New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

[ChisChas]

Re: New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

Hi ChisChas,

My first experience of dBpoweramp, was when I compared a manufacturer's top of the range CD to their, then new, Network Player. The FLAC file, was ripped, by the manufacturer recommended, dBpoweramp. Suffice to say, through a highly revealing, and full range, active system, the "ripped" file compared extremely favourably, to the then, reference CD player.

A friend uses dBpoweramp, and uses a Chord DAC, with outstanding results. A rip that give an AccurateRip, and somewhere between 95-100% of all CDs achieve this, will be passing a bit perfect stream to your DAC, so are guaranteed, the best possible sound. Some may have 2-3 frames with errors: a frame is 1/75 of a second, so I believe the occasional, and with a CD drive that is working properly, it really is occasional, longer rip time, is worth it, to give your DAC, the best possible chance to perform at its optimum.

The admittedly, steep learning curve, is well worth the effort, and once you know your preferences, and how your player works, great results can be achieved very quickly. dBpoweramp is incredibly powerful and flexible. Because of this, there are many options, some of which are not immediately obvious.

I was in your position two years ago, and thanks to the help of 3-4 people, certainly 3 of those are already giving you great advice, helped me achieve my goal, immeasurably quicker, more efficiently and smarter, than I would have, on my own. I honestly believe the product, the forum, and the help from these guys is the friendliest and best. For them to help you, you need to help them, by trying suggestions and clearly defining what you want to achieve.

One piece of advice, that certainly has saved me time, is to use Google search. I typed in Arena, Contagion, copy protected, and your thread was found immediately. Perversely, it is often quicker searching through Google, rather than through this forum.

Have you tried the Arena CD, with your new DVD drive? In my experience of ripping a couple thousand CDs, you were incredibly unlucky to not obtain an AccurateRip on all tracks. Looks an interesting album!

The CD layer of hybrid SACDs, should rip perfectly OK on either of your DVD drives: I've done several, without any issues, obtaining an AccurateRip on all tracks.

Paul's thread is well worth a read, as it shows screenshots of some settings you may find useful. Some are in CD Ripper, Settings, where album cover art sizes and embedded / Folder.jpg are discussed. If you haven't set these yet, for your preferences, then I highly recommend you do.

The default settings work very well, for most people, in most situations, but with a little more work, you may find that you can personalise, your music library, more to your liking. Use of Smart Capitalize or Capitalize All, Year and Genre, are worth considering and standardising, before ripping. Even something as straightforward, as Genre Progressive Rock, can end up having multiple variations,

The weird (and very frustrating) thing was that ONLY tracks 15 & 16, the last two tracks of Contagion refused to rip using dBpa. I tried many times and again today, just before getting the new Asus drive out of its box. I have a 256GB SSD and a 1TB HD on my laptop so plenty of room for redoing my music in dBpa and as I retired at the end of last year, that's why I'm doing it now. I will keep going and pop back if I get stuck and ask for some more help. I am very grateful that several people have been willing to offer advice.

[ChisChas]

Re: New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

Just two points:

1.) We never know if the WMP copy is bitperfect or nearly bitperfect. We can only testify major problems which obviously reduce the audio quality (glitches, cracks etc. pp.), if we listen to the complete copy. On the other hand do we know after ripping a CD with dBpa, if a copy is bitperfect or not.

2.) Ripping errors can completely destroy your audio / listening experience, so that the Equipment itself doesn't play any role. Listening to jumps, cracks and glitches ist not a question of bad, good or superb equipment.


Dat Ei

Thanks, I note what you are saying. I think the point I was making is that I have every incentive to use dBpa BECAUSE I use superb audio equipment. Sorry I didn't make this clear. As my own post (as opposed to replies to other's posts) states, the new Asus drive sorted the two tracks that point blank refused to rip with dBpa. I was interested to see that the Asus drive provides two USB plugs and the instructions recommend you use both to provide more power than just one.

[ChisChas]

Re: New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

I can't agree with advising a newbie to read the 46 page thread which, if you read it, chops and changes all over the place and could be confusing to a newbie and to my mind, only supports the adage fail to plan, plan to fail. Don't get me wrong, there is some good info in there, it's just a shame it isn't condensed into 3 or 4 pages.

Much better IMO, to have a quick read of the Online Help Windows or Apple OS X and Spoon's Audio Guide to get an overview of the Illustrate software.

