Best (reasonable) CD Ripping Practice

[sandyk]

I respect your opinion but have a couple things to say about it.

 

Withholding evidence because you don't want ridicule, even though you frequently post knowing you'll get ridiculed, is not going to make you look honest or good.

 

You know petsonal attacks aren't allowed at CA, yet you are the one launching personal attacks and using it as an excuse not to post something.

 

I don't believe a few errors in a track can affect an entire track. I wish I had evidence I could read in public.

 

Chris

What on earth do you expect me to do ?

I have already had my reports subjected to a series of Blind tests, and made comparison CD-Rs available to C.A. members as well as HFC members.

It appears that nothing I can do will ever be accepted by quite a few members of this forum.

I am even prepared to have qualified staff from Sydney Uni visit me and check out my reports if this was to be arranged.

Suggesting that I am being less than honest or good, is a slur not only on me, but others such as Martin Colloms and Barry Diament who have verified my findings.

I can also provide a copy of an email from Barry, (FYI ONLY, as I don't have Barry's permission to quote him directly in this forum) ) if you don't believe it. Barry still heard small differences under non sighted conditions, even after the files on the provided CD-Rs were ripped to HDD again, which was not the way I would have wished him to listen to them.

Alex

[The Computer Audiophile]

Chris

What on earth do you expect me to do ?

I have already had my reports subjected to a series of Blind tests, and made comparison CD-Rs available to C.A. members .

It appears that nothing I can do will ever be accepted by quite a few members of this forum.

I am even prepared to have qualified staff from Sydney Uni visit me and check out my reports if this was to be arranged.

Suggesting that I am being less than honest or good, is a slur not only on me, but others such as Martin Colloms and Barry Diament who have verified my findings.

I can also provide a copy of an email from Barry, (FYI ONLY, as I don't have Barry's permission to quote him directly in this forum) ) if you don't believe it. Barry still heard small differences under non sighted conditions, even after the files on the provided CD-Rs were ripped to HDD again, which was not the way I would have wished him to listen to them.

Alex

I expect you to publish everything you have rather than going around appealing to authority (logical fallacy). If the people don't believe you already, then you have nothing to lose and can only gain.

[sandyk]

I expect you to publish everything you have rather than going around appealing to authority (logical fallacy). If the people don't believe you already, then you have nothing to lose and can only gain.

 

This forum is in my opinion, NOT the proper place to publish this material .

If I hadn't directly contacted the people you don't like me mentioning, then nobody would believe anything I have to say.

I am damned if I do, and damned if I don't !

As I have already stated , I am now FAR from the only C.A. member who hears these things, and more recently bib01 reported that a group of his forum members in Italy reported similar, which resulted in a fairly recent thread from him here.

He is also doing further research in this area, and I also provided him with a couple of uploaded .wav files.

 

We are going around in circles here. If my reports are an embarrassment/annoying to you as the forum owner, and you don't wish me to say any more on this subject ,then please permanently ban me from your forum.

Alex

[kilroy]

This forum is in my opinion, NOT the proper place to publish this material .

If I hadn't directly contacted the people you don't like me mentioning, then nobody would believe anything I have to say.

I am damned if I do, and damned if I don't !

As I have already stated , I am now FAR from the only C.A. member who hears these things, and more recently bib01 reported that a group of his forum members in Italy reported similar, which resulted in a fairly recent thread from him here.

He is also doing further research in this area, and I also provided him with a couple of uploaded .wav files.

 

We are going around in circles here. If my reports are an embarrassment/annoying to you as the forum owner, and you don't wish me to say any more on this subject ,then please permanently ban me from your forum.

Alex

 

 

Really? Does that mean if you're not permanently banned you have no intention of shutting up?

 

Please do me a large favor and leave this thread now.

 

Chris, again please consider taking action against this poster or remove his posts from this thread. Thank you.

[sandyk]

Nobody wants a petulant whiner hanging around. Please respect my wishes.

 

You have a charming way of asking people to respect your wishes, then wonder why your requests are ignored.

[kumakuma]

You have a charming way of asking people to respect your wishes, then wonder why your requests are ignored.

 

Alex, as you know very well, the tradition here on CA is that the OP has the right to moderate his/her thread in any way he/she likes.

 

The fact that you didn't like how he asked you doesn't give you the right to keep posting to this thread after he has asked you repeatedly to stop.

 

If you want to post whatever you want, start your own thread!

[kilroy]

You have a charming way of asking people to respect your wishes, then wonder why your requests are ignored.

 

Wrong, there were no other people, there is only you.

 

No, I don't wonder, after seeing your bizarre behavior.

 

The longer you hang around the worse you look. So do yourself a favor.

[kilroy]

This thread has served its purpose. Stick a fork in it. Thanks to all (except you know who ).

