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Mirko88
01-10-2011, 11:49 AM
I want to start ripping my entire CD collection (>1,000 CD's) to a lossless format. Disk space is no issue. The goal is to keep my entire collection in an uncompressed format as well as a compressed format (f.e. MP3 320kbps) and have metadata + cover art available. I believe this will give me optimal flexibility for now and future.
As ripping more than 1,000 CD's is a hell of a job, I need to do this right the first time. I'm mainly concerned about using the right uncompressed format as I can always compress to any other format later on.

Which uncompressed format is best used if I also want to use metadata and album art. For future compatibility I find it important that this metadata and the album art is also available when playing in for example Windows Media Player or iTunes. Like with MP3's and the ID tags.

What can you recommend?
I understand that WAV can't hold tags and cover art, but I did see a reference to tags for WAV in the forum. Is this like an index only available in DBPowerAmp library of my ripped music or will it also be visible in other players?

I appreciate any support and user experience I can get, because I've been browsing the web for many hours to prepare for my project. I'm sure to use DBPowerAmp (just downloaded the trial version) but found nothing indecisive on the audio format that meets my requirements on quality and tags including cover art. If not necessary, I will not use compressed lossless as I read too many articles on difference in sound because of the conversion process when played. I've done a blind test myself and indeed heard the difference.

Spoon
01-11-2011, 04:47 AM
There is no universal lossless format that plays in WMP and iTunes with cover art, as these two companies are trying to force their respective lossless formats and refuse to support FLAC.

I would use FLAC, Wavs ripped with dBpoweramp do contain cover art and tags.

Mirko88
01-11-2011, 06:08 AM
Thank you for the quick response.
I have heard and read various arguments against using FLAC. It appears that in the conversion when played back differences can be heard in sound.

What is the reason you recommend FLAC if it is not supported by Windows or Apple? Is it merely the size of the files?

Good to read that Wav ripped with dBpoweramp can contain tags + cover art. Do these tags only work in dBpoweramp or will they also show when I play the ripped wav's in other players such as iTunes? I always thought that Wav's can't contain tags, but I do know in some databases you can have them as some kind of index in a librabry (I have the Harman Kardon DMC1000 media player which works like that). As soon as you copy the files and play them in another player, the metadata and cover art remains in the media player.
Does the tag + cover art actually become part of the wav and will it be visible for any other player or converter? I want to be as universal as possible of course.

Spoon
01-11-2011, 07:02 AM
Very little will read the id tags from wave.

Lossless is lossless, it can be transferred between Apple Lossless and WMA Lossless. FLAC is a good storage format as it internally contains MD5s which self detect if the file is damaged, Apple Lossless and WMA lossless do nto.

garym
01-11-2011, 06:28 PM
It appears that in the conversion when played back differences can be heard in sound.


There are many knowledgeable folks on this topic that can tell you that this assertion is nonsense. You should google around a bit and particularly search the forums at hydrogenaudio.org for discussions of this.

Mirko88
01-12-2011, 03:38 AM
It is hard to tell nonsense from facts on the internet. But I agree, there is a lot of information to be found on the toppic. FLAC has the same bits and bytes and WAV or AIFF for that matter, so quality should be the same.
I did a test though on a Sonos system and really can hear the difference. I am certainly not an expert or a tachnical person, but my assumption is that it has got to do with the uncompressing process. So not talking about quality of the data, but the sound itself.
Well, in the end it is all a matter of testing I think.

After careful consideration I have decided to rip to AIFF and MP3 320kbps.
I don't like Windows Media Player at all as the library sucks. iTunes is so much user friendly. As well, Apple/iTunes will also be around for many more years to come, so my music collection in AIFF should be future proof.
Advantage of AIFF seems to be that the tags added in dBpoweramp display perfectly in iTunes and other players I have tested. The tags with WAV don't carry over when played in another player. AIFF can always be converted to WAV or FLAC when needed. So it seems to be the most flexible uncompressed lossless format for my needs. And who cares about disc space....what does a 1TB hard drive cost anyway?

The multi-ecode to MP3 as well allows me to easily have the collection available for iPod/Pad etc. Just show it as a second library in iTunes and all is under 1 button!

Thanks for your comments and support so far!

garym
01-12-2011, 01:48 PM
It is hard to tell nonsense from facts on the internet. But I agree, there is a lot of information to be found on the toppic. FLAC has the same bits and bytes and WAV or AIFF for that matter, so quality should be the same.
I did a test though on a Sonos system and really can hear the difference. I am certainly not an expert or a tachnical person, but my assumption is that it has got to do with the uncompressing process. So not talking about quality of the data, but the sound itself.
Well, in the end it is all a matter of testing I think.

After careful consideration I have decided to rip to AIFF and MP3 320kbps.
I don't like Windows Media Player at all as the library sucks. iTunes is so much user friendly. As well, Apple/iTunes will also be around for many more years to come, so my music collection in AIFF should be future proof.
Advantage of AIFF seems to be that the tags added in dBpoweramp display perfectly in iTunes and other players I have tested. The tags with WAV don't carry over when played in another player. AIFF can always be converted to WAV or FLAC when needed. So it seems to be the most flexible uncompressed lossless format for my needs. And who cares about disc space....what does a 1TB hard drive cost anyway?

The multi-ecode to MP3 as well allows me to easily have the collection available for iPod/Pad etc. Just show it as a second library in iTunes and all is under 1 button!

Thanks for your comments and support so far!

Can you tag and have artwork with AIFF?

And I'm not trying to be argumentative, just helpful in terms of another opinion, but a couple of things about this FLAC vs WAV issue. Again, I think many people in addition to me would tell you that if you can EASILY hear the difference between FLAC and WAV files on playback then something is either very wrong with your FLAC rips or your player. But I suspect it may be simpler than that. Understand that even very tiny differences in the sound level in two tracks can make the slightly louder track sound "better". This has been tested many times in double blind tests. And the "louder" doesn't have to be much louder (maybe not even that noticeable). With FLAC are you adding replaygain tags when ripping? If so, SONOS may be using those (I use Squeezebox products and they use the replaygain tags, which is a useful thing by the way). Use of the tags could lower the volume on the FLAC as compared with the WAV files.

I would also suggest that you do an ABX (blind) test of a FLAC and WAV rip of the same song. Download foobar2000 and one of the components is an ABX tester. Easy enough to use for this purpose.

And another thought. I know lots of people who are extremely serious about secure ripping, managing their music collections in excess of 10,000 albums, etc. I can say that 99% of these folks use FLAC for their lossless format and then use either mp3 or AAC for a lossy mirror for use on ipods, etc. Some use ALAC (apple lossless). A handful use WAV but the tagging is a problem. But none of these folks I know use AIFF for their lossless storage medium. I don't know about you, but this is informative to me.

p.s. Over at the squeezebox forums there are a few folks (in a minority) that really believe the decoding of the FLAC file at the player level reduces the sound quality. These folks instead prefer to have the FLAC decoded by the Server before it is streamed to the actual player, thus reducing the load on the player. This is an option with squeezeboxes. But again, the majority don't hear any difference at all in the two approaches and in fact some technical analysis with audiodiffmaker indicates not difference.

here's but one long thread you might read through. Keep in mind that some of the posters don't have a clue what they are talking about, but some are quite knowledgeable about the subject.

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=71321&highlight=wav+versus+flac

Again, I don't use SONOS, so it may very well be that SONOS players are not good at decoding FLAC files at the player level, so this could be your issue. I'd guess that if this was true there would be a lot of discussion on this at the SONOS forums.

But bottom line: Enjoy the music!

Mirko88
01-13-2011, 06:13 AM
Garym,

Thank you for your clear reply. I appreciate feedback like this and offers me a new perspective.
I'm not a technical guy, but I believe you can tag AIFF. CD's ripped in dBpoweramp play in iTunes and show all the tagged info + cover art. Perhaps I need to do a further test.

I have given things a lot of thought in the past week, as you can only do it right once with a large CD collection (or you will have to repeat the cumbersome work). What made my decision easier in the end is:
- storage space is not an issue with the prices for HDD's
- I use iTunes a lot and AIFF's work really well in iTunes. I also think it is a standard that will be around for a long time with all the iPods out in the market
- At any time I can convert AIFF to WAV or FLAC when needed and won't loose my work or quality of the ripped audio. This to me was an important argument as it becomes less important in that case which format to use.

Things I will test in more detail this week:
- Does metadata and cover art display well in other players (besides WMP) with AIFF?
- What happens with the metadata and cover art when I convert to FLAC?

Spoon
01-13-2011, 06:43 AM
> but I believe you can tag AIFF. CD's ripped in dBpoweramp play in iTunes and show all the tagged info + cover art.

You can. Converting between lossless formats preserves all tag data and cover art.

garym
01-13-2011, 08:59 AM
Garym,

Thank you for your clear reply. I appreciate feedback like this and offers me a new perspective.
I'm not a technical guy, but I believe you can tag AIFF. CD's ripped in dBpoweramp play in iTunes and show all the tagged info + cover art. Perhaps I need to do a further test.

I have given things a lot of thought in the past week, as you can only do it right once with a large CD collection (or you will have to repeat the cumbersome work). What made my decision easier in the end is:
- storage space is not an issue with the prices for HDD's
- I use iTunes a lot and AIFF's work really well in iTunes. I also think it is a standard that will be around for a long time with all the iPods out in the market
- At any time I can convert AIFF to WAV or FLAC when needed and won't loose my work or quality of the ripped audio. This to me was an important argument as it becomes less important in that case which format to use.

