Good start here perhaps? : -
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Precision-...995#vi-content
Cheers,
Dave.
Printable View
Good start here perhaps? : -
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Precision-...995#vi-content
Cheers,
Dave.
Quick question: I just got my Beach Boys Smiley Smile cd with the mono/stereo mixes. I've ripped it with XLD and the mono tracks are the same size and bitrate as the stereo tracks. I thought they'd be around half that.
Is that correct?
Just checked my 'Pet Sounds' mono + stereo FLAC rips and the stereo ones are about 60% larger than their mono counterparts...these were ripped by dBpoweramp at FLAC setting 5
eg.
Wouldn't it be nice (Mono) FLAC = 10.1 MB (10,632,345 bytes)
Wouldn't it be nice (Stereo) FLAC = 16.3 MB (17,137,514 bytes)
If it was mono so single channel it would be half size indeed.
But you can’t have 1 channel audio on a CD.
Hence you get dual mono
Using XLD. Does anyone here know how to replace an old, low bit rate rip in iTunes with a new, lossless rip by actually replacing the file, but maintaining old play counts and such?
Cheers
I've just started to look at this little project, the software recommended in the OP is windows only as far as I can tell. I've had a go using Toast, but when its copied/converted it list the tracks alphabeticaly without track numbers, any sugestions for mac based ripping?
I found Alex's post and thought it may be of interest to share some information about a change in UK law relating to copying and backing up music.
Strictly speaking, prior to 1st June 2014, it has been illegal to make copies of music, even for personal use. However, that has changed.
From 1st June 2014, there were changes to the UK law relating to the copying of copyright works for personal use (doesn't apply to computer programs). Insofar as music is concerned, it is now legal for a person to copy/rip music for backing up purposes or to format shift (e.g. rip a CD to a FLAC / WAV / MP3 files) so long as:
1) it is strictly for personal use, and
2) the person making the copy permanently owns a legitimate version of the source material being copied.
If the person disposes of or sells the original legitimate source, all copies held by that person must be deleted / destroyed.
Some CDs and DVDs have copyright protection mechanisms to prevent ripping. It will remain illegal to break such mechanisms BUT there is a provision in the new legislation (at least in the draft - check first) that provides recourse in cases where the "restrictive measure" by the copyright owner "unreasonably prevents" copying for personal use. [Personal view: in theory, this means record companies won't be able to refuse reasonable requests to allow copying by operating blanket ("fettering") policies to maintain the status quo].
The law remains substantively unchanged in respect of sharing (even to relatives) - that remains illegal. The DRAFT legislation (there have been some amendments since, so beware!), along with some guides giving an overview, are currently on the website of the Intellectual Property Office:
www.ipo.gov.uk/copyright-exceptions.htm
In particular:
Consumer guides : www.ipo.gov.uk/copyright-guidance-consumers.pdf
The DRAFT regulations* : www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2014/9780111112700
* amending the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
There endeth a nice, jolly, light post for a Sunday morning :) .
Well, only 4 months later... :).
In my (non lawyer) opinion, I suspect the correct route to rip SACD in accordance with the law would be this:
1) wannabe ripper (WR) contacts the record company and expressly asks for permission to rip for personal use.
2) if the record company refuses without good reason (highly probable), WR contacts the Intellectual Property Office and asks for help.
3) several years later, an "amicable agreement" is reached between the IPO and the record industry.
4) in the meantime, someone has finally found a way to (easily) crack SACDs and everyone who is interested is already doing it in any case.
5) in the meantime (2): the cunning record industry have come up with another method of copy protection, stating it complies with UK law when, quite obviously, it doesn't. At this point, if we're still alive, it's back to "2)" above...
I am not cynical. Merely realistic.... :lol:
Fortunately I dont buy many cd's and the ones I do buy have not been affected....so far......stick with vinyl lads ;):trust:
It's the fuse Police that'll get you in the end, though.... :D
Marco.
