EAC & dBpoweramp Users – Which do you use/prefer & why?

dBpoweramp is a lot easier if I just want a basic rip, but when I'm doing some archiving of something rare I use EAC for the log/cue capability.

 

a. There is no difference in sound quality, only smaller file size with the higher settings (8 is highest). I always use the max. to save space, but the difference is small in both time to compress and the space saved - so why not?
b. “Verify written audio” does just what it says - verifies that the encoding created an error free file. I always use it, but I also have never encountered a bad encoding.

I always write ReplayGain tags - both track and album values. I use it for most playback (album mode), both on the music server and portable use, because I listen to a very wide variety of source material - from classical to contemporary masterings (i.e., loud). If I want a critical listening session, I just turn it off in the player.

Additionally, even if you don’t use it for playback, ReplayGain is an excellent reference tool for determining volume levels among different albums and masterings. And it only takes a second for dBpa to determine when ripping the files. So why not?

Note, do not use the ReplayGain Apply DSP - this will permanently alter the audio data. This is useful however, for creating personal compilations for non-Replaygain situations - such as car players, etc.

I don’t use this automatically for ripping CD’s anymore, since most HDCD’s don’t use peak extension (i.e., Audio Fidelity). If I find that the CD does use peak extension, then I use it.

 

I'm almost afraid to ask this...it shows my inexperience...but...

Assuming that you do allow dBpa to write the ReplayGain values, um....how do you turn it off when you are playing the tracks? Is this usually something that you find in the Options of the player...like a checkbox or something?

Also, at this time, I'm treating my FLAC files as the digital archive of music on my CDs for my computer. I also convert the FLACs to MP3s immediately after I rip each album & edit/modify the tags. We use the MP3 in our iPods. ReplayGain might come in handier on these files than on the FLAC files - but I guess you have to have one to get the other.

Is there a way to remove the ReplayGain values from files easily? Is it written in the tag?

Again, thanks for your patience!

 

OK...working on configuring dBpoweramp....

I'm at the point where it shows you how to test for C2 Support...

I created a "test CD" & drew a black triangle on the playing side as detailed in Spoon's guide. When I clicked "Detect C2 Support", I got a reply immediately that "C2 error pointers were detected and will be used". The progress bar never appeared.

In his setup guide, Spoon writes: "if a c2 pointer error is signalled right at the start then the cd drive might not be compatible (the above black marker test would signal a c2 error about 1/4 of the way through the test)."

What does "not compatible" mean? That the drive does not report C2 error pointers - or that his test does not work with that drive?

Considering that I'm very far from an expert, what would be your recommendation here?

Again, I apologize for the excrutiating step by step here. I just want to get it right so I don't have to do it again!

Thanks!

 

Options of the player. Most of them (all?) do not have ReplayGain enabled by default.

FWIW, iPods don’t support ReplayGain. I use ReplayGain in album mode on my server because it’s much easier than constantly changing the volume.

It’s just text in the tag - of course it can be removed.

 

Where can the peak extension information be found, when it is present? There have been a few times when I've had an HDCD without realizing it, and discover it only after dBp has done its ripping job (with the HDCD dsp recognition/adjustment feature turned on). So it wouldn't have even occurred to me to check for it (i.e., HDCD), let alone the peak extension info.

Unless there is some harm in doing so, I would think leaving the HDCD dsp feature turned on would be the most practical thing to do.

 

I use EAC because its free, its pretty easy to configure and it does what I need.
It rips to wav, calls the flac executable to convert and tag the files and then later I use oggenc to make smaller files for portable use.
Also, I'd never heard of dBPoweramp before

 

If you add the HDCD options to the available tag info write options, it will display this before ripping. Afterwards, (if I don't already know the answer) I run CUETools to see if peak extension is enabled. In most cases the answer is no. If it is enabled, then I can re-rip with the HDCD DSP to expand.

Harm? Wasted space, the bother of downsizing for portable players and mixed bit rates.

There are some discs with HDCD flags that have no HDCD features. And some discs, like Madonna's "Celebration" comp., has some files with the flag (with no HDCD features) and some without - so you get a needles mix of 16b &24b depth (assuming dBpa decodes each respectively).

 

So I downloaded the dbPowerAMP trial after reading all the impressions and I have to say I was impressed.

