ripped
  3   | (39/40) Accurately ripped
  4   | (39/40) Accurately ripped
  5   | (39/40) Accurately ripped
  6   | (39/40) Accurately ripped
  7   | (39/40) Accurately ripped
  8   | (40/40) Accurately ripped
  9   | (40/40) Accurately ripped
 10   | (40/40) Accurately ripped
[AccurateRip ID: 000fcbb0-007dfe8b-7109b20a] found.
Track   [  CRC   |   V2   ] Status
 01     [1f97060b|003b17a8] (000+003/222) Accurately ripped
 02     [682d7ecf|e07bb5d3] (000+003/224) Accurately ripped
 03     [7810227b|fa2590e3] (000+003/222) Accurately ripped
 04     [6c067f94|23871983] (000+003/222) Accurately ripped
 05     [10a60208|ce9cb139] (000+003/222) Accurately ripped
 06     [8bd2ab57|da908af0] (000+003/224) Accurately ripped
 07     [e500b8b6|ba391066] (000+003/222) Accurately ripped
 08     [9a23a3da|f75a6505] (000+003/222) Accurately ripped
 09     [1d6dfe4c|b37c26e7] (000+003/223) Accurately ripped
 10     [a591ca9f|69c28c47] (000+003/220) Accurately ripped
Offsetted by -670:
 01     [4a1ffd2b] (010/222) Accurately ripped
 02     [c3ae5e6f] (010/224) Accurately ripped
 03     [abe8bd0b] (010/222) Accurately ripped
 04     [216647db] (010/222) Accurately ripped
 05     [096db783] (010/222) Accurately ripped
 06     [c04f2599] (010/224) Accurately ripped
 07     [acce68d2] (010/222) Accurately ripped
 08     [91682ea0] (010/222) Accurately ripped
 09     [68764012] (010/223) Accurately ripped
 10     [682fc9b1] (009/220) Accurately ripped
Offsetted by -11:
 01     [1d9d17db] (018/222) Accurately ripped
 02     [42b4f5df] (018/224) Accurately ripped
 03     [e3e638e3] (018/222) Accurately ripped
 04     [afbd140f] (017/222) Accurately ripped
 05     [db0fdd27] (016/222) Accurately ripped
 06     [257ade71] (017/224) Accurately ripped
 07     [153bec96] (018/222) Accurately ripped
 08     [51661a49] (018/222) Accurately ripped
 09     [83887e3b] (018/223) Accurately ripped
 10     [e8310acc] (016/220) Accurately ripped
Offsetted by -6:
 01     [4d0eb2ab] (037/222) Accurately ripped
 02     [b0d479ef] (039/224) Accurately ripped
 03     [6d108bcb] (038/222) Accurately ripped
 04     [488079a2] (040/222) Accurately ripped
 05     [6d31d979] (040/222) Accurately ripped
 06     [503b265f] (040/224) Accurately ripped
 07     [69723c2b] (039/222) Accurately ripped
 08     [cf8db5e8] (039/222) Accurately ripped
 09     [551f5b5a] (039/223) Accurately ripped
 10     [558b9089] (040/220) Accurately ripped
Offsetted by 658:
 01     [4ffd682b] (045/222) Accurately ripped
 02     [9dfa956f] (044/224) Accurately ripped
 03     [2e385a8b] (044/222) Accurately ripped
 04     [0e4957fc] (044/222) Accurately ripped
 05     [49ec8b7c] (043/222) Accurately ripped
 06     [1e4ddbe7] (044/224) Accurately ripped
 07     [9a696036] (043/222) Accurately ripped
 08     [0db33d30] (042/222) Accurately ripped
 09     [41c876a2] (043/223) Accurately ripped
 10     [42e75761] (043/220) Accurately ripped
Offsetted by -1345:
 01     [4537597b] (000/222) No match (V2 was not tested)
 02     [b10fb9ff] (000/224) No match (V2 was not tested)
 03     [569704b3] (000/222) No match (V2 was not tested)
 04     [0c202973] (000/222) No match (V2 was not tested)
 05     [e7dbd902] (000/222) No match (V2 was not tested)
 06     [5ea6dc63] (000/224) No match (V2 was not tested)
 07     [6947d411] (000/222) No match (V2 was not tested)
 08     [0a851dc7] (000/222) No match (V2 was not tested)
 09     [e1e7a4b9] (000/223) No match (V2 was not tested)
 10     [bd734306] (000/220) No match (V2 was not tested)
Offsetted by -5:
 01     [f0256b3b] (000/222) No match
 02     [fa0dfabf] (000/224) No match
 03     [eee5cf93] (000/222) No match
 04     [bf6ee9b4] (000/222) No match (V2 was not tested)
 05     [989f2204] (002/222) Accurately ripped
 06     [e3a60723] (000/224) No match (V2 was not tested)
 07     [aa747caa] (000/222) No match
 08     [1bfc083b] (000/222) No match
 09     [4bd7212d] (000/223) No match
 10     [383744e2] (000/220) No match