I have a practical question. Explanation first. It is common knowledge that wav files copied from a CD to a hdd do not perform well, unless ripped by special software. But is this valid also when you need to move wavs from one hdd to another? I am generally being told it is. To check, I copy-pasted several wav files with the Windows file manager from one hdd to another. Then listened to all of them (on the new hdd) carefully. Surprisingly for me, they all played well (through Stan's Asynch-1) and did not show any abnormality. No interruptions, no pops, no other noise. Found no difference in sound quality from the initial ones. But should I really take this to be generally valid? Or, to ask the question properly: is it OK to transfer wavs from one hdd to another by simple copy-paste, or do you need to use special software, like when you need to make an exact copy of a bootable hdd?
Thanks in advance.
You're welcome, пак заповядай. :)
OK, but what about the "long answer" to the question? Any negative effects on sound? Or possibility for such effects? Why do some or even many people think "exact copy" software should be used? I continue to listen and do not find any deviations. But I might turn out wrong. Here we are after "best possible sound", not just "some copy", right?
The music on CDs is written in specific .cda format. You can not use this format directly for file based audio. First you should extract the files from CDs and convert them in WAV format (or any other losless or lossy format like ALAC, FLAC, APE, MP3 etc.). That's why you need a specific software program like Exact Audio Copy, dbPoweramp etc. The sound quality depends on how accurate this extraction is performed by the software and that's why using a quality ripping program with the correct settings is essential for the SQ.
Once the extraction is made and the music is transferred into WAV etc. format, the files can be treated as any other files and can be copied (with copy-paste function of any file manager) over and over again without any SQ loss, because the copies will be identical.
Of course it is just IMHO :)
+1To above.. JRiver is also a very good option. EAC wont work on my win 8 pc so ive reverted to jriver. Have to say i cant here any difference... Foobar2000 is a good free option and latest version is a lot simpler to set up.
I have no problem with the first part (1). But the second part (2) is very interesting in terms of the assumption that "the [wav] files can be treated as any other files and can be copied (with copy-paste function of any file manager) over and over again without any SQ loss, because the copies will be identical." At least as far as my knowledge goes, it is widely accepted that every subsequent copy of wav files on a CD-R is worse than the previous one - the best copy is the first one, the second one, made from the first one, is worse, etc., etc. There have been many demonstrations of this - and I have heard some, where every subsequent copy is slightly worse that the previous one. And this is clearly audible! And, say, the 20th copy is absolutely clearly MUCH worse than the 1st or 2nd copy. Having in mind that the laser-made holes and the non-holes in the CD-R represent nothing more than the ones and zeros of the recording, what is it that makes every subsequent copy worse? Jitter? But can jitter be induced in the process of copying the file? It ought to arise only as a result of the quality of the disk player, i.e., its ability to correctly read the ones and the zeros, the quality of the transfer to analogue, etc., and the ones and the zeros are supposedly the same. Thus if we take it that copying wav files does lead to a drop in quality when files are copied onto CD-R, what is it that prevents a drop in quality when wav files are copied from a hdd onto another hdd?
:scratch:
OK, I am a layman in the technical sphere and furthermore I may be missing or misunderstanding something. Still I strongly hesitate to believe that copying wav files onto hdd is totally different from copying wav files onto CD-R. And hence problem-free SQ-wise ...
CD-Rs do not have 'pits' - they use a dye technique outlined below (from Wikipedia)
"The blank disc has a pre-groove track onto which the data are written. The pre-groove track, which also contains timing information, ensures that the recorder follows the same spiral path as a conventional CD. A CD recorder writes data to a CD-R disc by pulsing its laser to heat areas of the organic dye layer. The writing process does not produce indentations (pits); instead, the heat permanently changes the optical properties of the dye, changing the reflectivity of those areas. Using a low laser power, so as not to further alter the dye, the disc is read back in the same way as a CD-ROM. However, the reflected light is modulated not by pits, but by the alternating regions of heated and unaltered dye. The change of the intensity of the reflected laser radiation is transformed into an electrical signal, from which the digital information is recovered ("decoded"). "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-R
Unfortunately written CD-Rs can degrade over time and/or produce inaccuracies which can then be passed on to subsequent copies. Also the process of converting data from one format to another doesn't help.