+I noticed I'm ripping a lot faster. Much less time correcting tags, checking gaps etc. I was having to do in EAC

+Probably the best tagging support in any program I've used, period. I've ripped ~40 discs with it and I don't think there were any spelling errors.

+The artwork support is surprisingly decent (and often better than iTunes quality, which I suppose many consider the "standard" but I've never been very impressed with). It's not awesome, but it's decent and seems to be better than most programs I've tried.

My only concerns with it are fairly minor:
-It doesn't capitalize common words like "the", "or", etc so I seem to have to fix that by hand. This is minor but everything I've ripped prior has first letters of words capitalized and I just want to be consistent. I've read where a DSP effect will correct this, but file names will not be reflected. If I'm wrong there, someone please set me straight.

-It seems to always want to embed whatever artwork it finds into my FLAC files, so I have to remember to turn it off manually each time. Is there a way I can turn this off?

I wouldn't say that dbPowerAMP is a better ripper than EAC, it does seem considerably speedier for me in secure mode and of course has much better tagging support.

dbPowerAMP of course does not have cuesheet support which I think deterred me in the past, but how much do I need them today? I can still burn the FLACs to disc.

I still like EAC and have a lot of time with it, but I think I will purchase dbPowerAMP and use it to finish ripping my collection.

 

I still get 95% of my cover artwork from albumartexchange.com. You can copy the image to your clipboard and then into dBpa. Be sure to delete the one that dBpa pulls up too by hitting the "-" sign.

dBpa and several of the databases it uses attempt to use proper title capitalization - which is not every word with it’s first letter capitalized. And if the database doesn’t have it, you can try the “Smart capitalize tags” button on the Meta review pane.

Options/Meta Data/Options/Write ID Tags/ and deselect “Album Art”

IIRC, there is a separate DSP download for creating single image/cuesheet. But it blows compared to EAC for cuesheets. The author really doesn’t want to support this option.

 

I use dBpoweramp and like it.

 

Yep, amen to that. I tried at least a half-dozen ripping programs (including EAC and XLD), and dBP beats them all in this area. The support is also top-notch.

You can use Tag & Rename to tweak tags, if you want to be anal-retentive about it. From a purely grammatical point of view, articles, prepositions, and conjunctions really should be lower-case except at the beginning of a title (IMHO), so I think they're doing it right. I concede that not everybody agrees, and some people want "Eye Of The Tiger" instead of "Eye of the Tiger."

I am anal about getting rid of all non-ASCII characters in file names and titles, because it can wreak havoc with operating systems later on. Curly quotes, curly apostrophes, slashes, asterisks... those are bad.

 

I have been going to the Exchange site the past several months, it's fantastic, especially at higher resolutions. I still scan some inserts here and there, I should submit them.

Yeah, I should have have noted I'm aware it's not technically proper grammar. For some reason I just like every first letter of all song titles capitalized when in any sort of software displaying songs. I am sure that may seem a little eccentric or OC to some, it's just a personal preference (and one I'm admittedly reluctant to go away from at this point- have ripped a lot of titles that way).

Aha, thank you. If lower res files are previously embedded, foobar wants to use those for display and I end up stripping them out with xrecode II.

Have to admit it took me some time to get comfortable with not having cuesheets.

Thanks for the helpful replies!

 

Right now, I'm feeling like I'm totally missing something. Everyone is saying that setting up dBpoweramp is so easy - but it seems like EAC is a walk in the park compared to this. I'm beginning to think that I am over-thinking the setup. Do you actually have to do any setup? Can you just set it on "Secure" & start ripping? Does the software figure out the settings it needs?

I can't seem to figure out what the C2 thing should be...what the cache setting should be....and there is zero documentation about what the other checkboxes in the Options should be.

Is there a decent step by step guide anywhere that explains this stuff- like there is for EAC?

Frustrated.

 

OK - venting over...

C2 Setting:

In EAC I never bothered to try to find out if my drive supported C2 - because most instructions I read said not to trust the result of the EAC test & leave the checkbox unchecked.

In dBpoweramp, they suggest doing the black triangle test - and I did. I immediately got an answer stating that "c2 error pointers were detected" - without the progress bar of the test actually starting. The setup guide on the dBpoweramp site says that if that happens, your drive may not be compatible. Compatible with what? The test? The software? C2? Is there another test I can try? How did you find out about your drive(s)?

 

I mostly agree with that, for the same reason. But I found one nice use for them - as delimiters for the mp3tag program.