Things I will test in more detail this week:
- Does metadata and cover art display well in other players (besides WMP) with AIFF?
- What happens with the metadata and cover art when I convert to FLAC?

That's logical. And given that AIFF can hold tag data and album art (good to know) and that you can losslessly convert to FLAC or anything else, then you're good to go no matter what you might decide to do differently in the future.

lobisimo
01-13-2011, 09:00 AM
Hey Spoon and the others,

first a big hello and happy 2011, this is my first posting in this forum :)

I don't want to enter a „which format sounds better?“ discussion, I just want to be on the safe side having „perfectly“ ripped all my hundreds CDs in both FLAC and WAVE in case software/Musicplayer/HDDs/etc. will change in 5 or 15 years. After ripping, both FLAC and WAVE files will be stored/backed up in ordinary 100€ external 1TB USB drives and for listening from my Ripnas I will choose the format I am going to enjoy more.

My equipments are Akurate DS Dynamik & Squeezebox Classic, new RIPnas Z 1000 with dBpoweramp Ripnas 1.7 purchased few months ago[/B], Supernait & Rotel amps.

Once again, the idea is to rip FLAC and WAVE that will be almost 100% compatible with/running in Kinsky, Ipod/Ipad or other common WLAN based RC, Squeezserver and USB/CD use in my car / Nokia Music Express mobile.

I don't worry about FLAC, with FLAC everything works fine using the default options in my dbpoweramp (tagging, compression etc).

Now here is my question - and believe me I searched really a lot throughout the forums, but I still have no clue:

How can i be sure that my WAVE files have the most perfect/compatible tagging for Ipod, Nokia phone, Kinsky, Ipod as RC, etc? Of course I was reading a lot about checking the Advanced Codec Options of the dBpoweramp Configuration and setting the Wave ID Tagging to LIST tags, change track to 'itrk', Padding etc.
But it really took me days to consider that I can´t find these bl...y advanced codec options because the dbpoweramp version on my Ripnas 1.7 does not have them, could that be true??? So in this case, what am I supposed to do? I am not sure if the WAVE files generated by my ripnas have already the "best" taggings (at least they look fine in Kinsky and Squeezebox webpanel)! Or if I am already ripping with Padding or not? I only can see the results, but not the advanced codec options!!!!

I really appreciate any answer or help for this kind of chicken and egg issue.

Thanks,

Peter

Here are for example all infos showing up in the Squeezebox panel for 1 wave track:

Track Number: 11
File Format: WAV
Duration: 3:21
Volume Adjustment: -1.62 dB
Album Volume Adjustment: -0.31 dB
Bitrate: 1411kbps CBR (Converted to 705kbps FLAC)
Sample Rate: 44.1 kHz
Sample Size: 16 Bits
File Length: 35,611,990
Location: \\ripnas\Music\Gschwinds CDs\WAVE\Djalma Correa\Xingú; Guitar & Percussion\Sebastião Tapajós - 11 - Luz Negra.wav
Date Modified: Tuesday, January 4, 2011, 6:29 PM
Tag Version: ID3v2.3.0

ACCURATERIPDISCID: 011-001214fb-0098b4e2-9209a30b-11
ACCURATERIPRESULT: AccurateRip: Accurate (confidence 2) [CB0B9CDE]
APIC: [ image/jpeg, 3, , (29410 Bytes) ]
IART: Sebastião Tapajós Pedro Sorongo Djalma Correa
ICRD: 1984
IGNR: Latin
INAM: Luz Negra
IPRD: Xingú: Guitar & Percussion
ITRK: 11/11
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_GAIN: -0.31 dB
REPLAYGAIN_ALBUM_PEAK: 0.977234
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_GAIN: -1.62 dB
REPLAYGAIN_TRACK_PEAK: 0.977203
TALB: Xingú: Guitar & Percussion
TCOM: Nelson Cavaquinho
TCON: Latin
TDRC: 1984
TIT1: Western European Traditions/Samba/Choro/Brazilian Traditions
TIT2: Luz Negra
TPE1: Sebastião Tapajós/Pedro Sorongo/Djalma Correa
TPE2: Djalma Correa
TPOS: 1/1
TRCK: 11/11
UPC: 4007198761344

Spoon
01-13-2011, 10:33 AM
There is no need to change the wave tagging options, they are there because to ensure compatibility with Sony Soundforge (professional editing software).

Mirko88
01-13-2011, 10:52 AM
How will Wave tags be available in players?
I did a test rip in Wave and played in Window Media Player for example, but I did not see the metadata or cover....

Spoon
01-13-2011, 11:01 AM
Only very specific ones will pick up the tags.

lobisimo
01-13-2011, 06:17 PM
Thanks Spoon for the quick response,

so my wave tagging is perfect for most players and kind of "future-proof"? And I am able to edit tags without destroying sth in the original wave file?

I just don't want to rip everything in wave again in three years because I will have realized that some important tagging is missing :)

Mirko88
01-14-2011, 02:47 AM
After the advice on this and other forums and testing myself, I found that AIFF was more flexible for me. You can always convert to wave later.
As Spoon mentioned, wave tags only show is specific players, so most players will not support the tags and album art.
I found that I have more options with AIFF. But in the end it is also a personal choice, because I use iTunes a lot to synch my iPod/Pad.
Perhaps your player of preference does support wave tags.

lobisimo
01-18-2011, 05:03 PM
indeed Mirko, my players (Akurate and Squeezebox) work perfect with wave and flac tags.

Green269
04-23-2011, 01:02 PM
Hello,
I am wondering if someone can help me. I am using the multi-encoder to rip cds in WAV and ALAC. And I know ALAC is capable of 1411 bitrate, and wav IS 1411, but i notice when I use the multi-encoder, or just convert a WAV cd to ALAC, the bitrate is NOT 1411. Is there any way to manually change a setting to get ALAC in dbpoweramp to be 1411 bitrate?

Thank you!!

Spoon
04-23-2011, 03:00 PM
ALAC is a compressed format, so the bitrate might show half the actual, when ALAC decompressed it is the same as Wave (1411)

Green269
04-23-2011, 03:17 PM
Thank you Spoon! Another question for you. Does your batch ripper support Acronova Nimbie USB DVD/CD Duplicators? I wouldn't want to buy one and not have it supported by dbpoweramp. Didn't want to start a whole new thread...Thank you!!

Spoon
04-24-2011, 08:39 AM
It is not supported.

boogieman
04-25-2011, 08:09 PM
I use AIFF with tag and album art.

Sugar Magnolia
09-01-2011, 02:51 AM
I did a test though on a Sonos system and really can hear the difference. I am certainly not an expert or a tachnical person, but my assumption is that it has got to do with the uncompressing process. So not talking about quality of the data, but the sound itself.

I believe that flac is the only format that Sonos supports replay gain (track only) with. I do not think that you can toggle this on or off. If there is a replay tag, the Sonos will obey it. Perhaps the difference you hear is a level difference, caused by the Sonos adjusting playback level.

I personally prefer flac for this reason, Sonos replay gain. I do not like that it uses Track Replay gain instead of Album replay gain. I get around this limitation by copying the album values to the track fields.

currter
08-04-2016, 09:54 PM
Hello,

I am struggling with this similar issue as I already invested about a week
back Late March to early April to rip 1300 CDs to .WAV using iTunes on an iMac
(even to the point of having 6 to 7 CD drives running , ripping CDs in parallel
to store on a hard drive (rotational ).
So far the collection is just under 800 GBs and I have made back ups of the master
copy and from there I copy, distribute songs to various USB flash drives (alphabetizing).

Now that my new Pioneer (even Sony) car stereo(s) can have a benefit of displaying album
art and metadata information, I want to take advantage of that feature.
Now I have to re-rip all those CDs onto another Master hard drive using flac format for its
metadata capabilities, but I am struggling to get the right setting.... like should I store the
files uncompressed (close to the size of the .wav files with metadata added) or should I
rip them compressed lossless (those levels of 1 to 8 even 0) using perhaps free software like
Exact Audio Copy (EAC). It seems as if the uncompressed lossless mode is proprietary to
dbpoweramp software so I will have to purchase it soon for either Mac or Windows* platform.

So, can .WAV files be tagged at all and show on the display the album art and metadata ?
Which flac form is the best to use if disk space is not of concern?
So far I am ripping using the dbpoweramp special feature uncompressed lossless...
Is there any advantage to using that like to lessen the CPU processing when it comes to decoding
the "compressed" flac file... more CPU usage or work it has to do if the files are compressed to those
levels of 1 to 8?
When the CPU has to work harder to decompress or decode the compressed files, does that or can
that affect audio? Like sometimes I hear a small buzzing sound but that is usually when the car stereo
is still reading files on the hard drive while the song is playing... I would listen to the first song it can find
after the initial read, and then I see 10%.. 20%... 60% ... 90% .. 100% as it continues to load
all the let us say 10,800 songs on a 480GB hard drive attached.

So for this project I want to switch to flac but want to make sure I am using the correct form of it
so I do not have to do this again.... However, I am thinking that I could rip using the maximum size
fiac files (uncompressed lossless that is similar to size of .wav) and later on compress those to one of
the sublevel (0, 1 to 8) flac formats if ever I want to save space and since all compressed levels are
still lossless and perhaps I could get back the original uncompressed lossless file since it is similar
to .wav.

