Hey all, I'm digitizing my CD collection in the next month or so. (edit technically it already is digital but, u get what I mean) This is so I can have acesso to it from anywhere, as CD players are more and more rare. Since this is archival, I want as close to an exact copy of the CD as possible, ripped inTo the computer. They have usb CD burners on Amazon for like $20. So I was thinking one of those.
There are a couple free ripping programs out there claiming to be "bit perfect" and one even has some online files of popular songs, so you can cross reference your rip with it, to make sure your drive is working properly, and there are no errors on the rip. File size doesn't bother me, I want the full uncompressed version.
This is the freeware I was considering. http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
So, is there any reason to believe this does better than say windows media player at ripping .wav files? Is there a certain level of quality for the drive I should get? I'd like to avoid manually naming each song and album, so I'd like to make sure the program downloads the album info.
Any thoughts and suggestions are welcome.
Comments
I checked out the website you stated Kyle, and it shure looks go
I checked out the website you stated Kyle, and it shure looks good. I have some software from this company, and it works fine. I would say, give it a try on a few CD's you know very well, and listen to the results on a system you know and trust, alongside the original. Keep in mind that different converters lead to a different sounding thing.......... Meaning, a cd player can sound differend than a soundcard from a computer or a seperate converter.
Robin.
Good call, I didn't think about the disc image! Gonna make sure
Good call, I didn't think about the disc image! Gonna make sure I do and image of each one, as well as rip the .wav for each cd as I go. That's the best of both worlds I believe, although I still don't have the heart to trash the actual CDs and packaging, but I can at least pack them away.
miyaru, post: 437449, member: 49780 wrote: I checked out the web
miyaru, post: 437449, member: 49780 wrote: I checked out the website you stated Kyle, and it shure looks good. I have some software from this company, and it works fine. I would say, give it a try on a few CD's you know very well, and listen to the results on a system you know and trust, alongside the original. Keep in mind that different converters lead to a different sounding thing.......... Meaning, a cd player can sound differend than a soundcard from a computer or a seperate converter.
Robin.
Good to know robin, I'm always weary of new software companies. I'll definitely try it on a few of the CDs I have, and cross reference them to their audio archive and see where I'm at.
Looks like having the ripped .wav for listening , and the cd image for long term storage I should be pretty safe.
Thanks for chiming in!!
DonnyThompson, post: 437468, member: 46114 wrote: I wonder what
DonnyThompson, post: 437468, member: 46114 wrote: I wonder what would happen if you imported both the original and the ripped version into your DAW and did a null test?
As long as you got them lined up in time correctly, you would get a perfect null. The audio content is identical.
Boswell, post: 437474, member: 29034 wrote: As long as you got t
Boswell, post: 437474, member: 29034 wrote: As long as you got them lined up in time correctly, you would get a perfect null. The audio content is identical.
That's what i was thinking - in that it might be a way to check the various available ripping programs for audio integrity..
DonnyThompson, post: 437468, member: 46114 wrote: I wonder what
DonnyThompson, post: 437468, member: 46114 wrote: I wonder what would happen if you imported both the original and the ripped version into your DAW and did a null test?
That's the whole concept behind the database in EAD/accurip. It has reference rips, from error free rips of a few hundred popular records from the past 4 decades. So it compares your rips waveform to the databases waveform for the same tune, and checks for errors.
I belive the errors this particular thing is looking for would be cd drive offset/data stream/cache related issues, as well as any errors from surface blemishes Ect.
Boswell, post: 437474, member: 29034 wrote: As long as you got t
Boswell, post: 437474, member: 29034 wrote: As long as you got them lined up in time correctly, you would get a perfect null. The audio content is identical.
I'm quoting myself, but Kyle's post made me realise I should have mentioned the importance of being able to read the CD without uncorrectable errors. You would need a pro CD burner/player that gives you correctable and uncorrectable counts. The last one I had that did this was a Plextor, but other manufacturers may make suitable ones.
On a slight tangent, here and here are a couple of articles about error detection and correction on CDs, and tools that you can use to evaluate error counts.
There's track ripping and there's CD imaging. If it's for archiv
There's track ripping and there's CD imaging. If it's for archival, I would go with the imaging, as that generates an exact copy of all the information on the CD, album and track info included. Most burning programs have an option to create a CD image, which will come out to be in the 800MB size range.
You can't (usually) play an image, but you can burn CDs from them. The contents of the burnt CD will be an exact copy of the contents of the original. Some programs will extract a track from an image and play it.
Make sure you select data verification when you burn the CD.