Hello,
how can I most conveniently rip CDs? If the core computer has a CD drive, is it possible to import CDs as easily as in the Sooloos Control 10? Does the system correct errors?
Thank you.
Paul
I use and recommend XLD (for Mac).
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I use and recommend Exact Audio Copy (EAC)
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I 2nd dBpoweramp. But, Roon itself does not “Rip to Import”.
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Yes, dbpoweramp.
Although not free, but comes with a lot of useful tools, like good conversion from almost any format to flac.
But most important it can rip with accuraterip. Meaning it compares your rip against an established database and tells you if it is bitperfect or not. For damaged discs you can also let it pass over the damaged part several times to extract as much as possible data in order to reconstruct the track. This worked for me several times.
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Yes, I would almost call it and mp3tag as mandatory tools.
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Examine the recording surface of the cd under a good light. It’s important to start with CDs that are in reasonably good condition. Google “how to clean a cd” or something like that to find out the best ways to remove any smudges, crud, goo, or worse from the surface of the cd.
This isn’t to say that a nicked-up cd will rip with a lot of errors. Though I’ve always treated my CDs with the same care I give to LPs, this isn’t a personality trait that my children inherited. My family members abuse their CDs in ways I can’t imagine. I found three CDs in the glove compartment of a car my girlfriend was selling. They were stuck together by some gooey sticky substance that evaporated from years in sitting in a hot car. I managed to unstick them and clean them up. The surfaces on these CDs still looked horrendous but I gave them a what the heck rip and I was surprised and pleased to see they ripped error-free. One of them took awhile longer than usual.
Pay attention to the error report given by whatever software you’re using to rip. Sometimes a good cleaning and then another rip attempt will turn a few errors into zero errors.
I’m not an audio perfectionist. Nevertheless it was a surprise to me was how tracks from CDs that ripped with multiple errors still sounded like new. Listen to the tracks with errors when deciding whether to import the album into your library.
As I make progress re-ripping my library to ALAC and AIFF format, it’s great to find those audio gems that were dormant for years appear as new additions in the Roon Overview screen. As much as I love Tidal, music I own - especially music I’ve owned for decades - sounds better to me. 
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+1 for dbpoweramp, with XLD a good alternative. If you’re on a Mac, Yate and Metadatics are good tag editors.
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dBpoweramp’s CD ripper is my tool of choice as well. There’s a Mac port now in addition to the original Windows version; but for a long while there was just the Windows version, which meant that for years I kept a virtual Windows environment available on my Mac almost entirely just for ripping CDs in dBpoweramp. I actually still use that Windows version - partly out of habit, partly because only the Windows version includes the feature of detecting and expanding HDCD-encoded CDs.
dBpoweramp’s CD ripper includes the secure ripping and AccurateRip checksum matching we all used to use Exact Audio Copy [EAC] for (although with a somewhat less primitive user interface); but the most huge place dBpoweramp adds value over EAC is in metadata handling.
dBpoweramp’s CD ripper pulls metadata from multiple sources (AMG, GD3, SontaDB, Musicbrainz & freedb), does a pretty good job of guessing the best data to choose from those sources for each field, and most importantly (to me) lets you flip to a page which shows alternative metadata from multiple sources in columns and lets you pick which to use with simple clicks.
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I am surprised that no one has suggested using iTunes to rip their CDs error-free. iTunes will rip to ALAC and AIFF and offers a config option to rip error-free. (No idea why that would not be turned on by default.)
This is the one area where Roon is a bit lacking. Ripping and synchronizing with my iOS devices is why I am going to have to keep iTunes around. So I have decided to use iTunes to create the library and Roon to play it. I bet others have experience with this and could guide me on now to do this a little more cleanly, especially when dealing with iTunes, HDtracks, and Roon. Getting the three to play nicely together appears to be a bit of a challenge, especially if one wants things to be seamless.