Decisions,decisions..

Dat Ei
08-05-2016, 02:27 AM
Decisions,decisions..

You worry too much! As long as your audio files are lossless, you can convert those files back and forth into any other lossless audio format without problems and any loss of audio data.

Nevertheless it is a good idea and practice to rip the music as flac, because flac is a common standard that supports ID3 tags. The use of tags in wave files is not that common. So my tip: use flac.

The compression rate of flac doesn't matter too much and has no(!) effect on the audio quality. Todays players are capable enough to handle all compression rates without any glitches. I've kept the dBpa standard compression of 5. Higher compression rates only need more cpu time for their calculation and save only a little disk space.

So don't worry about the compression rate - use flac and the compression rate you like (you can change it any time, if you feel any need to do so). Spend more time in the quality of the tags instead of thinking about the compression rate of a lossless codec.


Dat Ei

currter
08-05-2016, 02:57 AM
I did notice the default compression level seemed to be 5 or 6...
I was wondering if setting it to 1 could obviously generate larger files but
require less CPU to decode. And if that is the case, one could just use the free
EAC software which seems to do the same thing , rips to .flac files and adds metadata.

The advantage of dbpoweramp or what stands out is the special feature
of uncompressed lossless ripping to flac files that are same size as .wav....
There must have been a reason the developers may have modified the
open source flac software to allow this special feature.
Kind of like having the .wav file (its size) and just adding the metadata
(to the point I was thinking of taking a wav file and renaming it with .flac extension
to see if that could be processed with the metadata).

I think that will be my decision to proceed with dbpoweramp.

Dat Ei
08-05-2016, 03:15 AM
And if that is the case, one could just use the free
EAC software which seems to do the same thing , rips to .flac files and adds metadata.

There are plenty of reasons to use dBpa, but I can't see a reason why one wants to use a mixed workflow of dBpa and EAC or a workflow of EAC alone. Again: bigger files have no(!) advantages from the audio point of view.


The advantage of dbpoweramp or what stands out is the special feature
of uncompressed lossless ripping to flac files that are same size as .wav....

And what is the advantage of the same size?!? For me there are three aspects:

1.) audio quality
2.) quality of meta data
3.) common standard of the file format


There must have been a reason the developers may have modified the
open source flac software to allow this special feature.
Kind of like having the .wav file (its size) and just adding the metadata
(to the point I was thinking of taking a wav file and renaming it with .flac extension
to see if that could be processed with the metadata).

Why do you insist on wave? I don't get it. wave has the same audio quality as flac, but wave players that can handle wave files with meta data are not so common. Beside that the wave files are bigger than flac files - this is on top a disadvantage if you have huge collections, even if disk space is cheap.


Dat Ei

mville
08-05-2016, 07:34 AM
The advantage of dbpoweramp or what stands out is the special feature
of uncompressed lossless ripping to flac files that are same size as .wav....
There must have been a reason the developers may have modified the
open source flac software to allow this special feature.
Kind of like having the .wav file (its size) and just adding the metadata
(to the point I was thinking of taking a wav file and renaming it with .flac extension
to see if that could be processed with the metadata).

What makes you think uncompressed lossless is a special feature, rather than just another feature?

The compression levels are 0 thru 8 plus the uncompressed option. The decoded flac file (encoded at any level or the uncompressed option) will always be the same.

If you are unsure, just rip to flac at the default level.

garym
08-05-2016, 08:39 AM
Wav = FLAC = ALAC = lossless!

compression in FLAC doesn't change the above. My suspicion is that the uncompressed FLAC is just something to appease the audiophools that never could understand that lossless = lossless.

I like dbpa better than eac because of its ease of use, metadata sources, conversion tools, etc.
ps. I use FLAC at default -5.

currter
08-05-2016, 11:59 AM
[QUOTE=Dat Ei;167925]There are plenty of reasons to use dBpa, but I can't see a reason why one wants to use a mixed workflow of dBpa and EAC or a workflow of EAC alone. Again: bigger files have no(!) advantages from the audio point of view.

That is why I want to do the research to figure out which software would be best (or better) to use
so I can start with it and finish the entire project using the same application like I did when I ripped
the 1300 CDs using iTunes on the Mac. A few months ago I did not have the foresight or even thought
about metadata issues because I had not upgraded the car stereos until June.
I was aware of flac in the past but was more comfortable with wav (and .aiff may not have been
compatible in all players like .wav and .flac are ).

I see some advantages of dbpoweramp and some advantages of EAC (like one CD, I could not get
the full metadata using dba but EAC and WMP pulled the information in better... one of those discs
from Unidisc Canada).

You also question, why am I so hung up on .wav files since they are large? Then why does dbpoweramp
allow uncompressed lossless which generate files just as large or slightly larger than .wav?
I am trying to get from you what is the advantage of having that special feature to tease the customer?
This seems to be the only major feature where dba software differs from EAC which is free.

I am trying to see why should I pay for DBA that offers the same compression levels as EAC
with the exception of no compression. Why would DBA offer a special feature to generate a similarly
.wav file and not promote it or have disparaging comments about it? Why offer that feature at all
if it is not considered beneficial?

EAC even tells me where there are suspicious reads on the disc giving the track's minute: second position
so I can perhaps play the CD to see if I hear any anomalies at that point (which I did not really, good
error correction I guess ).


Well who knows

Thank you for the input.

currter
08-05-2016, 12:08 PM
[QUOTE=garym;167929]Wav = FLAC = ALAC = lossless!

compression in FLAC doesn't change the above. My suspicion is that the uncompressed FLAC is just something to appease the audiophools that never could understand that lossless = lossless.

I could be in the category of audiophools but I would not have been had I not seen this option
and still wonder what is the advantage of the lossless uncompressed and if that saves on any
CPU processing of the audio so it does not have to be decoded as it is the straight .wav file.

If there is no advantage here then maybe EAC , since it is free, could be the way to go.
Why pay ? I could even still use WMP which does a pretty good job except one cannot
change or modify the directory structures or file naming conventions with those % % flags...
I was thinking DBA had an advantage because of what the audiophools wanted and thus
a reason to pay for it...

Well back to procastinating... you have discouraged me and I may just end up using
WMP or EAC now (I think they did a pretty good job ripping the files and really WMP
is easier for me because I can see all the 6 CD/DVD drives in one application to rip
in parallel. With EAC and DBA, I have to run a process in each desktop to do the
parallel ripping to the hard drive to "speed"the process up than running one rip at a time. )

mville
08-05-2016, 12:52 PM
If there is no advantage here then maybe EAC , since it is free, could be the way to go.
Why pay ? I could even still use WMP which does a pretty good job except one cannot
change or modify the directory structures or file naming conventions with those % % flags...
I was thinking DBA had an advantage because of what the audiophools wanted and thus
a reason to pay for it...

dBpoweramp Music Converter is more than just an audio CD ripper. I advise you read the Products page and these forums in more detail.


Well back to procastinating... you have discouraged me and I may just end up using
WMP or EAC now (I think they did a pretty good job ripping the files and really WMP
is easier for me because I can see all the 6 CD/DVD drives in one application to rip
in parallel. With EAC and DBA, I have to run a process in each desktop to do the
parallel ripping to the hard drive to "speed"the process up than running one rip at a time.

I'm not sure why you have been discouraged. The advice given here is sound, honest advice.

garym
08-05-2016, 12:54 PM
[QUOTE=garym;167929]Wav = FLAC = ALAC = lossless!

compression in FLAC doesn't change the above. My suspicion is that the uncompressed FLAC is just something to appease the audiophools that never could understand that lossless = lossless.

I could be in the category of audiophools but I would not have been had I not seen this option
and still wonder what is the advantage of the lossless uncompressed and if that saves on any
CPU processing of the audio so it does not have to be decoded as it is the straight .wav file.

If there is no advantage here then maybe EAC , since it is free, could be the way to go.
Why pay ? I could even still use WMP which does a pretty good job except one cannot
change or modify the directory structures or file naming conventions with those % % flags...
I was thinking DBA had an advantage because of what the audiophools wanted and thus
a reason to pay for it...

Well back to procastinating... you have discouraged me and I may just end up using
WMP or EAC now (I think they did a pretty good job ripping the files and really WMP
is easier for me because I can see all the 6 CD/DVD drives in one application to rip
in parallel. With EAC and DBA, I have to run a process in each desktop to do the
parallel ripping to the hard drive to "speed"the process up than running one rip at a time. )

eac is fine. But whatever you do, do not use WMP as a ripper. That's a very bad idea. You should really choose between eac or dbpa. Either will give you bit perfect rips, with ACCURATERIP database matches.

The FLAC compression you are worried about is irrelevant. This "decoding effort" of compressed FLAC files that audiophools worry about is mostly nonsense. Certainly with any modern era player/computer.

Also, an important reason to use flac over wav, is that flac files have built in CRCs. I can easily run a batch program on my 100,000 flac files and determine whether any are corrupt. This is NOT possible with wav files.

currter
08-05-2016, 09:05 PM
[QUOTE=currter;167935]

eac is fine. But whatever you do, do not use WMP as a ripper. That's a very bad idea. You should really choose between eac or dbpa. Either will give you bit perfect rips, with ACCURATERIP database matches.