Track Peak [ CRC32  ] [W/O NULL] [  LOG   ]
 --   99.9 [4C2DE7E1] [6699EA99]   CRC32
 01   99.9 [2EC8083B] [AB606E3D]        
 02   99.9 [1F70D6AD] [6B481B87]        
 03   99.9 [FEA672F5] [29812E21]        
 04   97.0 [06B1448B] [926FCDC7]        
 05   99.9 [53BEC3F3] [9FCD4DA8]        
 06   99.9 [4AB58B21] [4D58A69B]        
 07   99.9 [B350DAE4] [8B120746]        
 08   99.9 [E2610BA0] [319D612E]        
 09   99.9 [7BCB95BB] [FC492D58]        
 10   99.9 [BBB9C196] [2C55C64D]        

Exact AccurateRip V2 matches when comparing EAC to CUETools.

 

No.

Why or how would it? Are you insinuating that I'm hallucinating or something?

I'm seeing what I'm seeing on my computer with my rips. How would your experience affect that?

 

Lol, all the best.

 

Took long enough . . .

 

That's a pretty sweeping (and incorrect) statement. It is good for listening to music, none of which I purchased from Apple. It plays 24/192 needledrops, it's easy to use and I have no issues with it. Your type of post should be against the forum's rules.

 

That'd be pushing the rules farther than they were intended to go.

 

He's essentially saying that anyone using iTunes is an idiot. This is a borderline personal attack IMO, plus it is outright false.

 

Ok to clarify, many of my friends and members of this forum use iTunes. None of whom do I consider idiots or any other derogatory description. I hold the belief that all animate and inanimate aspects of our world are to be respected and viewed as part of whatever this existence is...equally. If my comment on Apples' software offended you well from my point of view that is your issue with some sort of identification with being a user. Users of less than perfect items (even if perfection does exist) are not diminished in any way by their choice, as I see it. My dislike and rejection of iTunes has to do with it being a closed source system that forces users to use under the regulation of the parent company. In specific is the lack of support for open source third party utilites and Flac. file types (natively). Full disclosure, I have an iPhone and it is the best phone I have had to date. Personally I prefer other software options to use as interfaces for my music library (JRiver, Foobar and a number of front-ends specific to systems like BlueSound, Cambridge, Oppo and others). Some even have versions to run on the Apple OS. So to perhaps put an end to this I will revise my statement and say I think iTunes is good only for playing music natively on an Apple products.

 

I use iTunes, and I'm a GENIUS!

 

I think this statement is the key.

As someone who has never had an Apple computer (Windows and Linux) or smartphone (Android), I have no idea how well iTunes works on Apple products.

On my previous Windows computers, however, iTunes might as well have been bloatware. It took forever to load and crashed often. The features were nothing to write home about, either. Even Windows Media Player was more stable, and that's not saying much. As such, on my current computer, which I've had for about two years, I haven't even installed iTunes. I simply have no use for it. EAC, foobar, and WMP pretty much take care of what I need.

