Ripping to FLAC files: looking for advice

[stevejl]

I'm new to using dbpoweramp, so please forgive my "newbieness" ;-), but I'm pretty impressed by it's capability.

I want to backup my entire 2000+ CD collection to FLAC files on h/d and am looking for any suggestions that can help me feel I'm getting the most reliable files.

I'm about 100 discs in so far, am ripping to Level 5 compression, Secure mode, Accuraterip (my drive did the offset test thing successfully).

Some questions I have concern the logging and results information.

I notice some tracks show as "Insecure" in Red in the Rip Status field: should I be concerned?

Also, in the Information log that pops up after a rip, a number of entries show with a Yellow Triangled ! and I am assuming this is information about the AccurateRip info, and that any Critical error info would have a Red entry, yes?

I guess I'm trying to get my head around how error-correction is being done and how I can know my FLAC files are reliable and how the "Confidence" rating comes into play.

Here is a entry:

Information ripping to FLAC, 'Track 1' to 'Q:\_CD_Collection\Genesis\Turn It on Again; The Hits\01 Genesis - Turn It on Again.flac'
Track 1: Ripped LBA 0 to 17200 (3:49) in 6:19. Filename: Q:\_CD_Collection\Genesis\Turn It on Again; The Hits\01 Genesis - Turn It on Again.flac
AccurateRip: Inaccurate (confidence 32) Insecure [Pass 1 & 2, Re-Rip 85 Frames]
CRC32: 4A681C86 AccurateRip CRC: 1629551C (NEW) [DiscID: 018-003312b4-02abdeeb-0b128012-1]
[COLOR="red"]In trying to read this, I'm not sure what "frames" are and if 85 Re-Rips is bad. Also, most of my Track 1's come up as Inaccurate, not sure why.[/COLOR]


Any info, suggestions, links to tutorials, etc, would be most appreciated. I have gone through the Setup Guide and the FAQ's here.

My drive is a HL-DT-ST DVDRAM_GSA-H60N in a Core 2 Duo Acer PC, running Vista Home Premium 32, SP2

Thank you for any assistance :smile2:

[Spoon]

Re: Ripping to FLAC files: looking for advice

>"Insecure" in Red in the Rip Status field: should I be concerned?

It means the rip has errors from the CD. If all tracks verify with AccurateRip except one or two, you can be sure that there are errors in your rip (if the confidence from accuraterip is 2 or more).

[stevejl]

Re: Ripping to FLAC files: looking for advice

Thank you, good info.

[stevejl]

Re: Ripping to FLAC files: looking for advice

Spoon, if I can trouble you a bit more.....

I'm starting to get my head around ripping and errors and such, where a lot of the considerations are about the drive being used. Sadly, it is almost impossible to get a plain CD-R drive new any more, not even the Plextor's.

I am currently trialling DBP Reference with pretty strong intentions to purchase. I have installed it on my Desktop PC and my Laptop. I get the impression that your licensing is such that, with a single purchased license, it can be installed on 2 pc's so long as it is only used on one or the other at any given time (a pretty standard scheme) - is this correct?

The reason I ask that above is that I have found that the drives on these two PC's act quite different. I am doing the ripping on my desktop pc and find that disks that come up with Insecure/Inaccurate tracks on that PC rip OK on my laptop (it passed the offset test too). So my thinking is that I would want it installed on both, adhering to the usage restriction, so that I can see if I can get a successful result on "bad" rips by using the laptop now and then. Does this sound like reasonable usage of a single license?

On another note, here is a strange one: I ripped GFR's Closer to Home on my desktop pc and had 4 tracks come up as Insecure. I then did a test burn to audio CD with DBP's CD Burner on the same drive using those FLAC files [error tracks and all], then re-ripped that CD to FLAC and it came up with no errors. Go figure. Now, I did not keep that as my final rip as I would think there would be audio loss due to encoding/decoding/encoding and possibly another decoding if needed to burn to CD one day. (This particular CD ripped OK from the original using my Laptop so that became my final secure rip). Just curious on your thoughts as to the FLAC files with errors being burned to CD then re-ripping with no errors.

Thanks for reading.....

[Spoon]

Re: Ripping to FLAC files: looking for advice

>with a single purchased license, it can be installed on 2 pc's so long as it is only used on one or

We offer a family pack for upto 5 PCs.

If you rip a CD which is damaged, then the ripped audio tracks will have the errors from the disc, but the audio tracks themselves are not damged (just the data contained within). Now if you burn those tracks to cd-r and re-rip them, there will appear to be no errors, but the data still has the errors.

[stevejl]

Re: Ripping to FLAC files: looking for advice

Ahhh, OK, thanks.

[garym]

Re: Ripping to FLAC files: looking for advice

Ahhh, OK, thanks.

even with errors, you can try to just rerip and may be fine, or clean the disk and rerip. I often find that reripping attempts on a disk can eventually get me a secure rip.