The advantages of using dbapoweramp and / or exact audio copy are
1) each program seems to insert the metadata details into each .flac file generated or
place the album art information in Folder.jpg
2) each program does error correction or can give you information if the rip is secure or insecure
or some information if the CD is slightly damaged or smudged so one can try again or test to
see whether or not there is a problem at a specific location on the CD track

With Windows media player, those rips to flac, I had to seemingly babysit each ripped .flac file to
make sure the metadata pulled from the internet is in each file. I had to select all .flac files then
right click and choose IDTag information and make sure the album art is consistent and applied
to each .flac file and make sure it is not too high resolution as the Sony car stereo seems to have
problems displaying album art images that are above 500x500 (1400x1400 it won't display).

So I do appreciate the automated process EAC and DBA have to offer in that regard.

<sigh> I should really get this started as everything is in place with the pioneer stereo
which has 2 USB ports and an SD slot: so...
Of the 837GB of .wav files I had ripped by early April, I have placed about 477GBs
(Artists A through Mi) on the 480GB Patriot SSD drive or about 11,000 songs ,
I have another 237GBs (Artists Mo through V) on a 250 GB Samsung SSD drive
and the remainder 123GBs (Artists W through Z and Various Artists/Compilations/
Soundtracks) on a 128GB Microcenter microSD card
So this covers the entire collection on 2 hard drives and one micro SD card which
the Pioneer stereo can handle.
And if I used the compression levels (not uncompressed), may even be able to
get the entire collection on 2 SSD drives as I have to worry about the 15,000 song/file
limitation the Pioneer has per drive even if I can get the entire collection on 1 hard drive
using flac.

I am now ready to start "flacking" everything: including CDs by Roberta Flack

Sorry, I had to say that (Roberta Flack on flac).

I think I will just purchase one copy of DBA for Windows on the Macbook and leave it at that
whereas before I was thinking to use it on multiple computers. I see a benefit to having this
software handy, maybe not for multiple Windows computers but just one... Also the Windows
version seems to pick up where I left off if I should close the application: it tells me when I come
back to a CD the status of the rips... the Mac version does not seem to do this (have to start
over again with Mac).

I may see the light as far as the compression levels and would you just say compression level
1 would generate the "largest" file size that would not have to use too much CPU to encode or decode?
Or would that be level 0? As I do not care about disk space at this point.
I also noticed that some CDs DBA takes a long time to rip when there seems to be a problem with the
CD either slightly scratched or a defect in the CD from the manufacturer when I attempted to rip using
uncompressed lossless. Some re-rips took a few hours on one song and it turned out that I could not
hear any problems with the particular track. I had the setting for secure recovery of errors and trying to
analyze the meanings or importance of those AR values some Secure some Insecure with red X.
But for the most part, most rip with Accurate status after 1st pass or 2nd pass.

Thank you for the information.

The FLAC compression you are worried about is irrelevant. This "decoding effort" of compressed FLAC files that audiophools worry about is mostly nonsense. Certainly with any modern era player/computer.

Also, an important reason to use flac over wav, is that flac files have built in CRCs. I can easily run a batch program on my 100,000 flac files and determine whether any are corrupt. This is NOT possible with wav files.

currter
08-05-2016, 10:16 PM
I guess I could spend some time, added to the time already wasted or procrastinating :),
to rip a CD or 1 song to each of the 8 or 9 compression modes and analyze the file sizes
for 1 song and come up with an answer for myself and my own knowledge as I am learning
about .flac. (maybe even doing this for each of the various applications: WMP, DBA, EAC) then
compare...
Then I can come up with a level that will make me feel comfortable as I take
on this task and do it "right" the first time (or the second time: first time .wav using iTunes).
I can use the master hard drive of .wav files in case I come into problems and just convert
those .wav files to .flac (example: one test, I had problems ripping 1 song using WMP's flac
converter so I gave up on that song using WMP and used EAC or DBA to rip that 1 .wav song
to .flac and moved it into the appropriate directory for that Artist and CD album folder and
moved on to the next CD).
I am just warming up experimenting with which software I feel most comfortable using
for the entire project & stick to using that one application throughout the entire project (like I did with iTunes)
and be consistent throughout with which ever program and compression level used just as .wav is consistent.
And I would like to do these in parallel since the 6 DVD/CD drives are
connected to the computer (would have had 7 but the superdrive is not working, ejecting the
disc).

WMP I can see all the discs in one thread or in the software and I do not have to run multiple
processes in 6 separate desktops so I can process each CD/DVD drive. I have to do that using
dbpoweramp and I am not sure if there could be a problem running dbpoweramp using 6 processes
going at the same time if each one has to get some offset information from each optical drive
to perform the best rip possible and running all could confuse the program?

I need to stop talking and start doing :)

garym
08-05-2016, 10:40 PM
Why do you need both windows and Mac versions. Can't you just do all your ripping on the Windows machine?

currter
08-05-2016, 10:52 PM
Well, I feel more comfortable using Mac and anything I have for Windows I try to find for Mac.
However it seems DBA works better under Windows so it was a matter of purchasing the
package to run on multiple Windows computers (I am running Bootcamp on 3 Macs : macbook
iMac and macmini and at times I switch between them). I am realizing I do not need all
that so I think just one copy should do (save money in the end ).

The Mac version of dbpoweramp may need to be improved as I did notice a difference with
regard to coming back to a previously ripped CD later after closing the application or removing
the CD and reinserting. Windows brings up the previous information regarding the ripped
flac files. Mac does not seem to do that and it is as if one has to re-rip the CD to get the
information again.

Just for that I feel Windows version is better.

It is just I sometimes do not like using Windows as the operating seems to be more sluggish
compared to Mac and Windows may crash or have hang ups in comparison to Mac.
What I could do is just run stuff under Windows for a while, give it a rest, reboot to clear
things and come back to completing later: just take some breaks and I think I can get through
Windows with this.
But even now, I am procrastinating because I am running Mac OS now doing other things. :)
I tried using parallels with this and attach the optical drives and hard drives but over time
something hangs or goes awry while on Mac and Windows together.
I have to just boot into windows under the Bootcamp partition and run the software and hardware
all connected under Windows alone.

garym
08-05-2016, 11:00 PM
If your Windows machine is crashing a lot, you have a hardware or software issue. My Windows computers are rock solid. I use win 8.1 on 3 different Windows machines. My wife uses win 10. Are are very stable.

currter
08-06-2016, 12:22 AM
It is not a lot ... it is just I really like using Mac more so now since 2012.
Windows does run a bit better on the Mac but maybe for Windows running
platforms, I may need an upgraded, updated machine like from Asus gaming machine
G752-JT or JV something... I had my eye on it for a while even when they had the
G751 series out a while back...


Anyway I have done some comparisons of the ripped flac files at different compression (0 or 1 through 8)
levels and trying to see which way I should go.. probably wasting more time doing this for nothing
or no real benefit. I am even doing some threshold testing (trying levels -1, 9 which caused errors in the EAC program :)
and 10, 11, 12 which seems to wind around where 10 is really 0 and 11 is 1 , 12 is 2 so the software is probably
ignoring bad input on the command line :) just some testing from the old AT&T days...


DBPA = dbpoweramp
EAC = Exact Audio Copy
WMP = Windows Media Player


So far it is a toss up between EAC and DBPA , WMP has been weeded out

Test file, song: Feel Like Makin' Love - Roberta Flack 2 minutes 53 seconds long
Number 1 pop, R&B and adult contemporary 1974 (Billboard)
again Roberta Flack "flacked" -> .flac'd short and to the point

:)

It seems as if DBPA generated a smaller .flac file with higher bit rate (797kbps)
but EAC generated a larger .flac file but slightly lower bit-rate (794kbps) (at level 1 compression).
I am not sure what this is going to tell me but I had to do it as I waste more time in analyses.
These things could change from song to song so I am not sure what benefit this is.
Maybe a larger file really means nothing after all if it is all lossless and a higher bit rate is better?
but of course .wav is the best (bit rate-wise) minus the file size disadvantage.
Also maybe the file size differences could be the metadata, album art information... I should have
selected the same size image in the files...oops. oh well, I am still a newbie.
But it seems as if DBPA maximizes the bit-rate with a smaller file size at maybe each of the
compression levels: so goal is to maximize bit-rate (not sure about minimizing file size as I need
to take that metadata out or use the same sized metadata in each file).

I think what I learned from all of this (if I actually learned anything at all)
is I think I will select level 1 compression level (though the experts here recommend level 5 or 6) if I should
go with either software. DBPA does have an advantage as to that proprietary option of uncompressed still
to consider and at a higher bit rate than .wav :) . See the images.
I can understand that people may choose the compression level based on how much disc space available or
wanting to save to cram more songs onto a hard drive ... so choose the higher level for such.
Since I do not care about disc space, the lower the number (or uncompressed) would be fine for my purposes.
:) Good night.

1039 1040 1041

currter
08-06-2016, 01:08 AM
I either changed the .jpg or Folder.jpg file in the .flac files to be the same and eventually
deleted them all across the board , so I think... the thing is it seemed to change the bit-rate listed
for each song.
I thought it would just decrease the file sizes (obvious, not much or at all), but why would the bit-rate
indications be changed as well? Why would the metadata or images in the .flac file
have anything to do with the waves of the audio data or its bit-rate?

