Best settings for lossless rips?

[Sathlin]

Re: Best settings for lossless rips?

I use ultra secure. Of course if there is an ACCURATERIP match, the program automatically skips all the ultrasecure stuff and moves on to the next track. It's only when there is no ACCURATERIP match that it then does multiple rips and compares the CRCs, etc. Have you read these docs yet:

https://www.dbpoweramp.com/spoons-audio-guide.htm

Ok cool thanks.

[garym]

Re: Best settings for lossless rips?

And i'm assuming using secure ripping is just a good idea instead of burst. Is that enough or should we also use the ultra secure ripping option?

I use ultra secure. Of course if there is an ACCURATERIP match, the program automatically skips all the ultrasecure stuff and moves on to the next track. It's only when there is no ACCURATERIP match that it then does multiple rips and compares the CRCs, etc. Have you read these docs yet:

https://www.dbpoweramp.com/spoons-audio-guide.htm

[Sathlin]

Re: Best settings for lossless rips?

And i'm assuming using secure ripping is just a good idea instead of burst. Is that enough or should we also use the ultra secure ripping option?

[garym]

Re: Best settings for lossless rips?

If the lossless level does not matter, why wouldn't everyone use level 8 and save the most space? The difference in time seems to be only seconds?

one song uncompressed was 50 megs, lev 0 30 megs, lev 8 26 megs.

And do you guys use the "after encoding verify written audio" option?

yes on the "after encoding verify..."

Why not all at 8? Because many use default settings, which are 5 and simply don't change. Some people (mistakenly) believe that less compression leads to better "sound quality" (the same group that used to use a green magic marker on the borders of their CDs), and there are some players out there (mostly older ones) that sometimes struggled with anything higher than 5 or 6 compression in terms of their decoding (tended to be very, very low powered players).

[Sathlin]

Re: Best settings for lossless rips?

If the lossless level does not matter, why wouldn't everyone use level 8 and save the most space? The difference in time seems to be only seconds?

one song uncompressed was 50 megs, lev 0 30 megs, lev 8 26 megs.

And do you guys use the "after encoding verify written audio" option?

[naimconvert]

Re: Best settings for lossless rips?

I have left it on the default setting "5" I use MinimServer on my QNAP I have set this convert the playback to WAV24 into my Linn Akurate (only as I read that WAV24 was the best setting for the Linn) Sound good.
The only trouble with me is I found myself listening to much for sound quality differences rather than just listening to the music.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Best settings for lossless rips?

Easy enough to find out....grab a CD and rip it (or just a few ytacks) to uncompressed .FLAC. Then repeat those rips at some of the other .FLAC compression settings, making sure to change the name or location, or else you'll write over the previous rips. Then just compare the file sizes. In my experience, it's not a big enough difference to even matter. I suppose if someone were really cramped for hard drive space, it might be important. But I really think it's a non-factor for most.

[Decibel2015]

Re: Best settings for lossless rips?

No, it really isn't. (Personally, I wish that option were left out of the encoder. As you noted, it doesn't even save that much space. And it just causes endless confusion....)

Well, that pretty much answers my question! Maybe you should have a setting for "11"? How about "Eleventeen"?

Be interesting to know how much difference there is between uncompressed rips of CDs and the various settings this product has for compressed rips.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Best settings for lossless rips?

So, is it really meaningful to agonise over whether I have the Encoding at 5 or 6?

No, it really isn't. (Personally, I wish that option were left out of the encoder. As you noted, it doesn't even save that much space. And it just causes endless confusion....)

[garym]

Re: Best settings for lossless rips?

dbpa default is "5", but this is all entirely *irrelevant* to creating a bitperfect copy of the CD. Anything from uncompressed to "8" (the maximum), creates a bitperfect copy of the CD audio. The only thing higher compression does is take a bit longer to create and save a bit more space...it has nothing to do with being a perfect bit copy or with sound quality. Personally, I've ripped my thousands of CDs to FLAC using "5" compression.

[Decibel2015]

Re: Best settings for lossless rips?

[SIZE=2][/SIZE]


Hyperlinks?

Thanks for that. re your question, I probably mean the coloured text which is in the menu options of the ripper and which open up when you click on them.

Back to the encoding level number, I get the feeling that it doesn't really matter which you use...but there's about 8 different options! That makes it kind of
confusing, plus the fact that (apparently), there really isn't that much difference as far as space saved with compression goes. I have heard that another
pro ripper product uses the "6" setting for Encoding. Is it the case that the higher the Encoding number, the closer to uncompressed it is? And there's not really
that much difference in the space saved anyway?

So, is it really meaningful to agonise over whether I have the Encoding at 5 or 6? Just wondering why the competition would set it at "6". Would "11" be better? (joke).