[The Computer Audiophile]

@sandyk - The OP has asked that you leave this thread alone. We do have the tradition around here of honoring the OP's request in this regard.

 

You can start your own thread and say whatever you'd like, even referencing this thread.

 

I do accept some blame for where this thread has gone.

[plissken]

This forum is in my opinion, NOT the proper place to publish this material .

Alex

 

Then your material isn't up to passing critical review! If it was that solid it would stand up to any forum anywhere....

[sandyk]

@sandyk - The OP has asked that you leave this thread alone. We do have the tradition around here of honoring the OP's request in this regard.

 

You can start your own thread and say whatever you'd like, even referencing this thread.

 

I do accept some blame for where this thread has gone.

 

I will leave this thread because you have asked.

If the OP had asked me politely ,I would have left this thread long ago.

 

It's a shame though that with any thread that I have ever started, in any area of the forum, that a similar request by me would have never resulted in the same courtesy.

That is one of the main reasons I am reluctant to post any of my other material/findings in this forum.

[The Computer Audiophile]

I will leave this thread because you have asked.

If the OP had asked me politely ,I would have left this thread long ago.

 

It's a shame though that with any thread that I have ever started, in any area of the forum, that a similar request by me would have ever resulted in the same courtesy.

That is one of the main reasons I am unwilling to post any of my other material/findings in this forum.

I can't think of a time when I've denied you any rights as the OP. Anyway, thanks for respecting the unwritten rules of the forum. Please call me out if you think you're being treated unfair in the future.

[scan80269]

I just realized how similar my CD ripping setup has been to that of the OP. I've been using dBpoweramp for about 2 years, but before that used EAC to do whole-CD rips to WAV with cuesheet, followed by conversion to FLAC. The oldest optical drive I used to rip CDs was a Plextor PX-40TS SCSI drive, connected to an Adaptec AHA-2940 SCSI card. The Plextor had early support for redbook C2 error indication. While C1 errors can be corrected with the Reed-Solomon interleave coding, C2 errors are by definition uncorrectable. EAC can be configured to re-rip of CD sectors upon the drive indicating C2 errors. To this day, I still encounter a handful of flawed pressed CDs that won't rip completely without errors, with either dBpoweramp or EAC. There are also some CDs that rip at high speed with ease with one optical drive but not with another, and some of these problematic CDs rip successfully with specific drive brand/models that differ from disk to disk.

 

I agree that AccurateRip checksums are an effective way to verify rip integrity. What's interesting is that more than a decade ago, my colleague and I already concluded that a CD-R burned from a rip of a pressed CD can sound different, even when both the CD-R and the original were verified to be C2 error free, using several different optical drives as readers. We attributed the sound difference to the different amount of work the optical drive had to do to retrieve the bitstream from the disks. We often preferred the sound from well-burned CD-Rs rather than the original pressed CDs. It appears that the better sound resulted in the optical drive working less hard (e.g. generate less electrical noise) when reading the CD-R.

 

As to the claim that checksum identical files can sound different, I'm a bit fascinated, but the engineer in me wants a plausible and sufficiently technical explanation of why. I'm open to the possibilities of new discoveries and learnings in the computer audiophile universe, but an explanation firmly based on scientific and engineering principles is what I need to be convinced that I'm not fooling myself. I'm also willing to listen to the tracks, and should I hear a difference, the need to understand why will intensify.

 

I have invested heavily dollar and time-wise in computer audio, with an increasing number of ripped CDs, so I have a vested interest in knowing whether there is a fundamental way to improve the sound quality of ripped CDs. So far, all the SQ improvements I have heard were the result of tweaking or changing my audio gear, especially in power supplies and galvanic isolation for USB, Ethernet, etc. plus running Windows PCs diskless, but I have not worked on my ripping technique for quite a while, as I currently believe it is as good as it can be. I won't like having to re-rip my entire CD collection in exchange for better sound, but the drive for better SQ can be a powerful motivator.

 

BTW, the blue laser in Blu-Ray optical drives can have shorter usable life compared to IR lasers in DVD or even CD drives. Due to the specific materials used to generate blue light, the blue LED degrades in intensity much faster than red or green LED. It's the same reason some recent notebooks featuring RGB OLED displays can suffer permanent burn-in after only a small number of hours of use. Some data indicates 1% brightness loss of the blue LED after ~32 hours of full intensity operation, and 2% after ~76 hours! I'm not sure how much operating margin Blu-Ray drive manufacturers build into their designs for the blue laser, but using a Blu-Ray drive to rip CDs (or even Blu-Ray audio disks) seems like a good way to prematurely wear it out. A well designed DVD drive should have a longer life for its laser diode than any Blu-Ray drive. I've used my Oppo BD player to rip SACDs, but my SACD collection is very small compared to my CD collection...