Any suggestions on dealing with duplicates?
iTunes doesn’t do ACCURATERIP checking. That’s a major (deal breaking) deficiency for me. I use dbpoweramp (windows). I’ve been involved in digital music stuff for over a decade and ACCURATERIP was a major breakthrough in secure ripping. It is rare to see an iTunes ripping recommendation. EAC and dbpoweramp are the most often mentioned. I started with eac but moved to dbpa. Better metadata and easier user interface. And the dbpa author also created and maintains the ACCURATERIP database.
ps. Cuetools for Windows is also very useful, even if you don’t use cuefiles. Particularly it’s repair function.
And re duplicates, dbpa author also produces PERFECTTUNES. It can do deduplicates as well as finding better album art and doing post ripping ACCURATERIP checking. I find it very useful.
https://www.dbpoweramp.com/perfecttunes.htm
I’ve used XLD for the Mac OS platform with success. It provides a full report at the end of each rip. It also does a pretty good job retrieving tag info - metadata from freedb or musicbrainz. It is only available on the Apple platform.
Nothing wrong with iTunes ripping a good CD - does a good job. I get better metadata with XLD though and I like to review the rip report for errors or tracks that required multiple tries.
I still use iTunes to manage my library for the same reasons you gave: syncing to devices and the library works well with Roon. I set up some watched folders in Roon that are separate sisters from iTunes to contain FLACs / HiRes tracks.
I rip to AIFF to obtain a broad compatibility with devices present and future. It means my iOS devices don’t hold as many tracks but that’s okay - I rarely filled them up with MP3s anyway. XLD will convert AIFF to any format should I want to burn a CD mixtape.
Thank you for replying to my post. I appreciate it. I will look into AccurateRip.
The problem is, Red Book error detection is pretty rudimentary anyway. If you read a frame and you get a good CRC, odds are, that is as good as you are going to get. Yes, other programs will attempt to work at it longer to get a good read but if iTunes reads it without errors, it is a pretty good bet that the rip is error-free. There is no good way to do error-correction other than trial-and-error. Sometimes I have to spend time properly polishing a CD to get a good read but eventually I am successful. And if iTunes cannot get an error-free rip, it fails to rip the track. That’s annoying but at least I know.
I am not a fan of iTunes but if one has iOS devices and wants music on them, it does appear to be a necessary evil. Roon seems to understand iTunes pretty well so it seems to be a reasonable path.
[quote=“Brian_Lloyd, post:14, topic:10656, full:true”]
The problem is, Red Book error detection is pretty rudimentary anyway. If you read a frame and you get a good CRC, odds are, that is as good as you are going to get. Yes, other programs will attempt to work at it longer to get a good read but if iTunes reads it without errors, it is a pretty good bet that the rip is error-free. There is no good way to do error-correction other than trial-and-error.[/quote]
Well, yes there is - and that’s what you’ll discover when you read up on AccurateRip… 
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Thank you Geoff_Coupe. Interesting idea, using something like an MD5 signature from a known-good rip (or statistically from a number of rips) will let you do better error detection that what is built into CDs. But error correction is another story, and should have been included in the original Red Book design but wasn’t.
I’ll look more into AccurateRip. I appreciate the pointer.
OK, I went looking for an implementation of AccurateRip that runs on MacOS (the server that runs my house and all my AV is a Mac). I found Rip and Songbook. Rip apparently no longer runs on current versions of MacOS and the link to Songbook is not valid. Does anyone have any pointers to rippers using AccurateRip that run on MacOS?
Thanks.
XLD and dbpoweramp both support accurate rip and both are available for the mac. XLD has been around for a while and is stable although the documentation leaves something to be desired. dbpoweramp has been around on Windows for years and was recently ported to the mac. The documentation and support (forum) are both excellent.
I’ve been using both for years and do the bulk of my ripping with dbpoweramp on windows. I have yet to try the Mac version though.
+1 for dbPoweramp. (again ;D)
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Hm, I don’t like to say a customer: You don’t need a computer to play your libery. Customer: But how do I rip my CDs? Salesman:Oh, just use your computer to rip your cd, create a route to store it and then, blabla bla! Customer: So, what do I have to do there to get it to my Nuc harddrive?
The Germans are way behind the rest of the world regarding the use of a private computer, I doubt, they won’t love it! It is not consistent in the argumentation chain.
Just my thoughts…
Best
Armin