After this, the EAC .flac files now have a higher bit-rate (806) than DBPA (800)... so I could be shifting
my opinion ... DBPA still has advantage of the uncompressed lossless, but now
EAC may have the advantage and it is free especially if one want to use the compression levels.

1042 1043


Maybe Windows is not reporting that bit-rate information accurately
I looked at the Audio properties (tab) and just see some indicator
of the % of compression. Maybe it all does not matter in the end.
level 1 for EAC and DBPA are 44% or 43% compressed I forget which one
I am tired of this analysis probably leading to nowhere.
Lossless is lossless

garym
08-06-2016, 08:10 AM
I hope you realize that all this file size comparison is a complete waste of time. All FLAC files are lossless, regardless of compression level. You are more likely to be abducted by Martians than to detect ANY effect on sound quality of decoding the flac file for playback.

currter
08-06-2016, 03:34 PM
I am sorry,... now I am playing with foobar... it seems to be able to take my
current .wav rips I worked on a few months ago and wrap the seemingly correct
album information around the audio files specific to that album and add some basic , pertinent tagging information
hopefully that is compatible with the Pioneer car stereo (I do not think I need song writer information for the
car stereo). This way I do not have to re-rip
all the audio CDs. Maybe dbpa can do the same as well... So far the only thing
I need to do manually is apply the album art in the resulting flac file. I am also
hoping the metadata added to the .wav files will show up on the car stereo.
So far I have not had any luck with that as I would continue to use .wav and
add the tagging information.

I am still exploring how I want to do this and feel comfortable with it all.
I even sent an email to Tag&Rename to see if its software can do anything
with the .wav files already established.

I think the ideal situation would be to continue to use .wav files I feel most comfortable,
and since I already did the work there, and just add the tagging information if it will
be universally compatible across all systems or other devices can read and translate that
information (like the car stereo).

Well back to testing.

currter
08-06-2016, 07:26 PM
I hope you realize that all this file size comparison is a complete waste of time. All FLAC files are lossless, regardless of compression level. You are more likely to be abducted by Martians than to detect ANY effect on sound quality of decoding the flac file for playback.

That foobar icon kind of looks like a Martian... :)
The way I see it, I would rather waste the time now in researching what best way to
go than to choose one method and regret that later. I want to make sure I find the
best way to do this now before embarking on re-ripping 1300 CDs and do it the right
and consistent way throughout the process. I already wasted time for a week ripping to
.wav using iTunes on the Mac... I don't want to do that again (but .wav has worked well for
me and seem enduring standard).

The foobar trick worked with 2 albums... was able to convert to .flac files and
add some metadata, maybe not as detailed with the songwriter information , but
the album, title, track number and I have to manually select all the files and
insert the album art .jpg in the ID Tags section.

So maybe I do not have to re-rip all those CDs again, what a pain to do for a week,
and can just use foobar or maybe even EAC or DBPA ? to take the mass of .wav files
I have under the artist directories and album directories and automate the insertion
of some metadata,conversion to flac (level 1) and become more intimate with the
music to go through and add the album art to each file en masse as I go along.

Finally, I have tried hard to get the metadata in the .wav files to show on the car stereo
and have failed. The information shows on the computer but not external to that.
I am wasting time, but I am trying and will try some other things with .wav before
I give up and concede to .flac in some form (compressed or uncompressed, more likely compressed).
<sigh>
I was in the car to see if I could hear any differences between .wav and .flac
and noticing how it reads the flash drive (that light flickering). The car stereo seems to
keep the audio in memory for both format when repeating a song the light does not flicker.
But .wav would be more data for it to have to hold in memory than a .flac.
I do notice something different with the time bar for flac... flac seems a bit delayed or
at certain parts of the song where I know something happens or an event in the song
at a certain minute:second position, flac does not seem to be accurate there. Maybe it is buffering
some information ahead of time to do the decoding faster, whereas .wav is in real time.

Thank you for your help here as I know I have been a pain with this.

currter
08-06-2016, 08:01 PM
I am analyzing how the bit-rates are for each song
especially for that Roberta Flack CD...
It seems as if there are lower-bit rates for the slower, softer songs
like The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face a *1 pop and adult contemporary song of the year for 1972.
That seems to have one of the lowest...747 kbps maybe because it is a bit of a sleeper track with lots of quiet parts.

The more up tempo songs have higher bit rates maybe because of more complicated
instrumentation and syncopation...
Back Together Again - duet with Donny Hathaway more of a disco flavored tune at 903 kbps
is one of the highest
It kind of makes me wonder how this is related to beats per minute ...

Just some interesting things noticing about the conversion to flac as I go along...

mville
08-07-2016, 08:00 AM
EAC .flac files now have a higher bit-rate (806) than DBPA (800)... so I could be shifting
my opinion ... DBPA still has advantage of the uncompressed lossless, but now
EAC may have the advantage and it is free especially if one want to use the compression levels.

I'm not sure what you are trying to argue or prove here. EAC and dBpoweramp use the same official flac libraries (http://xiph.org/flac/)

Lossless Uncompressed (followed by compressed level 0) will result in the largest files, with faster encoding/decoding, whereas compressed level 8 will result in the smallest files and slower encoding/decoding. With today's processing speeds and the availability of cheap disk storage, for most users, both these points have become less of an issue.

Also, it is unclear to me why you consider uncompressed flac files to be advantageous.

mville
08-07-2016, 08:02 AM
Finally, I have tried hard to get the metadata in the .wav files to show on the car stereo
and have failed. The information shows on the computer but not external to that.
I am wasting time, but I am trying and will try some other things with .wav before
I give up and concede to .flac in some form (compressed or uncompressed, more likely compressed).
< sigh>

Tag support for wav files is notoriously poor, hence one the advantages of ripping to flac.


I was in the car to see if I could hear any differences between .wav and .flac
and noticing how it reads the flash drive (that light flickering). The car stereo seems to
keep the audio in memory for both format when repeating a song the light does not flicker.
But .wav would be more data for it to have to hold in memory than a .flac.
I do notice something different with the time bar for flac... flac seems a bit delayed or
at certain parts of the song where I know something happens or an event in the song
at a certain minute:second position, flac does not seem to be accurate there. Maybe it is buffering
some information ahead of time to do the decoding faster, whereas .wav is in real time.

This will be a consequence of the car stereo hardware resources/firmware and how it handles different audio formats.

garym
08-07-2016, 08:37 AM
... now I am playing with foobar...

yes, dbpa can do the same thing with its convert program. And PerfectTunes can automatically add album art.

currter
08-07-2016, 10:41 AM
Okay,...
I was able to use DBPA on the Mac to convert the existing .WAV files under artist name/album name
to .flac files and even had the tagging information inserted. The problem is I cannot verify the
tagging information is correct until I go to windows. I guess I could run parallels and have Windows running
on the Mac to check.

I could not do the same easily under Windows... maybe, just as with foobar, I have to tag each of the .wav files
first, then convert to flac files and the files/songs will be placed in another area under the appropriate
Album Artist/Album name and number followed by title of song.

I think this is the way to go with this so I do not have to rip all those CDs again.
It has been journey to get to this point but I am glad I did the research.

I may end up purchasing DBPA for the Mac, not Windows as Windows seems to
be served by a myriad of flac conversion tools that I can choose from that are free.

EAC did not work well with just converting the .wav files in batch and it deleted
my "source" .wav files --I forgot to turn off that option to delete the .wav after
it processes it to .flac . But I still have 2 master copies, so no big deal there
replacing the .wav files.

I think DBPA will be handy to keep around but on the Mac .

Thank you for all your support and patience as I acquiesce
that .flac is the way to go if I really want to see the album art
information on the car stereo. And since I am keeping the master hard drive
with all the .wav files backed up and safe, why should I worry about the audio
quality of the compressed the files in .flac any longer just for usage in the car
and especially now I can see how to convert the .wav to .flac without
having to re-rip the CDs again... If the .wav files I ripped back in April
have errors on them , as I discover them (only 3 so far where the CD
was just smudged), then I will deal with them then.
I will also have the benefit of being able to put more songs (albums, artists)
on the drives (flash, SSD, microsd) that I would use for the car maybe even
using only 2 hard drives instead of the 3 drives used now.

I will play with DBPA on Windows to see about adding the tagging
information and have the .flac files stored in the appropriate directory
Artist/Album/xx title.flac
So far it seems to just place the converted files in a top level directory
or sub directory where I want to organize the file but it is not creating
the Artist/Album folders. And I think that was because the .wav files
did not have the tagging information inside them to direct the .flac files
where they should go.

Thanks.

garym
08-07-2016, 10:46 AM
You simply need to set the dynamic naming properly when converting wav to flac and dbpa will create separate artist/album subdirectories. There is lots of info on this in the help screens on various program screens. Just click on the "?" Icons.

currter
08-07-2016, 11:13 AM
Okay, I think I figured it out...

On Windows, I have to add the tag information from the source directory.
I think someone mentioned that before... so to give credit to that person.
Once the tag information is filled out in the .wav files for Album Artist and/or
Artist and Album name, song number position and song title, then I have to
back to rip to .flac and the converted files will be stored under the appropriate
directories based on Artist/Album name/ files .. songs.flac numbered

Then I have to manually add the album art information by right clicking... then ID Tag
editing then searching for the right album art from internet...
I think this will be fine as this will be faster than ripping 1300 CDs again even if doing so
all these other steps could be automated .
I think this will be a small inconvenience... I just have to go through directory by directory.