[sandyk]

scan80269

 

Please check your PMs

Alex

[paul_riordan]

I just realized how similar my CD ripping setup has been to that of the OP. I've been using dBpoweramp for about 2 years, but before that used EAC to do whole-CD rips to WAV with cuesheet, followed by conversion to FLAC. The oldest optical drive I used to rip CDs was a Plextor PX-40TS SCSI drive, connected to an Adaptec AHA-2940 SCSI card. The Plextor had early support for redbook C2 error indication. While C1 errors can be corrected with the Reed-Solomon interleave coding, C2 errors are by definition uncorrectable. EAC can be configured to re-rip of CD sectors upon the drive indicating C2 errors. To this day, I still encounter a handful of flawed pressed CDs that won't rip completely without errors, with either dBpoweramp or EAC. There are also some CDs that rip at high speed with ease with one optical drive but not with another, and some of these problematic CDs rip successfully with specific drive brand/models that differ from disk to disk.

 

I agree that AccurateRip checksums are an effective way to verify rip integrity. What's interesting is that more than a decade ago, my colleague and I already concluded that a CD-R burned from a rip of a pressed CD can sound different, even when both the CD-R and the original were verified to be C2 error free, using several different optical drives as readers. We attributed the sound difference to the different amount of work the optical drive had to do to retrieve the bitstream from the disks. We often preferred the sound from well-burned CD-Rs rather than the original pressed CDs. It appears that the better sound resulted in the optical drive working less hard (e.g. generate less electrical noise) when reading the CD-R.

 

As to the claim that checksum identical files can sound different, I'm a bit fascinated, but the engineer in me wants a plausible and sufficiently technical explanation of why. I'm open to the possibilities of new discoveries and learnings in the computer audiophile universe, but an explanation firmly based on scientific and engineering principles is what I need to be convinced that I'm not fooling myself. I'm also willing to listen to the tracks, and should I hear a difference, the need to understand why will intensify.

 

I have invested heavily dollar and time-wise in computer audio, with an increasing number of ripped CDs, so I have a vested interest in knowing whether there is a fundamental way to improve the sound quality of ripped CDs. So far, all the SQ improvements I have heard were the result of tweaking or changing my audio gear, especially in power supplies and galvanic isolation for USB, Ethernet, etc. plus running Windows PCs diskless, but I have not worked on my ripping technique for quite a while, as I currently believe it is as good as it can be. I won't like having to re-rip my entire CD collection in exchange for better sound, but the drive for better SQ can be a powerful motivator.

 

BTW, the blue laser in Blu-Ray optical drives can have shorter usable life compared to IR lasers in DVD or even CD drives. Due to the specific materials used to generate blue light, the blue LED degrades in intensity much faster than red or green LED. It's the same reason some recent notebooks featuring RGB OLED displays can suffer permanent burn-in after only a small number of hours of use. Some data indicates 1% brightness loss of the blue LED after ~32 hours of full intensity operation, and 2% after ~76 hours! I'm not sure how much operating margin Blu-Ray drive manufacturers build into their designs for the blue laser, but using a Blu-Ray drive to rip CDs (or even Blu-Ray audio disks) seems like a good way to prematurely wear it out. A well designed DVD drive should have a longer life for its laser diode than any Blu-Ray drive. I've used my Oppo BD player to rip SACDs, but my SACD collection is very small compared to my CD collection...

 

Your comments about potential blu ray laser life spans are quite interesting and not something I had heard about before. I'm not disagreeing with your point but I used an Acronova NB21-BR to rip my collection of CDs, DVDs and Blu Ray discs (I have mentioned this earlier in this thread but you may not not seen it) - that was a total of around 7000 discs and it is still working fine so I am not sure it is something to worry about too much. If I hadn't had 100+ blu ray discs then I would probably have bought the DVD version of the Acronova (and saved some money).

 

Thanks

 

Paul

[mansr]

BTW, the blue laser in Blu-Ray optical drives can have shorter usable life compared to IR lasers in DVD or even CD drives. Due to the specific materials used to generate blue light, the blue LED degrades in intensity much faster than red or green LED. It's the same reason some recent notebooks featuring RGB OLED displays can suffer permanent burn-in after only a small number of hours of use. Some data indicates 1% brightness loss of the blue LED after ~32 hours of full intensity operation, and 2% after ~76 hours! I'm not sure how much operating margin Blu-Ray drive manufacturers build into their designs for the blue laser, but using a Blu-Ray drive to rip CDs (or even Blu-Ray audio disks) seems like a good way to prematurely wear it out. A well designed DVD drive should have a longer life for its laser diode than any Blu-Ray drive. I've used my Oppo BD player to rip SACDs, but my SACD collection is very small compared to my CD collection...