My PC's mobo has a Sound Blaster chip or something...presumably the timings on that are goo? I've got a good DAC in any case.

Think I'll ask about tags before I start ripping any CDs. Coming up.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Best settings for lossless rips?

[SIZE=2][/SIZE]

I did click another hyperlink in the menu which brought up the stuff that schmidj mentions, re "ultra secure" rips as well as maximum number of re-reads. Ultra secure isn't ticked by default and the re-reads is set to x34 by default. Any consensus on settings here?

Do you have a lot of bad CDs? (i.e., scratched, damaged, etc.) Unless a CD is a different pressing that doesn't match what's found in AccurateRip, these settings generally won't come into play. So the defaults are more than adequate in most cases.

Sort of related, on AccurateRip section, mine states that it's "unconfigured (waiting for key disc to find offset)". What's that all about.

Accurate needs an initial setup for your particular drive. Use any fairly well-known CD in good condition....the configuration is very quick.

I do see more hyperlinks in the menu...truck loads...default okay?

Hyperlinks?

Almost lastly, I was asking about lossless etc not so much because of space considerations but more because I was wondering if any of these default settings or changes to them might make the PC work harder to play them. Not sure if that is a real issue or not.

No, it's not an issue. With a few exceptions,* playback devices have the clock that sets the timing in the DAC....the clock info and the digital music data are sent into the DAC together. It's the quality of these components, the timing clock, the DAC, and anything downstream (amp, speakers, etc.) that determine playback quality, not the relatively insignificant processing the computer/CD transport/streamer/etc did in opening the file package.


* Very high-end DACs integrate the timing clock so that they're not impacted by the quality of the clock in the computer or transport.

[Decibel2015]

Re: Best settings for lossless rips?

I'd like to hone in on these two bits of advice from two respondents here and hopefully synthesize them:

I have my secure ripping set with Enable Ultra Secure Ripping, minimum passes 1, maximum passes 4, end after 2 clean passes, vary drive speed checked.
I have maximum re-reads as 100 which is probably high. If set too high, you may get random "good" reads which really aren't, I've seen that happen fairly often.

I don't have to imagine....I do consider myself an "audiophile ripper" , and I just leave it on the default.

A lot schmidj's discussion didn't take into account that I did say that I wanted to have lossless audio. Maybe I should have said that I want to rip to a PC where I have
plenty of space (at the moment)...i.e. at the moment I'm not looking for portability of my rips.

I did click another hyperlink in the menu which brought up the stuff that schmidj mentions, re "ultra secure" rips as well as maximum number of re-reads. Ultra secure isn't
ticked by default and the re-reads is set to x34 by default. Any consensus on settings here?

e.g. we're happy with the "Lossless level 5 (default)"?. As I said, I have no issue with storage space on my PC.

Good to tick the "ultra secure" option?

Default maximum number of re-reads adequate?

Sort of related, on AccurateRip section, mine states that it's "unconfigured (waiting for key disc to find offset)". What's that all about.

I do see more hyperlinks in the menu...truck loads...default okay?

Almost lastly, I was asking about lossless etc not so much because of space considerations but more because I was wondering if any of these default settings or
changes to them might make the PC work harder to play them. Not sure if that is a real issue or not.

Lastly, I did post a reply to the guy with the link above, yesterday. My reply isn't up yet. I also posted a link. Is that post getting up? Nothing suss about it.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: Best settings for lossless rips?

Thanks for that. I've set my option to "Secure" as per your advice. All the options in "Accurate-rip" are ticked by default, it seems. Any other settings in there which I should have as default? re "Defective by design" setting...what do you mean by "non-standard" CDs? By "problem CDs" I assume you mean audio CDs which may be in less than pristine
condition and so are buggy in some way, play-wise?

Defective by design is one of those things you only monkey with when nothing else works. It may become necessary for messed up CDs, ones with troublesome copy-protection, things like that.

That leaves me with what option to go for in the Encoding section. Ok, so ALL options are lossless. Are there practical reasons to choose one option over another, apart from storage
space? E.g. would an uncompressed library pose difficulties for lower specced computers or something? If not, what exactly is the problem (if there is one?). If you want to imagine that
you're going to be an audiophile ripper, what setting would you choose? What would be the difference between the default setting's ripping time vs uncompressed? Is there a consensus
on what the default should be? What is it?

The only considerations when choosing a lossless compression level are (1) processing time, and (2) file size. There is no "audio" or "audiophile" consideration, as we are talking about the exact same, perfectly identical audio data.

