What can affect the most your rip and encoding quality?

[Ucodia]

The title pretty much explains my subject. I have been using dbPoweramp for more than a year now and as I decided to enter the long process of ripping my whole library with FLAC I was wondering what is the ideal usage of the computer (software or hardware) to not affect too much the ripping and encoding process.

For example I guess that you should avoid running anything processor intensive, especially while encoding. Is it true or that does not really matter?

When you start a new rip, I notice that there is no "read warm-up". By "read warm-up" I mean that the ripping speed slowly increase from x3 to x30+. Is this variation affecting the ripping quality or is it better to simulate something intensive on the drive to maximize the spinning speed and then start the Rip?

Also if any of you have more advice on how to increase your rip quality I would appreciate.

Thanks.

[Spoon]

Re: What can affect the most your rip and encoding quality?

No need for any of those options, if AccurateRip is verifying the rips, you cannot get any better than 100% correct.

[Ucodia]

Re: What can affect the most your rip and encoding quality?

I thought so but was unsure and did not wanted to get in this long process doing any mistake so I prefered asking an expert because I do not know what is really going on behind.

Still about encoding, was my guess right? As it had noting to do with ripping, I guess we can't really check the quality so how can we avoid affecting it?

[eaglescout1998]

Re: What can affect the most your rip and encoding quality?

When you start a new rip, I notice that there is no "read warm-up". By "read warm-up" I mean that the ripping speed slowly increase from x3 to x30+. Is this variation affecting the ripping quality or is it better to simulate something intensive on the drive to maximize the spinning speed and then start the Rip?

There is an option somewhere that, if enabled, will spin up the drive before ripping. I think it's turned off by default. I am not sure if there's any added benefit to having it turned on.

[Ucodia]

Re: What can affect the most your rip and encoding quality?

There is an option somewhere that, if enabled, will spin up the drive before ripping. I think it's turned off by default. I am not sure if there's any added benefit to having it turned on.

I actually found that option called "spin-up time" but even if it delayed ripping for the amount of time I set, it did not spin-up the disc. I guess this option is not compatible with every drive. But it is true though that AccurateRip will anyway check the quality of the rip so benefit will be minimum, unless you have a tough reading error on the start of the first track.

[Porcus]

Re: What can affect the most your rip and encoding quality?

Not much, really. The big difference you can make -- if you have lots of discs not in AR -- is a better drive. Then of course, the appropriate c2/cache settings.

If AccurateRip verifies, then it is OK (... there might be some issues at the end of discs, for example if you want track one pregap a.k.a. 'Hidden Track One' a.k.a. 'Hidden Track 0', which is not supported by AR and not by all drives).

If not, then there are a few choices to make, and they might at worst affect the result on certain drives. For example, I have no idea whether there is any of my scratched discs which turned out any better by checking the box for varying speed each rip. It may or may not help, and it is probably up to the hardware.

Maybe there are options which may reduce drive wear (and prolong its lifetime), but that shouldn't affect quality of the rips you do until it fails.

Having the computer at idle when encoding, does not affect anything. (I always check the box for verify after encoding. Takes a bit more time, but ensures the bits are on the hard drive.)