For example, I format my files as:

Artist - Title {Album Title}.flac
or
2-DigitTrackNumber Artist - Title {Album Title}.flac
or
Artist - Title [45 or LP version] {Album Title}.flac

It's been helpful if I have to convert files through a step that doesn't allow for tagging, like wav files. Doesn't happen often, but it saved me a few hours more than once.

I use curly braces, brackets, and "space-hyphen-space" as delimiters. Those haven't given me any issues. Plus, I allow parentheses in all the fields, like "Was (Not Was)", etc. I've seen the vertical line | used as a delimiter as well.

But there are some characters that are no-no's for me: * / ? < > @ $ The operating systems may be sophisticated enough to handle some of the weird characters in the filenames, but I choose to avoid those for the same reasons as you.

For me, I use just { } [ ] ( ) and -.

 

I use brackets and parentheses in my file names and tags all the time. I wish I didn't have to, but so far it hasn't caused me any issues.

 

You’re way over-thinking this, IMHO. For secure ripping in dBpa:

1. Turn on the option for Secure ripping
2. Un-check C2. Most best practice guides recommend that you NOT use C2 error reporting.
3. Insert x # of required discs to get AccurateRip (and offset) setup

Rip discs

 

Good info, thanks again. I guess I"ll leave the HDCD DSP "on", as nothing there seems particularly bothersome/worrisome. If I had a bunch of HDCDs or HDCD falsely identifying discs, then I might be more concerned about the extra wasted space. But I don't. And the mixed 16b/24b depth aspect seems more like an obsessive-compulsive thing than anything else.

 

This reminds me, I have to fix all those upside down "?"'s that show up so often in my song titles. I wonder if I simply have to delete them and not ever use question marks or if there is a way to keep them right-side up. I think this problem may be player dependent but I haven't paid very close attention to these occurrences.

 

OK - I just ripped my first CD in the Reference version of dBpoweramp 14.2. My test case was the old 1987 mastering of Abbey Road.

With a "secure" setting & the C2 Error Pointers check box "unchecked", my rip took 6:52. Each track displayed a confidence level of "6". However, looking at the results of "Come Together" as an example, you can see the following detail:

AccurateRip: Accurate (confidence 6) [Pass 1]
CRC32: 6B66313B AccurateRip CRC: FA28646D (CRCv2) [DiscID: 017-00232190-01ad66ef-fb0b1c11-1]
AccurateRip Verified Confidence 6 [CRCv2 fa28646d]
AccurateRip Verified Confidence 89 [CRCv1 13551105]
AccurateRip Verified Confidence 6 [CRCv2 fa28646d]
AccurateRip Verified Confidence 89 [CRCv1 13551105]​

With a "secure" setting & the C2 Error Pointers checkbox "checked", the rip completed in 2:03!

Contrasting this to over 20 minutes with EAC, I have to ask: Is this typical of the difference in ripping time between these 2 programs???

With regard to whether or not to check the C2 checkbox, I decided to try Spoon's C2 test. I pulled a "bs" CD that had never been played from a carton of stuff left over from my days as a buyer in the 80s & 90s. I drew his "black triangle" with a permanent marker - with the point starting 1 cm in from where the digital information started on the inside of the CD - and ending right where the information ended on the outside of the CD, 1 cm in width on the outside. Then I ran the C2 detection, and about a quarter of the way thru the process, dBpoweramp reported that C2 Error Pointers were detected.

So, at least in that test, it looks like my drive supports C2. The only decison I have to make is which setting to use. Either one would represent a significantly faster rip time than what I have been used to. Opinions?

With regard to the Cache setting, I ran 2 tests:

dBpoweramp reported "39 KB (17 frames)"
Cachex reported "36 KB / 16 sectors" across multiple runs with 10 tests per run.​

Should I lower the Drive Read Cache value or just leave it at his default of 1024 KB?

Accurate Rip configured my drive with a Sample Offset of "+667". (I wasn't sure what to do with the "Read into Lead-in or Lead-out" checkbox, so I left it unchecked.)

Are there any other crucial settings in dBpoweramp that I need to make sure are correct? (For the most part, I simply followed Spoon's SetUp Guide.)

I REALLY appreciate your help & opinions with this! (And if I am being repetitive & overly "a*al" about this, I apologize - I'm just hoping to be able to "set it & forget it" and be confident that the majority of my rips will be good with these settings.)