Then, try ripping 4 or 5 CDs only, including a single CD album, a multi-CD album, a compilation CD and perhaps a classical CD.

You can then see how CD Ripper works in terms of the file/folder structure (determined by Path and Naming) and how to preview/edit//write the artwork and metadata tags such as album, artist, title etc.

Once you have ripped these few CDs, check to see how the albums appear in your chosen playback system and whether you need to make any modifications to your ripping process/workflow including whether you want to use sort tags etc. This process may take 2 or 3 re-rips until your are happy, but it will help you plan your overall tagging strategy.

Only when you are happy with your ripping process/workflow, would I suggest you start ripping all your CDs. This is a time consuming process and if you don't plan, as is clear in Paul's threads, you will spend much more time having to re-think/re-tag, post rip.

Gulp ok, I don't want to get into anymore trouble with you guys, homework first, rip lots of CD's second, I'll walk before I start to run. Before I proceed further, now my Contagion tracks 15 & 16 have been vanquished by my new drive, I'm using VLC Media Player to escape from the rest of WMP, is VLC Media Player a good thing for me to use with my dBpa ripped albums?

[ChisChas]

Re: New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

Hi mville,



I did not mean to literally work through the long thread in a strictly step-by-step fashion; because there are many twists and turns. I would have thought that ChisChas would be able to detect this flaw. But nevertheless, maybe I should have been clearer in my reply yesterday.



The reasons for me changing my mind mid-flight were not entirely down to me having not "planned". Some reasons were because I discovered - whilst reading a historical book over the summer - clear definitions of many of the sub-genres of Jazz (Cool, Swing, Fusion, Latin). I think I began ripping in July and only found out the latter historical information around 3 weeks ago; and by then I was a good way into my ripping. Plus, I switched from a Sony Walkman to an Amazon Fire tablet device (the latter handled/ignored certain criteria differently from the former) between July and August - which was a scenario that was not possible to predict. Finally, I found that I was not able to take a look at the bigger picture (ie. a birds eye view) until I had ripped a good 20 CDs. Then I went back and changed many things which I thought I had set in stone. All of these decisions have definitely been for the better and I really do not see how I could have foretasted such decisions so early on in the ripping stage.

Paul

Paul

Yes, I have mentioned an audio forum where I slugged my way through 456 pages of a thread and I did see that your thread meandered a bit (don't they all and you can learn things about off topic stuff too). I will proceed steadily and learn more things, thanks for your help. The new Asus drive slew the two dragons (tracks 15 & 16 of the Arena 'Contagion' album). Highly recommend this drive, it has two USB's and Asus advise using both (more power that way, the manual says).

[ChisChas]

Re: New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

THE NEW ASUS drive (SDRW-08D2S-U Lite) has defeated the two Arena tracks who were unwilling to join the dBpa party, bravo, I'm much happier.

Thanks to everyone who has borne with my frustrations and my dBpa journey can now start. I'm sure there will be other trials & tribulations in the future and I feel confident I will be able to come back for some more help. I will go through Paul's thread and pick out what is helpful to me.

THANK YOU!

[mville]

Re: New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

The reasons for me changing my mind mid-flight were not entirely down to me having not "planned". Some reasons were because I discovered - whilst reading a historical book over the summer - clear definitions of many of the sub-genres of Jazz (Cool, Swing, Fusion, Latin). I think I began ripping in July and only found out the latter historical information around 3 weeks ago; and by then I was a good way into my ripping. Plus, I switched from a Sony Walkman to an Amazon Fire tablet device (the latter handled/ignored certain criteria differently from the former) between July and August - which was a scenario that was not possible to predict. Finally, I found that I was not able to take a look at the bigger picture (ie. a birds eye view) until I had ripped a good 20 CDs. Then I went back and changed many things which I thought I had set in stone. All of these decisions have definitely been for the better and I really do not see how I could have foretasted such decisions so early on in the ripping stage.

Sorry Paul, it wasn't meant as a criticism and of course no-one will ever get their tags perfect, first-time (I still tweak my tags from time to time). I also realise that you had an unfortunate issue with Sony/Amazon, which hindered the sort of trialling and testing I was recommending.

The point I was trying to make is your thread highlights the importance of trying to get as much right early in the process, as is reasonably possible.