It's been fun... time to do the work.

mville
08-07-2016, 11:17 AM
Thank you for all your support and patience as I acquiesce
that .flac is the way to go if I really want to see the album art
information on the car stereo. And since I am keeping the master hard drive
with all the .wav files backed up and safe, why should I worry about the audio
quality of the compressed the files in .flac any longer just for usage in the car
and especially now I can see how to convert the .wav to .flac without
having to re-rip the CDs again...

There is NO difference in the audio quality of wav files and any corresponding compressed flac files. The compression refers to data compression only and should not be confused with analog audio compression.

currter
08-07-2016, 11:17 AM
Oh, I must not have seen that option for dynamic naming... maybe it was in small print.
Thank you... But I think even if I do this manually, it will be a lot faster from .wav to .flac
than re-ripping CDs where at times the encoding would take an hour for one song it got
hung up on just to make sure it got ripped accurately with CRC checking and error correction
when in reality when I visit those song, I do not hear a problem in the audio either on the
CD or in the .wav files I generated.

currter
08-07-2016, 11:18 AM
Yes, I see the light now.
I have been converted to flac even at compression level 0 or 1...
whichever one generates the larger file and / or higher bit rate
and or requires less CPU processing (encoding, decoding)...
just for my ease of mind. :)

Thank you so much.

currter
08-07-2016, 03:16 PM
I guess I did see that dynamic naming area...
On the Mac it was already set, Windows I had to do some tweaking of it.

One has to do some work to get these things right when everything would be
automated and automatically placed in appropriate areas if I would just re-rip the
CDs .

Apparently, I am not going to get the software to research to fill in those blank fields
such as year, composers(s), contributing artists like with duets and guest artists if I just
convert the newly tagged .wav files as that information is not in the file nor in the
directory structure.
I will have to assess if that is important and if it is, I will have to re-rip everything.
If I want to simply get these things converted fast using only the artist\album\track* song.wav,
then I will have to live with that limited information in the resulting tagged .wav to the
compressed .flac files which will be appropriately placed onto the new masterflac hard drive
just as before with the .wav.

I see the downloaded version does insert the album art and once I purchase, that can be done
automatically... maybe I will luck out that the other fields can be inserted such as
genre, year, composer, record label ,etc. even UPC label
wow this is a lot to consider re-ripping the entire collection

Wav was so limiting and I kind of thought ripping to .wav using iTunes, that iTunes would have
added some of this information in the .wav file as the detailed information did appear in
the iTunes application once the CDs were loaded and ripped. What a waste of time.
<sigh>

currter
08-07-2016, 03:34 PM
I am also going to have to send an email to Apple's CEO Tim Cook
as to why iTunes does not support flac and also why it seems .aiff files,
which could contain metadata information better than .wav, are not
widely supported on car audio systems such as this Pioneer or the Sony.
Maybe had I ripped all those CDs to .aiff, I would not have to go through
this to get the data and images added to the audio files.

I may just go ahead and re-rip all the CDs and use that burst option
as the software did spend a lot of time doing multiple passes ripping certain
songs on CDs which were fairly clean... one song it spent 4 hours or so if not
more ripping. I had to go to sleep and come back to it the next morning.
I did not hear any noticeable anomalies on that track but some of the music
is loud and as having a vinyl record that has a little scratch on it, if the
music is not soft, you barely notice the scratch.

Well that is it... I have two more days of the trial... then I can purchase for either
platform... coin toss maybe.

garym
08-07-2016, 05:17 PM
Don't use burst option. You want the ultra secure option with ACCURAERIP. You want to rip correctly, even if it takes a bit longer. And by the way even some brand new CDs with no apparent flaws can have errors in ripping (not bit perfect). That's one reason Itunes is not a recommended ripper. You want a secure ripper that does an ACCURATERIP match (such as dbpa).

Respectfully, you seem to spend your research time on all the wrong things (e.g. Wav vs flac file size). Instead, you need to read a bit more about secure ripping and ACCURATERIP. Just google it.

currter
08-07-2016, 06:51 PM
Don't use burst option. You want the ultra secure option with ACCURAERIP. You want to rip correctly, even if it takes a bit longer. And by the way even some brand new CDs with no apparent flaws can have errors in ripping (not bit perfect). That's one reason Itunes is not a recommended ripper. You want a secure ripper that does an ACCURATERIP match (such as dbpa).
Respectfully, you seem to spend your research time on all the wrong things (e.g. Wav vs flac file size). Instead, you need to read a bit more about secure ripping and ACCURATERIP. Just google it.


I may be an audiophile of sorts, but I am not that anal(-retentive) about it/perfection to want to wait 4 hours
for a rip of one song. I had to stop it, rip the other songs which went well and go back
to that one song. Again this is in testing all this out because the .wav file created months
ago sounded just fine.
The song was the first track on the Dirty Dancing Soundtrack:
the No.1 pop song (I've Had) The Time Of My Life - Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes I think it went *1 easy listening too.
actually the CD did have a pin hole scratch on it in near the center and probably why
there were issues with it. In the past that track skipped a bit but I "fixed" it with a little
liquid paper on the label side :)
On CDs the tracks start in the middle of the CD and go outward.
Actually if you hold the CD angled in the light, you can see the track separations on it
(like with vinyl staring outward going inward).
That song , there were over 300 frames or something I saw that had to be
re-ripped.. and why it too so long to complete that one.
One DVD drive reported it need to process 700 frames... but the LG said 300+ so
I went with that drive... but in the end, there was nothing noticeable audibly about the
track even if there was that scratch...
So that was not fair... but other CDs that are lightly scratched, some rip 100% Accurate and
some the software struggles with a bit taking a long time, longer than necessary considering
the song sounds fine when I play it in the optical drive or listen to the already established .wav
files, thus I see no reason really waste time with this when I have 1300* CDs to process.
I want it to go as smoothly as it did when I worked on the iTunes ripping (with error correction)
for about a week.
* well now that is less some 90 CDs I have ripped to .flac in the meanwhile.
I do not think I am too concerned about perfection or accurate rips for CDs that are lightly scratched
or that I have repaired using one of those CD repair kits I got long ago to scrape off parts of the
CD's playable side. I did notice that the software reported some inaccuracies on those... but again
the CD plays just fine in a standard CD player and I verified such with the .wav files.
Believe me, since I have ripped to wav and have moved the audio files to the flash drives,
I have listened to a lot and tested those and I do not hear anything noticeable like skips or
faint buzzing (not sure that is the right term , like a faint scratch as the error correction takes place).
there is one song:(full version 6minutes+ of) The Green-Eyed Lady - Sugarloaf a *3 pop song, that I have on Curb Records,
though slightly scratched and noticeable on one CD drive, I put in another (LG) and the
flaw went away. So I ripped using that DVD/CD drive instead. The .wav sounds fine.
The flac conversion sounded fine as well though it was reported as Insecure?.
Some are reported or red-flagged but reported as Secure with some AR value..

Yes, I may have to do more research on the accuracy of the rips and how to
interpret (worry about or ignore) those AR values , some red some Inaccurate,
Insecure some Secure...
what I had been doing was redoing those that said Insecure and moving past the ones
that said secure. But I don't want to waste time as when I visited those song that
were ripped Insecure, I did not hear any problems... That is where EAC came in handy as
it reported the "exact" location where there could be a problem minute:second so I can skip
to that part to see... and I heard nothing out of the ordinary even with Sony MDR V55 headphones
on

currter
08-07-2016, 10:17 PM
Don't use burst option. You want the ultra secure option with ACCURAERIP. You want to rip correctly, even if it takes a bit longer. And by the way even some brand new CDs with no apparent flaws can have errors in ripping (not bit perfect). That's one reason Itunes is not a recommended ripper. You want a secure ripper that does an ACCURATERIP match (such as dbpa).

Respectfully, you seem to spend your research time on all the wrong things (e.g. Wav vs flac file size). Instead, you need to read a bit more about secure ripping and ACCURATERIP. Just google it.

Oh, I think I have finally moved past the file size issue.
It was a learning curve... in a short amount of time. I thought larger meant better,
but I can accept that let us say the audio encounters a frequency of 10,000 Hz,
there is no reason why that should be stored in 16 bits when that could be
stored in 14 bits (log 10,000 / log 2 from old computer/math days).
I am not sure if that is the way this works but I can see there could be a waste
of padded zeros in the audio file (2 bits of zeros). Lower frequencies could require
even smaller amount of bits to store that information : 2000 Hz may require only
11 bits with 5 bits of zeroes (wasted padding)... .wav must have a lot of zeroes in it
in high-ordered bits (within 16 bits of information) . wow... that is a lot of wasted bits.
The human range of hearing 20Hz to 20,000 Hz ... 16 bits unsigned 65536-1 max value.

Also a lot of music is repetitive so maybe those parts can be compressed
(4 on the floor so maybe a compression of 25% to 33% at least )...
Some files I see 43%,44% compression so flac is working better than expected.
I am not sure this how flac works but I see and understand the benefit of it.

As long as I keep the .wav files secure, I have nothing to worry about
the compressed .flac files for the car audio (hard drive, flash drive, SD card).