All of my Apple using friends, however, have no problem with iTunes. Many love it. So, over the years, I've had to conclude that iTunes works a lot smoother, and is much more convenient, on the Apple OS, which is what the OP was asking about anyway, if I understood correctly. (Hell, it may even sound better on Apple hardware.)

 

If you don't like ITunes don't use it. Simple. I don't like JRiver, I find it hard to use or even to understand. It needs a complete rewrite to simplify the control structure as it is overly complex. Written for geeks by geeks.

 

iTunes does a nice job ripping CDs and is super-convenient. However, with any decent-sized CD collection, it is likely that at least one, and perhaps a few, discs will not actually rip 100% perfectly, and some of these errors could be audible (as skips, clicks, and/or distortion). For this reason, I stopped using iTunes when, like the OP, I decided a few years ago to rip by entire CD collection for backup and archive purposes.

I switched to XLD because it's free and rock-solid, and will do secure ripping (which iTunes won't do, although it does have an error-correction mode that's better than nothing), and it will query the AccurateRip database, as noted by others above. Since a Mac version became available, dbPowerAmp has gotten very positive reviews among Mac users too.

I can't speak to whether or not CueTools correctly quieries the AR database - but that particular issue aside, otherwise all secure ripping apps do a fine job, and there doesn't tend to be a ton of variation among them. That is, if you find one setup can rip some problematic CDs accurately and another setup cannot, in my experience it's more likely to be due to different optical drives than different software. (It also possibly could be different preference settings in the software - e.g. max ripping speed, and so on.)

Finally, file format: Apple Lossless and FLAC are equally as "robust" as each other (whatever that might even mean). And there's absolutely, positively zero problem converting back and forth between lossless formats (FLAC, ALAC, AIFF, WAV, even APE and SHN) in terms of maintaining the original audio data and fidelity. (As far as album art and tags, that's another story - and you're best off with ALAC or FLAC for those, IMHO.)

Most of the rest of the discussion, while perhaps interesting, is irrelevant.

 

I would agree that iTunes does do a decent job of ripping CDs. However, like you, I decided to rip my entire collection to ALAC (I am using an iMac) because I wanted to listen to my music via a digital server. I must honestly report that I initially did have problems with iTunes when I started ripping my collection. Perhaps one out of twenty CDs exhibited some type of anomaly- clicks, pops, etc. Also, iTunes really does run MUCH better on an Apple computer than on a Windows computer (I've personally have used iTunes on an iMac and on a Windows computer).

Subsequently, I made the decision to start using dBpoweramp (on the recommendation of some friends) because I really didn’t want to waste my time re-ripping parts of my collection after I discovered errors that could have been the result of using iTunes. When I initially made this decision, I was primarily using Mac computers. However, I kept an old Windows computer around just to rip CDs because, at that time, dBpoweramp was Windows only (since then Spoon wrote a OS X version of dBpoweramp that runs almost exactly as the Windows version does).

Sadly, I’ve found that certain CD drives just don’t accurately rip EVERY CD (even using dBpoweramp). When one CD drive I own doesn’t seem to rip a specific CD accurately, I just move the CD to another drive and it always seems to rip accurately in the second drive.

Since I’m running my server on an iMac, most of my music is either in ALAC format or AIFF format. I agree that it really doesn’t matter what format the file is in as long as it is lossless- I routinely convert between any of the lossless formats without the loss of audio quality. I also agree ALAC and FLAC have the better provisions for metadata.

As far as what software to use, I believe people should whatever software they feel comfortable using.

 

How I feel about iTunes CD ripping vs. the fussy alternatives:

 

As I wrote earlier about 140,0000 songs all ripped into iTunes.

So far less than ten I had to re rip and a couple that didn’t load at all but worked when I tried on another Mac.