A burned cd is also just that...burned. Its very likely to contain faults...a real cd is a different process. Flac or alac is best especially if you want metadata attached
Thank you mikmas, drpetar, struth. Let me make my point in another way. Surely, burning a CD-R and writing onto hdd are different processes. But the result is the same: ones and zeros, whether the ones are indentations, or different color, or whatever. A CD player in a computer, due to its slow speed, is, of course, incapable of extracting music of the same audio quality as the hdd (provided the PC output is USB signal fed into a good USB interface, M2Tech-like or Asynch-1-like, then into a good DAC and henceforward into a good analogue section). So I am not comparing sound quality from a CD-R disk played by a CD/DVD-ROM in a computer to sound quality from a hdd. What I mean is, and this is based on my personal experience, while there is a big difference between a recording on an ordinary CD-R and a recording on a good CD-R Audio disk in the sense that they perform differently on a good HiFi/HiEnd setup with a good CD player and other components, I do not find any difference in SQ between music ripped from a low quality CD-R and a very good CD-R Audio disk (or a matrix audio CD for that matter) when these are played from a hdd through a USB interface etc. (see above). At least so far I haven't. Would be curious to see if you have similar experience - or different. Apart from a PC, I have been using the well-known M2Tech Hiface Evo One setup: M2Tech Evo Power Supply + M2Tech Evo Clock High End Word-Clock-Generator + M2Tech HiFace Evo 24Bit/192kHz USB-Interface with high-class cables (DIY) throughout, then follows a very good setup with Hi-End-ish components. The source part of the system thus described (PC+M2Tech Evo) beats the hell out of the analogous source with a Hi-End CD Transport - DAC combo. To cut the long story short, within a period of some three years I have become fully convinced that at the heart of a really good HiFi/HiEnd setup is a computer with a hdd, followed by a quality USB-interface. In such a system, in which the quality of the USB-interface, the DAC and the cables is axiomatic, the essential thing is now to obtain the best possible quality of the hdd files. Hence my question. For the time being I cannot hear a difference between wav files originally ripped onto a hdd and wav files copied from one hdd onto another in the standard way (copy-paste). But further listening might prove otherwise.
I used to stream from my laptop via an async converter and dac. I now do it via a RPI/Dac ... I still rip to flac via my laptop but the rpi s far superior in simplicity and sound quality,.... cheaper too :)
It just as easy to better PC based playback, as it is to do worse!
Yes, i am suggesting that that the same hardware have the potential to compete at multi thousand pounds level worth of CD playback, and in another config can sound truly vile!
What these discussions need to make clear is whether the audio file is being treated as a file or an audio stream. While it is stored on a computer it is always treated as a file and you may copy it one hundred times and i swear, the 100th generation copy WILL display the same CRC checksum as the original copy.
Unless your computer/storage is defect of course.
As soon as the file is being processed into an audio stream it will be susceptible to jitter, bit loss etc. When ripping a CD (-R) you are relying on another sensitive process which i belive is quite similar to an audio stream. Or at least very simple error detection and correction..
Of course i may be full of crap! ;)
Thank you Grant, Mike! Grant, I had no idea what RPI was. Took the trouble to read all the 24 pages of the thread "New DAC board for my Pi: Audiophonics I-Sabre DAC ES9023". Interesting! Have there been any reviews comparing SQ between Audiophonics and other more common kit?
Just wondering which software program people are using for ripping nowadays as this Sticky kicked off a few years back?
Cheers
Loz
Using jriver...right now actually lol.
Thanks fellas. I look them up. Been using FreeRip mostly. Very easy to use.
When I did the majority of my rips I used EAC and an Old LG external cd rom drive with external psu. It did make a difference. As I dont do many now and my system is different I now just use JRiver and a inboard cdrom drive. They are not quite as good in many cases but tbh they are still pretty good. JR21 is quite decent now
I use two main apps for ripping, Easy CD Converter when in windows domain and XLD when using Mac. The latter is afreebie and works wonderfully, logging and comparing checksums online.
While Easy CD does the same it cost a couple of tenners. For me though it is worth every penny ten times over. Its main purpose for me is editing tags and converting between different formats. Works perfectly!
https://www.poikosoft.com
Does anyone know how to rip audio from a dvd-audio disc losslessly?
I have the New Gold Dream (81, 82, 83, 84) box set which has a dvd-audio disc with some videos on it but the part I want is the PCM 2.0 stereo version of the album.
Thanks
DVD Audio Extractor.
Should get a trial free of that. Ive used it myself, and its good.
Try another pc and email if it asks