Dexter

 

You can still get that from the file structure, and get the album titles from the folder name. Not that hard to do. I agree that a unique identifier like {} or [] will work fine if you really want to go to this extent, and dBP will name the file whatever and however you want it.

I also agree that the file name is arbitrary and ultimately doesn't really matter -- especially when you consider that if you're listening to a server or a portable player, all you're going to see is the metadata anyway. But I like to make sure the file is user readable to a point. As long as all the track numbers, disc numbers, artist names, song titles, years, music genre, and all that stuff is in there, I'm generally happy. The key for me is to be able to arrange the playlists quickly and easily, either by artist, by album, and/or chronologically. And definitely lose the weird high-ASCII characters like the foreign ? marks and all that -- you may find that certain operating systems balk at copying file names like this. I don't even allow "normal" quotes -- just a 'straight' apostrophe is about it, and that's permitted in Windows, Mac, and Linux. No em-dashes, no curly quotes, no diacritical marks, no degrees, none of that stuff. This forces me to deviate from certain artist names -- no "98°" for me -- but I'm not totally nutso on this.

BTW, if you ever want to see screwed up song titles and artist names, watch the readouts on Sirius Satellite Radio sometime. It'll drive you nuts -- quotes, ALL CAPS, Upper And Lower, Mizpellingz, you name it, tons of inconsistencies. It's obvious they used a lot of interns and other staff people who didn't care much to take care of their database and music libraries.

As a sidenote: I have C2 error checking available on my Plextor DVD-ROM drives, but I find for me, it slows the ripping process down so much, it isn't worth it. As long as the disc can make it through AccurateRip, that's good enough for me. And I do have all the drives configured for the proper offsets and all that stuff -- that's another key setup requirement.

 

That's interesting. When I have the C2 checkbox checked, it ripped the CD in one-third the time. Maybe it has to do with the "ULtra Passes" settings?

His guide recommended these values:

Minimum Ultra Passes 1
Maximum Ultra Passes 2
End After Clean Passes 1

Without C2 checked, the suggested values were 2, 4 & 2. (The default values that were set in software were 3, 6 & 2.)

He also suggests raising the Maximum Re-Reads value to from 34 to 60 when C2 is checked.

What exactly does this actually mean?

 

I wouldn't worry too much about tweaking all the settings for C2 and re-reads and passes and such. Set things up so the rips progress quickly for your drive while maintaining accurate rips. If your drive supports C2 and rips are faster with C2 then use C2.

My strategy would be to get dBpoweramp to rip quickly. Rip all your CDs in quick mode. Some CDs may fail AccurateRip or not be in the AccurateRip database. Put those CDs aside to be re-ripped later with tweaked settings that may be slower. AccurateRip will catch when there are problems. So let dBpoweramp rip quickly so you can get your shelves of CDs all done.

Some tagging tweaks to do write "AccurateRip Result" "Pre-Emphasis" and "HDCD" to the tags. You'll be able to use tagging utilities to scan your rips and find which discs/tracks failed AccurateRip or which discs have HDCD or pre-emphasis. Then you can go back and re-rip those. For the discs with HDCD you can enable the HDCD DSP plugin and make a decoded copy of the CD. Keep both the undecoded and decoded HDCD rips.

And make sure your file naming settings put the tracks for multiple artist albums and compilation albums all in the same directory. It's a real mess if multiple artist albums get split to separate directories for each artist. I've been using a naming setting like this: "[IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[IFCOMP]Various Artists[][IF!COMP][artist][][] - [album]\[track] [artist] - [title]"

If your local library has CDs to check out look for some CDs there that are scratched. The library will have lots of scratched CDs with all sorts of different types of scratches to experiment with. That will allow you to experiment with C2 or no-C2 to see how your drive behaves. Will also allow you to experiment with how the number of passes and re-reads affect the rip.

 

Not sure as to the rest of your questions, but if the CD is in the Accuraterip database, there's no reason not to use C2 since it makes it faster. You would have to have a pretty rare disc for it to not be in there.

Re: song title capitalization.. I'm sure not everyone is this OCD, but if you follow AP style rules, any preposition less than five letters is lower case. ("Smells like Teen Spirit") unless it's part of a phrasal verb such as "Hang On to Your Ego" where hang on is phrasal. Yes, I have around 18,000 songs all double and triple checked for these rules.