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Mac will do it in iTunes if you have USE ERROR CORRECTION turned on in IMPORT Preferences. If you search the forum for Exact Audio Copy it will lead you to info about this program which seems well rated. I think it's available on Mac and PC (I'm on Mac so rarely venture into the rough and unruly software water sof the PC).

 

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It might be useful to create update the CASH list with a 'ripping' section. A FAQ would also help (people don't realize what the CASH list is probably), as this ripping question seems to come up on an almost weekly basis.

 

If there is an error on the disc then the software will re-read that sector multiple times to try and figure out what the correct bits are. These can't always be recovered without cleaning or repairing the disc though. iTunes error correction will improve rips slightly, but iTunes won't tell you if there was a problem with the disc that was unrecoverable.

 

Use dbpoweramp on the pc for the best mix of features and user friendliness. The feature you want is AccurateRip, which compares your rip to an online database of other user's rips. If any tracks don't match Accuraterip then you know that you need to clean the CD and try again. EAC also has this feature, but EAC is far from user friendly, and it's much more hardware abusive.

 

Regarding WAV vs. AIFF - there are other threads on this, try:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Tagging-AIFF-MS-Windows-world

 

Long story short, only iTunes supports AIFF tags, otherwise you're better off with WAV, but the situation is not great with either format for tagging. dbpoweramp wil insert multiple types of tags in WAVs, so WAV with dbpoweramp is the most compatible uncompressed option. If you want wider tag support then FLAC is the best choice.

 

 

For any others reading, on the MAC you can use this program to get AccurateRip compatibility:

http://tmkk.hp.infoseek.co.jp/xld/index_e.html

 

If interested in further reading, I wrote up a long post on my ripping experiences here:

https://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/iTunes-ripping-ALAC-may-have-bug#comment-10967

 

 

mpdPup maintainer

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I did this and still do it as a service for some of my customers.

 

They pay $30 per disk for this service. Why? Because the clone disk sounds significantly better than the original.

 

If you rip the disk using EAC (or latest iTunes version with error correction enabled) and then rewrite it with a writer with a good clock in it, such as a Superclock4 and use media such as Mitsui Gold Audio reference disks, the clone can have much better placement of the pits than the original, resulting in lower jitter on playback with virtually ANY CD player. I've tried dozens of CD players with this.

 

Steve N.

Empirical Audio

 

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There is no such thing as better or worse error correction, because it is based on a mathematical formula. Either you can correct or you can't, in which case, the designer is "free" to do whatever he wishes. For example, you can do another pass and try again, you can interpolate, etc... So, I suppose it would be interesting if the software can report not just on the errors that were corrected, but on the errors that were not corrected...

 

In addition, CD readers have built-in error correction in hardware. When i purchased my burner/reader, I checked the reviews at CDRinfo and chose the one with the best cd-audio performance. When ripping you can see that the rip speed will vary from 2-3X to up to 30+X. The hardware is trying different things to correct for the errors. When it can't correct, it is obvious when you listen to the music.

 

 

www.hifiduino.wordpress.com

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I disagree, but that's fine. If iTunes doesn't report errors, that's a problem for me. I believe that it also frequently interpolates them, which I dislike even further, as then you won't be aware that there is a problem while listening, but there will be some quality loss. Hence my opinion that iTunes' implementation is not so good.

 

Dbpoweramp and EAC give error reports, and 75-85% of the time those errors can be resolved by cleaning the disk and re-ripping, and CD polishing compound can be used if you're dedicated. The value of Accuraterip can't be underestimated either.

 

Listening for errors is not a realistic option, if ones undergoing a big ripping project to rip a large collection of music you're not going to listen to every album as you rip it. Furthermore you can't hear interpolation, which often seems to happen at the hardware level based on my experience. This is based on listening to tracks that EAC and dbpoweramp rip but report lots of errors or a complete inability to rip securely - they often lack any obvious errors to my ear. I have a couple bad pressings that make this very clear, and while the secure rippers report hundreds or thousands of issues, iTunes reports none...

 

 

 

 

mpdPup maintainer

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So I went to the source, Accuraterip...

"The philosophy behind AccurateRip is quite simple - each time an audio track is ripped (recorded by computer) it is compared with rips from other people, this allows a confidence report to be generated. The report might say that 4 other people had exactly the same results, this would guarantee your rip was without error, or the report could say that 3 other people disagree with your rip, the likely hood is that your CD has a scratch and should be cleaned."

 

So the value-add of accurateRip is not that it can do a better job at ripping, but that it has a large database of others ripping results with which you can compare... If there are errors, you can then try different things.

 

Agree you prefer the implementation of EAC/DbPoweramp, but the error-correction capability of both rippers is the same. If you believe iTunes will attempt to correct for an error that cannot be corrected, then AccurateRip will do the same, but it will tell you.

 

 

www.hifiduino.wordpress.com

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I think at this point we're practically saying the same thing... Anyway the lean toward Dbpoweramp is that it's a bit more user-friendly and faster. This is because it's default setting does a fast itunes style rip, but then compares the results to the AccurateRip database. If AccurateRip doesn't match, then it drops into a secure mode (this rips the disc twice and looks for differences), and only does heavy duty brute-force error correction on sectors that have errors or differences. It also has stronger tagging features and format conversions are built in. It's all these values combined that sold me on it.

 

The difference with EAC is that its' default settings use the brute force sector by sector approach for the entire disk, and then after that compares it to AccurateRip. Doing brute-force rips all the time takes much longer, and it reduces the lifespan of your CD drive. EAC can be tuned down from the brute force settings, but it doesn't allow you to configure the simple logic flow dbpoweramp allows, it's much more manual if you drop down from the defaults.

 

iTunes will do a fine job for lots of people though, and for those that like Apple simplicity it has that too.

 

 

mpdPup maintainer

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  • 2 years later...

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