Now I am working on the Flac Audio files master hard drive with a possible
occasional reference to the .wav master if I ever encounter an issue with
a flac conversion of a song... I will just convert the .wav to .flac , add the metadata
and move forward to the next CD.

currter
08-07-2016, 11:06 PM
I am not sure if my analysis means anything, but I can now
see that .wav is very wasteful in the high ordered bits ...
I should look at a hexadecimal dump of the data in .wav and
would probably see a lot of 00s in it.


if 5 upper bits are wasted 0s and 11 lower bits are useful audio
frequencies could that already be a savings, if the zeroes are stripped
out, of 31% compression right there alone? and think of the
entire song , more savings of bits?

I am not looking at .wav the way I used to now now it could be
a wave of wasted zeroed bits.
Maybe that area of saved (bits) bytes in another location of the
.wav or .flac file (perhaps the at the footer) can be used for more
useful metadata, album art and other pertinent information? :)


I am all for flac now.

Maybe the .flac back to .wav to get the original back is just
putting back a lot of zeroes in upper bits ? :)

Nothing From Nothing - Billy Preston a No. 1 pop song 1974
leaves nothing ...

currter
08-08-2016, 12:48 AM
2 bytes or 16 bits
0x0000

each hex digit is 4 bits
so maybe a lot of 0x0 in the .wav file if the first 4 bits are just zeroes
I should not have stated 0x00 but that is a possibility too

20Hz = 0x0014 = 0000 0000 0001 0100 so a lot of 0s in the most significant bits up until the 1 (11 bits zeroes)

2,000 Hz = 0x07D0 = 0000 0111 1101 0000 so a savings of 5 bits (upper bits zeroes)

20,000Hz = 0x4E20 = 0100 1110 0010 0000 (1 bit upper zero that can be stripped).
I don't think you touch or remove the lower bits with zeroes, just the place holding upper bits that are zeros
(padding) to fit into the 2 bytes.

it is like saying 00456 in decimal is really 456 the padded zeroes at the beginning are not necessary
and if stripped does not change the value if you got rid of the 0s

I read somewhere that the flac compression may use as few bits necessary to store the audio or frequencies.

I am not sure this is the concept, but maybe this could convince some others that it is possible not
losing data if just stripping off upper bit zeroes as part of the compression.

Then I guess if you have audio that ranges between 40Hz to 8000 Hz (not sure ?) but there could
be a savings (compression) of at least 3 bits (zeroes) off the top throughout the entire (huge) wav file.
(compress out the upper bits of zeroes)
if 8 areas, frames, or whatever, save 24 bits or 3 bytes right there...

I am sure the flac software is more complex than what I am thinking as I am not an audio engineer either.
But I can appreciate this concept of flac and maybe it can be explained some other way to fully convince
that you should not or will not lose data with this type of compression. The audio frequencies are preserved
just the way it is stored is altered, compressed using the amount of bits necessary.
flac is great now...

Dat Ei
08-08-2016, 05:07 AM
Hey currter,

it is not the frequency that is encoded in digital music. If you like to understand the encoding have a look at the acticle "Pulse code modulation (PCM)" in wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-code_modulation).

Regarding compression: it is helpful to understand the different concepts of compression to judge them.

a) lossy compression:

those concepts are based on the idea / an algorithm to identify the essential and the unessential data. The essential data will be kept, the unessential data will be deleted. If you delete information, you lose the information. This information can't be restored. Most often the degree of quality and loss can be adjusted by the user. Example for those algorithms are jpg compression or mp3.

b) lossless compression:

those concepts are based on the idea / an algorithm to identify repititions or pattern in the data or better and smaller encodings of the data without throwiung away a single bit. All newly encoded data can be restored to the former encoding. Those algorithms can have adjustments too - a depper analysis of the data may result in a higher compression, but it needs more time. So it's a trade complexity / speed against compression / space. Example for those algorithms are zip compression or flac.

c) compression of the dynamics

This is a third kind of compression. There is a trend in the music industry to cut off the dynamics in nowadays productions resulting in a flat sound. In the eyes and ears of the music industry a song has to have a high and even sound level to be recognized immediately in the radio or on the TV. No more patience to listen to music and to enjoy the quiet parts of or the dramatic in a song. This kind compression can be avoided only by not buying this sh**.


Dat Ei

currter
08-08-2016, 07:44 AM
I guess I got it all wrong...
the thing is long ago when I worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories
maybe in 1995 or so or was it when transitioning to Lucent Technologies in 1996,
I had some interest in CDs and had noticed patterns of 44 bytes the headers
of each track on a CD... (using some Windows computer to examine the directory
on the CD).

I had written a program to translate the bytes or decipher the bit patterns in those
44 bytes... thinking I could somehow see or get access to the audio data. I did not have the right
resources to do much with that but I did break down the 44 bytes.
It is too long to remember all the details, unless I can find that program,
but one of the common factors I had noticed in those 44 bytes was the value 75.
I did some type of comparison of data within the structure of those 44 bytes and did some
type of division and kept coming up with the value of 75
I wrote that program in C language

So later I guess I learned that there were 75 frames or something.
I also was well aware of the 44100 Hz (samples per second) * 2 channels * 2 bytes (16 bits)

I think like the first bytes (forgot how many) was some "CDDA Fmt" that was common
in all the track files... then I was able to decipher perhaps the lead track or a pointer (maybe offset of 2 seconds)
to the start of a certain track, then I was able to to find the end of it so that could
tell me the duration information ...then there was a pointer to perhaps the start
of where the audio's location was...I even noticed some gap information maybe 2 seconds
was common between the track files
but I could not see the audio :) or the bytes/bits
associated with that with my limited resources at the time and I had to work on a
project to add floating point operations to some Communications Module using a
Motorola MC?6800? processor so I had to examine bytes and hexadecimal patterns
to make sure the floating point assembly commands were correctly added
(debugging , disassembly stuff) so I got distracted from my side project about audio.
I love music and kind of wished I had taken a different career path maybe
from telecommunications to music.

I know I showed my "discoveries" about the CD information to my officemate
at the time, but there was no interest. Maybe I should have talked to the boss about it
and I could have been directed to a different department closer to music, audio research
departments or I could have risked getting laid off or downsized which was another
reality back then as well. :)

So there is no concept of bit packing to find sections in the audio that may
have a range of frequencies where the high ordered bits if zeroes can be compacted
to save space and over several frames or throughout the duration of the audio
those bits can be "compressed" out thus the result is a reduction of size of the audio file?
:)
Just as long as you are not changing the value or frequencies involved, just eliminating those
upper zeroes.
Well maybe I am wrong there...

But I think I can understand the concept and benefit of flac more so now
Maybe I was on the right track about the repetition in audio...
especially with studio produced audio where they may use the same sample over and over
again (repeat, loop)... maybe those patterns could be optimized : store it one time
and have pointers back to it when or if needed in the audio.
I was thinking that the dynamics of the audio may change and each repetition after
the first may have some subtle differences or offset of frequency patterns so each
repetition could be slightly different than the first and thus you cannot compress that
easily. Maybe a frequency in the common part is at 9025 Hz and the next that is repeated is at 9026 or 9027 Hz...

Well who knows...I will leave this up to the experts, I am retired.
Just as long as an original .wav audio file converted to .flac and that .flac can recreate
the original .wav , I guess it is all fine. Maybe I should do a test there but who has time
to examine all the data in a .wav file (something I did not have tools to access back in the mid-1990s).
I have to find a hexadecimal editor or I think there was a bit or byte compare program.
Examine CRCs < I am getting a headache reminiscing an era where I had to examine hex digits for accuracy >

Take care and it has been great talking about this even if I am wrong but do have respect for flac and its concept
and I am hopeful the other audiophools out there can get on board as well. Maybe have to have simple technical
education about this.

I will stop now. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

garym
08-08-2016, 08:10 AM
No need to write a program to confirm flac decodes to wav perfectly. They already exist. Use convert to [TEST CONVERSION] in dbpa to compare CRCs or file integrity checker in foobar2000.

Flac files have built in error checking with md5 and CRCs. Note that WAV files do not have built in error checking. See
https://xiph.org/flac/features.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC

currter
08-08-2016, 08:19 AM
I found my old program cdrc.c
just some highlights
not the whole thing...
it could be AT&T Bell Laboratories proprietary since I wrote
it on company time even at home...
:)
* note, those * should be pound sign or number signs , they are not accepted here

*include <stdio.h>
*include <stdlib.h>

*define BT0TO7(x) ((x) & 0x000000ff)
*define BT8TO15(x) ((x >> 8) & 0x000000ff)
*define BT16TO23(x) ((x >> 16) & 0x000000ff)
*define BT24TO31(x) ((x >> 24) & 0x000000ff)

*define BT0TO8(x) ((x) & 0x000000ff)
*define BT0TO15(x) ((x) & 0x0000ffff)

struct cdfmt {
char cdformat[16];
unsigned long cmn_unkwn1;
unsigned short cmn_unkwn2;
unsigned short trackno;
unsigned long cdid;
unsigned long cumultime;
unsigned long tracktime;
unsigned long unkwn1;
unsigned long unkwn2;
};

typedef struct cdfmt Cdfmt;

...
void printcumultime(unsigned long time)
{
unsigned long timeval;

timeval = time;
timeval = swablong(time);

printf("test timeval is -- %08lx\n", timeval);
timeval /= 75;
printf("%08lx -- Cumulative time is %ld min : %ld sec\n", time,
timeval / 60 , timeval % 60);

}

...
timeval /= 75.0;
minutes = timeval / 60;
seconds = (int) timeval % 60;
fracsec = 75.0 * (timeval - (int) timeval);

printf("%08lx -- Track time is %ld min : %02ld.%02d sec\n", time,
minutes, seconds, fracsec);

size = (minutes * 60.0 + seconds + fracsec/100.0)
* 2.0 * 16.0 * 44100.0;

tracksize = size / 8.0 / 1024.0 / 1024.0;
printf("Size of track is %5.2f MB\n", tracksize);

totalsize0 += tracksize;

...

void printelaspedtime(unsigned long time)
{
unsigned long timeval;

timeval = time;
timeval = swablong(time);


timeval /= 75;
printf("%08lx -- Elasped time is %ld min : %ld sec\n", time,
timeval / 60 , timeval % 60);

}

Dat Ei
08-08-2016, 08:24 AM
Hey currter,

the data of a CD or PCM encoded audio file doesn't know anything about audio frequencies at all. The data are the result of digitizing the analog music signal, which our ears can hear (AD conversion). For the CD format 44100 values per second and per channel were digitized with a resolution of 16bit. When you playback a CD those 44100 values per second and per channel will be reconverted into an analog signal (usually a voltage) - that the process of DA vonversion. And because we only have 44100 values per second, a CD can only reproduce frequencies up to 22,5kHz (look for Nyquist and Shannon theorem). But that's another story...

