I am planning on ripping my CDs to digital and I’m looking for both the right hardware and software. I will appreciate recommendations on both, but I am mostly confused about the hardware.
A few years ago, before I was into HiFi, I bought the cheapest CD ripper I could find (it cost me around 20€) believing that a cheap ripper would do just as good as an expensive one. I learned I was wrong, so now I’m looking for some guidance.
I am not looking to spend much, but I would like your thoughts on this issue. Are most CD rippers fine enough as long as I don’t go again for the absolutely cheapest existing one? Or is it the kind of thing were it’s worth it to go to a high end product? Do you have any specific recommendations?
My idea is to rip the CDs to my MacBook Pro in FLAC.
Buy dBpoweramp for your MacBook and make sure you enable AccurateRip. Then you can use a cheap CD drive and have confidence that your rips are accurate as long as they are reported accurate by AccurateRip.
+1 on dbpoweramp. Best $30 I ever spent. Ripping with AccurateRip matching and excellent multi-source metadata approach. I’ve ripped a few thousand CDs on my windows machine.
EAC is free. It was pretty much what everyone used until alternatives like dbPoweramp. IMHO, has an undeserved reputation for complexity. Just use the defaults.
I see that now. I’m not mac. I can imagine why solutions like dual-boot don’t appeal, I am not very technical myself, but distancing from iTunes seems to bring benefits.
It is, same results as with EAC, which means bit perfect. (I don’t verify each and every rip, but the one’s i’ve checked show the same CRC checksums)
And it also uses online reference for individual tracks, i think AccurateRip?
I used iTunes for the bulk of my ripping, and enabled bit perfect rips as I use ALAC primarily. It was about 5 times faster than XLD and reasonably easy. Needed a few scripts to bake artwork etc.
Now I use XLD for occasional automated ripping as it’s less likely to pop up a dialogue box saying it’s confused about what the disc is - which was the biggest annoyance during my ‘big rip’ with iTunes.
XLDs not exactly user friendly when you first try i, but it makes sense after a bit of a play.
I was aware of the Windows solutions but that would be a step too far for me. Eeeewwww
i use a USB Blue-ray player for ripping audio CD’s. I have bought dBpoweramp to satisfy the audiofile in me. But to be honest. i haven’t heard any difference from ripping just from iTunes. When the meta data gets mixed up in dBpoweramp i still use iTunes.
i always wonder if you can outbeat Apple on its own platform on these kind of things…
as far as i understand the database-check not more then a data check if data size and probably some other meta data from the CD is the same as is the data base.
Well, its alway the same. And if its not, (maybe 1% of all my rips) there is nothing i can do to change it. re-ripping only seem to confirm its wrong in the database. It at least sounds all good.
so, dBpoweramp does offer a check on a database. But it seems hardly nessecary because iTunes rips just fine itself. no check needed.
I’m using a Acronova Nimbie USB Plus NB21-BR ripper with dBpoweramp and AccurateRip. I use Get Digital Data to access great metadata. Running with Windows 10 on a desktop PC.
I had a few problems setting it all up initially, but now it just works.
To cover multiple platforms I rip to FLAC, Apple Lossless and high res MP3.