General CD Audio Ripping Question

[Bespin1138]

First, I would like to say thanks to the members of this site for helping me this past year on my journey of ripping my audio CD collection to FLAC and for the continued assistance that I may require in the future depending on where my music storage and listening future goes. I have recently completed ripping all of my CDs to FLAC with ReplayGain added to the song files during the ripping process. My question is intended to be general in nature. When I started the ripping process over late last year, I uninstalled and re-installed dbPowerAmp to start with what I hoped was a clean installation of the program with all settings returned to default using the IObit Uninstaller program. I did a lot of trial and error processes to try to make sure I got the cleanest and best audio quality files possible based on input from this forum and learned new things from the forum as well. To the best of my knowledge, when I started over, and uninstalled and re-installed dBpoweramp, all settings were returned to default.

My question regarding CD Ripper is this: I am aware that the audio quality of my song files is impacted by what format the Rip To option is set for (e.g. FLAC or AAC). I am also aware that DSP Effects such as ReplayGain can impact sound quality. My understanding is that at least to some extent, such as in FLAC audio, encoders and Tags could also impact sound quality (Encoder is at default Level 5 and Tags is empty). I understand Encoder sets the compression level and size for FLAC and tags provide data for players to read and depending on the tag, could impact audio quality. The only other factor that I am aware of that could impact audio quality is Secure Rip, but that is mainly whether files skip or pop due to bad CD rips. Are there any other settings in dBpoweramp's CD ripper besides the ones that I just mentioned that could impact the sound quality of the FLAC files that I ripped or are the ones that I mentioned the only ones that impact the audio quality. I ask this because I hope I never have to go through this long trial-and-error journey again.

Thanks.

[garym]

Re: General CD Audio Ripping Question

FLAC is lossless. Assuming you get a good rip (and that is confirmed with either an AccurateRip match or Secure outcome), nothing about the compression level (e.g., using "5"), or metadata tags, or adding ReplayGain tags has any impact whatsoever on "sound quality". ReplayGain tags are simply tags read by a ReplayGain "aware" player to adjust volume. Such tags don't modify the actual audio content of the file. (note that there also is a way to "apply" the RG information to permanently modify the audio, but that's a different DSP and not what you've used).

Bottom line, rip CDs to FLAC, use any compression level you want, add all the tags you want, use the ReplayGain DSP, and you will end up with bit perfect copies of the CDs with the exact sound quality of the CD itself. At that point, the only thing that affects your sound quality would be your playback mechanism and room (amplifier, DAC, Speakers, shape of room, material in room, etc.). But none of this has anything to do with getting perfect lossless rips of your CDs.

edit: Obviously ripping or converting to a lossy file (e.g., mp3, m4a, AAC) is a different matter. Information is "thrown away" in creating these lossy files, and thus things like the bit rate can have an affect on sound quality (a 64kbps mp3 file will likely not sound that great while a 256kbps mp3 file will often sound just as good as lossless FLAC file).

[Bespin1138]

Re: General CD Audio Ripping Question

Thank you for your response, input, and correcting my misunderstandings. I really appreciate the help.