 

The blue laser is only used for Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD) discs. CDs and DVDs can't be read with a blue laser. Multi-format players have multiple lasers.

[scan80269]

The blue laser is only used for Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD) discs. CDs and DVDs can't be read with a blue laser. Multi-format players have multiple lasers.

 

I stand corrected. Assuming a BD player switches off the blue laser when playing CDs or DVDs, the aging of the blue laser should occur only when the inserted disk is BD. This means only BD movie buffs playing lots of Blu-Ray discs would be in a position to wear the blue laser to any degree.

 

Also, I may have mixed up blue OLED with blue laser. The degradation I mentioned is applicable to blue-color organic LED material only, and it is accelerated by heat. If the blue laser in BD players is not based on the same blue OLED material then the degradation does not apply.

 

In any case, I consider my Oppo BD player too valuable to be subjected to high-speed CD ripping. I use several internal SATA DVD writer drives (exclusively Plextor brand) for that purpose.

[davide256]

 

... BTW, the blue laser in Blu-Ray optical drives can have shorter usable life compared to IR lasers in DVD or even CD drives. Due to the specific materials used to generate blue light, the blue LED degrades in intensity much faster than red or green LED. It's the same reason some recent notebooks featuring RGB OLED displays can suffer permanent burn-in after only a small number of hours of use. Some data indicates 1% brightness loss of the blue LED after ~32 hours of full intensity operation, and 2% after ~76 hours! I'm not sure how much operating margin Blu-Ray drive manufacturers build into their designs for the blue laser, but using a Blu-Ray drive to rip CDs (or even Blu-Ray audio disks) seems like a good way to prematurely wear it out. A well designed DVD drive should have a longer life for its laser diode than any Blu-Ray drive. I've used my Oppo BD player to rip SACDs, but my SACD collection is very small compared to my CD collection...

 

Sounds like another compromise found only in laptops due to power and space requirements

[davide256]

Sounds like another compromise found only in laptops due to power and space requirements

 

Put another way... PS3's have been in heavy use a long time as a blue ray game console... not seeing any mass deaths of the blue ray players

in PS3's

[scan80269]

Sounds like another compromise found only in laptops due to power and space requirements

 

There's a material science/physics limitation applicable to blue OLED. Apparently no one in the display industry has been able to come up with better blue color LED material for over a decade.

 

I was told that some Microsoft stores replace the OLED-based Samsung 2-in-1 notebooks on display every 4-5 weeks, because the burn-in of the OLED screen gets so bad the unit becomes unworthy for showcasing purposes. I'm staying away from OLED displays for now, as the technology is not ready for prime time, and it is not cheap either.

 

BD players should not have this same issue with their blue lasers.

[wdw]

Two files, both ripped with a IMac and Superdrive using dBpoweramp, one with a jitterbug in line the second without.

 

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zr2qejdbfxs5iob/15%20Beatles%2C%20The%20-%20She%27s%20a%20Woman%202.aif?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w9z0snlmfu7z5pv/15%20Beatles%2C%20The%20-%20She%27s%20a%20Woman.aif?dl=0

[The Computer Audiophile]

Two files, both ripped with a IMac and Superdrive using dBpoweramp, one with a jitterbug in line the second without.

 

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zr2qejdbfxs5iob/15%20Beatles%2C%20The%20-%20She%27s%20a%20Woman%202.aif?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w9z0snlmfu7z5pv/15%20Beatles%2C%20The%20-%20She%27s%20a%20Woman.aif?dl=0

Interesting. The files don't have the same checksum.

 

#1 MD5: bf27eba213deb094365035db836526cd

#2 MD5: d89a6e1078e5abe246f31abd7c91f751

[wdw]

Interesting. The files don't have the same checksum.

 

#1 MD5: bf27eba213deb094365035db836526cd

#2 MD5: d89a6e1078e5abe246f31abd7c91f751

Chris,

 

wouldn't know a checksum if it came up and shook my hand but have a listen on your system. (totally envious of the Berkeley Ref)

If I have posted them correctly, one will be more urgent (in a good sense) with the guitar strikes, the vocal chatter more intelligible, etc...

would Dropbox alter the datafile?

[The Computer Audiophile]

Chris,

 

wouldn't know a checksum if it came up and shook my hand but have a listen on your system. (totally envious of the Berkeley Ref)

If I have posted them correctly, one will be more urgent (in a good sense) with the guitar strikes, the vocal chatter more intelligible, etc...

would Dropbox alter the datafile?

Cool, thanks. No DropBox wouldn't later the files.

 

I use a free app called iHash to show me the checksums.

 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ihash/id763902043?mt=12

[wdw]

Cool, thanks. No DropBox wouldn't later the files.

 

I use a free app called iHash to show me the checksums.

 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ihash/id763902043?mt=12

 

Have a listen. Great early Beatles song. Warren