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

Sorry Paul, it wasn't meant as a criticism and of course no-one will ever get their tags perfect, first-time (I still tweak my tags from time to time). I also realise that you had an unfortunate issue with Sony/Amazon, which hindered the sort of trialling and testing I was recommending.

The point I was trying to make is your thread highlights the importance of trying to get as much right early in the process, as is reasonably possible.

mville,

It's OK; no apology needed.

Yes, I remember you saying some time back that you still make edits to tags which you originally performed way back. I dare say that even someone like yourself - who I consider to be an expert - thinks, later down the line: "oh, I wish I had included, or not included, this or that". But at your stage, it would be merely fine tuning (compared to radical changes in my case!).

Paul

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

Paul

Yes, I have mentioned an audio forum where I slugged my way through 456 pages of a thread and I did see that your thread meandered a bit (don't they all and you can learn things about off topic stuff too). I will proceed steadily and learn more things, thanks for your help. The new Asus drive slew the two dragons (tracks 15 & 16 of the Arena 'Contagion' album). Highly recommend this drive, it has two USB's and Asus advise using both (more power that way, the manual says).

ChisChas,

I am pleased the new Asus solved your issues!

I am sure you are - but just in case you need a gentle reminder - are you BACKING-UP your rips?! This is something I perform on a daily basis. I purchased a dedicated Dell 1TB external-HD for this purpose.

I think Gary said that he uploads his to a cloud storage? But he has 1,000s of rips so I am not sure if he has to pay/subscribe for such a service like Google_Drive, or similar?

Paul

[garym]

Re: New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

ChisChas,

I am pleased the new Asus solved your issues!

I am sure you are - but just in case you need a gentle reminder - are you BACKING-UP your rips?! This is something I perform on a daily basis. I purchased a dedicated Dell 1TB external-HD for this purpose.

I think Gary said that he uploads his to a cloud storage? But he has 1,000s of rips so I am not sure if he has to pay/subscribe for such a service like Google_Drive, or similar?

Paul

I have lots of backups (various 3TB and 4TB USB 3.0 drives), stored in 3 different locations. I only accidentally use cloud too (my entire office desktop machine is automatically backed up to a cloud service and it happens to pick up my complete music collection which is on my work harddrive as well). That one's a freebee (but it seemed to take about two months to do its initial uploading).

[Oggy]

Re: New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

Gulp ok, I don't want to get into anymore trouble with you guys, homework first, rip lots of CD's second, I'll walk before I start to run. Before I proceed further, now my Contagion tracks 15 & 16 have been vanquished by my new drive, I'm using VLC Media Player to escape from the rest of WMP, is VLC Media Player a good thing for me to use with my dBpa ripped albums?

Hi ChisChas,

I don't know if you are using a Windows device for playing your files, but rather than VLC, I would recommend, Foobar2000. Lots of happy users here!

[Oggy]

Re: New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

THE NEW ASUS drive (SDRW-08D2S-U Lite) has defeated the two Arena tracks who were unwilling to join the dBpa party, bravo, I'm much happier.

Thanks to everyone who has borne with my frustrations and my dBpa journey can now start. I'm sure there will be other trials & tribulations in the future and I feel confident I will be able to come back for some more help. I will go through Paul's thread and pick out what is helpful to me.

THANK YOU!

Great news that your new drive has done the job; a reliable drive makes ripping a large collection, immeasurably easier.

I'm sure you've configured the offset, if you are not already, let it rip at maximum speed!

Hopefully you have finished reading, and are now happily ripping your CD collection. Just in case you are not, I've pulled together a few things, that may help you achieve your goal, quicker.

Firstly, a good naming scheme. I tried working out this for myself, but in the end, took the great Tom Lehrer's advice, plagiarise!

So if you haven't settled on a naming scheme, do what I did, and use garym's!

[IFCOMP]Compilations\[album][IFMULTI]\Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title]-[artist][][IF!COMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][]\[album][IFMULTI]\Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title][]

This will deal with single, multi disc and Compilations, with very little user intervention. If you have found your own scheme, great!



This Album Art screenshot shows the two sizes that I've set in the CD Ripper Options, 1000x1000 and 300x300. I settled on these because some players will not display larger files, and they give a good quality image.

If you do not like the album art offered to you, using a Google search on images, and adding fanart, 1024, or other popular image sizes, often offers, high quality, but sometimes very large images. Your settings will reduce these to a maximum of what you set.