Here's an analogy, with something that may be more familiar: I don't know if you ever use file compression programs to archive stuff on your computer....I have and use both 7zip and WinRar. So let's say I want to archive of all my AmEx statements from last year. I select all twelve .pdfs, then I use one of those programs to put them into a compressed package (that I'll file away on some backup drive somewhere and never look at again! ) These programs have settings that allow me to prioritize/balance between speed and file size.....on the one end, the slowest setting makes the most compact file but it takes noticeably longer to do it, and at the other end, the fastest setting is very speedy, but the file it creates is definitely larger. But the point is, if I ever need to open up the .zip or .rar package and access those files, the .pdfs are identical to the originals. They're not less clear, less sharp, less complete, they didn't drop a word here and there. They are the exact same files as the original .pdfs, irrespective of which speed vs file size settings I used when I archived them.

This is the nature of lossless compression, for both data files and music files. Nothing is lost in compression. Any player that plays .flac has an decoder that knows how to open the .flac file and feed the audio bitstream into its digital-to-audio converter for playback. The package it arrived in is irrelevant. (This is also why all lossless codecs have the same audio quality....once the package is opened, the audio bits fed into the DAC are indistinguishable from the original CD.)

I don't have to imagine....I do consider myself an "audiophile ripper" , and I just leave it on the default. I'd only consider changing the compression setting if I were really squeezed for storage space or if I had a huge number of disks to rip.* I'm well past that now, and seldom have more than a handful of disks to rip in any one sitting. And I have abundant storage space. So lossless compression levels just aren't on my radar as something to worry about when ripping music.


*Even then, faster ripping wouldn't speed up the process, as metadata processing is usually the bottleneck.

[schmidj]

Re: Best settings for lossless rips?

For playback from a "fixed" system, where storage shouldn't be a problem (as opposed to a phone or portable device) I'd want a lossless compression, the playback audio will be as good as the original source file. I'd stay away from .WAV or AIFF as neither are standardized for metadata, and you will discover sooner or later that the metadata is as important, maybe more important than the audio quality.

I personally use FLAC, if I was an Apple devotee, ALAC might be a better choice. Both are lossless. You do need to see what your playback device (renderer) will work with. WMA won't play FLAC without a third party codec, obtaining that can be problematical now, as most of the codec sites seem to package them with malware, or at least spyware. There are other issues with WMA also. Itunes also has its issues, and the default settings can make a mess of your file system and tags. There are several decent versions of playback software/renderers/controllers out there, including Foobar 2000, Media Monkey, Kinsky and even VLC Media Player. What is your playback system?

You also have to think about how you want to organize the music files and folders, a separate issue from tagging them. Getting that set up the way you want particularly for compilations, multi-disc sets and Classical collections can take some trial and error. Depending on your storage system, you may have issues with file names that are too long for your software/operating system. I'd rip a number of albums you listen to often, then stop and use them, before doing hundreds or thousands of CD's and then doing it a second time because of organizational problems. Been there, done that.

There are a lot of issues in doing this, I've been at it several years and am still discovering things. In the end, it should give you a very high quality and flexible playback system.

For portable devices with limited storage, you will have to use lossy compression, unless you have a very small library. How lossy depends on a tradeoff between how much audio you want to store and how lossy it gets before you find i
listening objectionable. Some of the newer codecs such as m4a (AAC) can compress to smaller file sizes with less noticeable artifacts than older codecs like mp3. I have two sets of files of my rips, FLAC for home and moderately high quality m4a for my portable devices. Can I hear the difference, usually no, but sometimes very much.

Defective by design is an attempt at allowing rips of some copy protected or other non-standard discs, not damaged discs. As you may know, burst ripping just encodes whatever it rips from the disc with no error checking/correction above that which the drive does by itself. If you can't get a rip at all using secure rip, try burst and listen to the result. If you are lucky, the errors won't be audible. Otherwise, get another copy of the CD. You can try Defective By Design, particularly if the CD plays OK in a portable player but not in a computer, but I've only run into a couple that played with that setting out of a couple thousand CD's I've ripped.

I have my secure ripping set with Enable Ultra Secure Ripping, minimum passes 1, maximum passes 4, end after 2 clean passes, vary drive speed checked. I have maximum re-reads as 100 which is probably high. If set too high, you may get random "good" reads which really aren't, I've seen that happen fairly often. I'm suspicious of anything that requires re-rips, even if the result is "secure" I try cleaning the CD and ripping again, often with a different make CD drive, if still bad, I listen to the recovered audio to see if it sounds OK to me. It usually sounds OK.

This may take a while to digest, dBPoweramp is very powerful software, IMO, the best available, but there is a steep learning curve because there are so many issues involved. Stick with it, it will all be worthwhile in the end.