Regarding your idea of bit compression: every compression needs extra data to manage the compression. So in your case that you want to save several bits you have to store the information how many bits you have saved, so that you can reproduce the original data. That would lead to a big overhead in your case and could lead to even more data. This is a very common problem of compression. Often you get the best compression results of data, if you don't use generic compression algorithms, but use a deep insight of the nature and structure of your data.


Dat Ei

Dat Ei
08-08-2016, 08:26 AM
*include <stdio.h>
*include <stdlib.h>

*define BT0TO7(x) ((x) & 0x000000ff)
*define BT8TO15(x) ((x >> 8) & 0x000000ff)
*define BT16TO23(x) ((x >> 16) & 0x000000ff)
*define BT24TO31(x) ((x >> 24) & 0x000000ff)

*define BT0TO8(x) ((x) & 0x000000ff)
*define BT0TO15(x) ((x) & 0x0000ffff)

struct cdfmt {
char cdformat[16];
unsigned long cmn_unkwn1;
unsigned short cmn_unkwn2;
unsigned short trackno;
unsigned long cdid;
unsigned long cumultime;
unsigned long tracktime;
unsigned long unkwn1;
unsigned long unkwn2;
};

typedef struct cdfmt Cdfmt;

...
void printcumultime(unsigned long time)
{
unsigned long timeval;

timeval = time;
timeval = swablong(time);

printf("test timeval is -- %08lx\n", timeval);
timeval /= 75;
printf("%08lx -- Cumulative time is %ld min : %ld sec\n", time,
timeval / 60 , timeval % 60);

}

...
timeval /= 75.0;
minutes = timeval / 60;
seconds = (int) timeval % 60;
fracsec = 75.0 * (timeval - (int) timeval);

printf("%08lx -- Track time is %ld min : %02ld.%02d sec\n", time,
minutes, seconds, fracsec);

size = (minutes * 60.0 + seconds + fracsec/100.0)
* 2.0 * 16.0 * 44100.0;

tracksize = size / 8.0 / 1024.0 / 1024.0;
printf("Size of track is %5.2f MB\n", tracksize);

totalsize0 += tracksize;

...

void printelaspedtime(unsigned long time)
{
unsigned long timeval;

timeval = time;
timeval = swablong(time);


timeval /= 75;
printf("%08lx -- Elasped time is %ld min : %ld sec\n", time,
timeval / 60 , timeval % 60);

}

Typical case of "we don't use comments - comments could be wrong!" source code! ;)


Dat Ei

currter
08-08-2016, 09:06 AM
Oh, I had always thought the reason for 16 bits or 2 bytes was
due to the frequency range of hearing
20 to 20,000 Hz would fit in an signed short
0 to 32,767 or maybe -32,768 to 32,767
what to do with negative values? anyway

I always thought the frequencies had to be stored
in some form and 16 bits (due to alignment issues)
(15 bits necessary) the minimum amount of bits necessary
for that range was chosen.

I was probably in the wrong department at AT&T at the time :)
well back to enjoying retirement.

oh for that thing saving bits, I was thinking a chunk of bits could be
saved or compressed so over a duration of time within the audio
if the frequencies were lower bound 45 Hz and upper bound 8000 Hz
that chunk (maybe the entire song and depending on its duration) could be optimized and
you may not require too much overhead
to store that for the decoding process and I did not think it would add too
much considering the cumulative amount of bits saved/compressed would
outweigh the extra data to manage the compression. and there are many samples
of frequencies perhaps 44100 samples perhaps saving 2 or 3 bits at a time over
a duration portion of the audio...perhaps 120 seconds or 360 seconds of audio?
that could be a lot of bits saved/compressed out the upper bit 0s and perhaps a
savings of a lot of bytes.

I am looking at some of the flac source code just now and do notice some
similarities with what I wrote in 1995 or 1996 .. regarding that endianness issue...
I had to swap some bits or bytes in the data read (or get access to bits 0 to 7
8 to 15 and so forth and shift and do some bit anding or oring to put humpty
dumpty back together again...)
<sigh>
Well let me stop this... I am striking out.

currter
08-10-2016, 12:25 AM
in C the pound sign was for the macro processing (pre-processing before the compiler) pound define, pound include
and comments were within /* */
C++ added // I think
long ago stuff... that does not matter any longer

Good night

Dat Ei
08-10-2016, 03:23 AM
long ago stuff... that does not matter any longer

Still my business...


Dat Ei

currter
08-21-2016, 12:02 AM
I would like to ask an expert or guru this question:

For some strange reason, after executing EAC on my Macbook Pro 17" and later my
iMac 27" , I have lost access to the DVD drive or the Superdrives have malfunctioned
and whenever I insert any disc, it is immediately rejected.
I did not experience this behavior prior to executing EAC or even DBPA software
that accessed the DVD drive to rip the CDs and seeing some offset information
pertaining to the optical drive.
I have one iMac 21.5" left with an optical drive (Superdrive) and I am afraid to
run the software on that for fear that that optical drive may malfunction , reject discs.
I kind of don't like those superdrives that "eat" or swallow the disc never knowing
if it will be released or get stuck inside anyway.
Now I am having problems installing Bootcamp (Windows) on my Macbook since
using an external optical drive does not seem to be fully compatible as the Mac is
looking for an internal superdrive...

Well this is my latest problems to the point I am thinking of just getting a new
gaming laptop dedicated to Windows and stop using the Mac and Bootcamp or parallels.

Anyway, I am kind of blaming EAC software for messing up my once functional optical
superdrives as I saw a behavior after running that software that even though the disc
was in the drive, it kept saying insert disc and then the disc was ejected thereafter .
From that point the drive would just eject any disc inserted (audio and data) rendering
the superdrive useless. Even though I recognized the Macbook's superdrive was
damaged by the software, I thought I had saved the iMac's superdrive after running the
EAC software. But now I think it is too late as that drive is behaving badly rejecting discs.
I have been depressed as I am not able to reinstall Bootcamp/Windows on my Macbook
since the superdrive is gone...
wasting more time

Spoon
08-21-2016, 04:57 AM
I am not convinced EAC damaged your drive, a power off would reset the drive and these drives do not store settings between power off.

currter
08-21-2016, 03:17 PM
it just seems suspicious that 2 superdrives would just go bad around or after executing the software,
then there is Apple: though I have not applied any updates (firmware etc.) to those Mac computers -that I am aware of-,
Apple may seem to not really support the superdrive any longer (in its newer computers they have been
eliminated). Maybe there was some sort of surreptitious firmware update to my imac and macbook computers that
rendered the drives useless now.
It was that I saw some strange behavior after running EAC where there would be this message to insert CD into
drive D: when there was a CD inside and then the CD would be ejected while EAC was running. I thought I had
solved the problem by stopping the EAC process and the CD would be inserted and acted normally.
But now I cannot keep the CD or DVD inside the drive on both Windows and Mac sides now.
I tried PRAM resets and SMC resets (on the Macbook not yet for the iMac) and the optical drive would not
keep in any optical disc. So I am just not a happy camper now as it could be one more thing I have to
divert attention to to fix or just learn to live without having a useful internal optical drive.
<sigh>
Or it is just time to abandon some of these old computers and get a newer Windows computer.

Spoon
08-21-2016, 04:38 PM
You should be able to use any USB drive with OS X.

currter
08-21-2016, 05:33 PM
Believe me, it has not been that easy with the Macbook that had or came with an
optical superdrive. Apple must have changed something with the firmware.
I tried a bootable USB (to install Windows) and it either hangs with a blinking cursor on a black screen
or requires some extra partition (with Windows 8.1) and then after installing,
it crashes.... I just am getting tired of the changes.

I am just going to save to get a new Asus gaming laptop to run Windows solely
and let the Mac be a mac and run only Mac things and forget about Windows and
bootcamp. I may still play around with Parallels and run windows as a virutal machine
with growing disc space for it (before I was using the Bootcamp partition which I am having
difficulty reinstalling now -- this is something I did not have to be concerned about 2 years ago
when the optical drive was working and just installed using the inserted disc).