By default, album art is embedded in each track. A popular choice, is to use a Folder.jpg, where you have one image, per disc. This is compatible with most apps, certainly Foobar. You have to set, Write to [output folder]\ AND, unless you want embedded and a Folder.jpg, In Write ID Tags, uncheck Album Art.

I settled on these settings after a month; I wish I had read up about them earlier. They work very well for me, but you are building a personal library, and your choices may be different.

Once set, these settings will apply to each rip. Once you know what you want, set and forget.



The CD Ripper Metadata, screenshot, shows a lot of really useful information, and the left hand column, shows the preferences that I chose, before ripping disc 1, of the 1987, The Beatles, White Album.

Firstly, I hit the Captalize Tags - i've only just noticed that it says Captalize and not Capitalize! This capitalises, the first letter of each word and I believe that this is less wrong than using smart capitalisation, and gives a uniformed look. I use this for all naming, excepting stylised names, such as blink-182, and classical, where I prefer, i. Allegro con brio, than if it was all capitalised. These are purely personal preferences: the best advice I can offer, is to be consistent.

As you can see, the 4 providers have a few red highlights, where I have used different options:-

Artist - The Beatles, not Beatles, or even Beatles, The. In Windows, this shows as The Beatles, in Ts, but my player ignores "The", and displays as The Beatles, in Bs, which is my preference.

Album - The Beatles. I look at this as the correct album name, so don't mention "White Album", or Disc 1. I know that it is disc 1, from Disc - 1/2. If you have more than one mastering of an album, such as the 2007 remaster, or mono version, you will need to give them a unique name, such as The Beatles [Mono], to keep them separate.

Genre - Rock. This is my preference, but if you tag Genre, limiting the variations, searching by Genre, instantly becomes a very useful tool.

Year - 1968. My preference is for the albums original release year, which apart from multiple releases in a single year, allows the albums to be displayed chronologically. Adding month and date, appears to throw my player. Again this is purely a personal preference, and how my player works.

Disc - 1/2. This is disc 1 of a double CD set, if you use this convention, and if you tag disc 2, 2/2, with the exact same name for Artist and Album, The Beatles

From garym's naming string, and the above tags, you end up with a folder tree of:-

The Beatles

The Beatles

Disc 1 Disc 2

This also puts a Folder.jpg with album art up 1000x1000, 300x300, in each folder.

This may not be everyone's preference, but hopefully shows that with a good naming string, setting a few options, and with a bit of care and consistency with the metadata, a well organised library, isn't too difficult to achieve.

Even though as folders, you have a folder per disc, on most players, this would play disc 2 after disc 1, automatically.

This method also works exactly the same with sets with more than 2 discs, and Compilations. It is imperative to use exactly the same Album name for both compilations and multis, and exactly the same Artist name for multis, correctly populating the Disc numbers, 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5, 5/5, for a 5 CD set.

Hope this helps, and that others will add, correct, offer different or more elegant solutions, keeping information in fewer posts.

I haven't mentioned sort tags.....

[monsterjazzlick]

Re: New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

Hi ChisChas,

I don't know if you are using a Windows device for playing your files, but rather than VLC, I would recommend, Foobar2000. Lots of happy users here!

ChisChas,

I am using Foobar on my PC to play my FLACs.

On my Amazon Fire tablet I am using VLC (as foobar is not an Amazon compatible app.).

Paul

[ChisChas]

Re: New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

Hi ChisChas,

I don't know if you are using a Windows device for playing your files, but rather than VLC, I would recommend, Foobar2000. Lots of happy users here!

Thanks, defo not wedded to VLC, just occasionally use it for DVD's. Yes, using W10 when listening with a desktop dac/amp (waiting for my Chord Hugo 2 to arrive), a Linux device (Questyle QP2R) for portable use.

[ChisChas]

Re: New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

Great news that your new drive has done the job; a reliable drive makes ripping a large collection, immeasurably easier.

I'm sure you've configured the offset, if you are not already, let it rip at maximum speed!

Hopefully you have finished reading, and are now happily ripping your CD collection. Just in case you are not, I've pulled together a few things, that may help you achieve your goal, quicker.

Firstly, a good naming scheme. I tried working out this for myself, but in the end, took the great Tom Lehrer's advice, plagiarise!

So if you haven't settled on a naming scheme, do what I did, and use garym's!

[IFCOMP]Compilations\[album][IFMULTI]\Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title]-[artist][][IF!COMP][IFVALUE]album artist,[album artist],[artist][]\[album][IFMULTI]\Disc [disc][]\[track]-[title][]

This will deal with single, multi disc and Compilations, with very little user intervention. If you have found your own scheme, great!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1758[/ATTACH]

This Album Art screenshot shows the two sizes that I've set in the CD Ripper Options, 1000x1000 and 300x300. I settled on these because some players will not display larger files, and they give a good quality image.

If you do not like the album art offered to you, using a Google search on images, and adding fanart, 1024, or other popular image sizes, often offers, high quality, but sometimes very large images. Your settings will reduce these to a maximum of what you set.

By default, album art is embedded in each track. A popular choice, is to use a Folder.jpg, where you have one image, per disc. This is compatible with most apps, certainly Foobar. You have to set, Write to [output folder]\ AND, unless you want embedded and a Folder.jpg, In Write ID Tags, uncheck Album Art.

I settled on these settings after a month; I wish I had read up about them earlier. They work very well for me, but you are building a personal library, and your choices may be different.

Once set, these settings will apply to each rip. Once you know what you want, set and forget.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1760[/ATTACH]

The CD Ripper Metadata, screenshot, shows a lot of really useful information, and the left hand column, shows the preferences that I chose, before ripping disc 1, of the 1987, The Beatles, White Album.

Firstly, I hit the Captalize Tags - i've only just noticed that it says Captalize and not Capitalize! This capitalises, the first letter of each word and I believe that this is less wrong than using smart capitalisation, and gives a uniformed look. I use this for all naming, excepting stylised names, such as blink-182, and classical, where I prefer, i. Allegro con brio, than if it was all capitalised. These are purely personal preferences: the best advice I can offer, is to be consistent.

As you can see, the 4 providers have a few red highlights, where I have used different options:-

Artist - The Beatles, not Beatles, or even Beatles, The. In Windows, this shows as The Beatles, in Ts, but my player ignores "The", and displays as The Beatles, in Bs, which is my preference.

Album - The Beatles. I look at this as the correct album name, so don't mention "White Album", or Disc 1. I know that it is disc 1, from Disc - 1/2. If you have more than one mastering of an album, such as the 2007 remaster, or mono version, you will need to give them a unique name, such as The Beatles [Mono], to keep them separate.

Genre - Rock. This is my preference, but if you tag Genre, limiting the variations, searching by Genre, instantly becomes a very useful tool.

Year - 1968. My preference is for the albums original release year, which apart from multiple releases in a single year, allows the albums to be displayed chronologically. Adding month and date, appears to throw my player. Again this is purely a personal preference, and how my player works.

Disc - 1/2. This is disc 1 of a double CD set, if you use this convention, and if you tag disc 2, 2/2, with the exact same name for Artist and Album, The Beatles

From garym's naming string, and the above tags, you end up with a folder tree of:-

The Beatles

The Beatles

Disc 1 Disc 2

This also puts a Folder.jpg with album art up 1000x1000, 300x300, in each folder.

This may not be everyone's preference, but hopefully shows that with a good naming string, setting a few options, and with a bit of care and consistency with the metadata, a well organised library, isn't too difficult to achieve.

Even though as folders, you have a folder per disc, on most players, this would play disc 2 after disc 1, automatically.

This method also works exactly the same with sets with more than 2 discs, and Compilations. It is imperative to use exactly the same Album name for both compilations and multis, and exactly the same Artist name for multis, correctly populating the Disc numbers, 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5, 5/5, for a 5 CD set.

Hope this helps, and that others will add, correct, offer different or more elegant solutions, keeping information in fewer posts.

I haven't mentioned sort tags.....

Oh my giddee aunt, thanks for all this, just heading for a dark room so I can have a lie down...........

The new drive is defo configued for AccurateRip, does this action take care of the offset you refer to?

And when I've come out of the dark room, I'll read this very helpful post S L O W L Y............

[ChisChas]

Re: New User Experiencing Huge Time Differences in Rips

ChisChas,

I am using Foobar on my PC to play my FLACs.

On my Amazon Fire tablet I am using VLC (as foobar is not an Amazon compatible app.).

Paul

Life ain't simple, is it? But another vote for Foobar.