Looking for the best possible quality

[JDuc]

Please forgive me as I know this is a very basic question. I'm just a tad bit overwhelmed right now though with the many options that seem to be out there.

I'm looking to copy all of my CDs to a hard drive for a few reasons:

Mainly, I'd like to be able to play them back without loosing any quality. Yes, I'm talking about even the most minute nuance.

I'd also like to have a back up of my CDs (as I'm sure many people want as well).

I'm new to the lossless ripping game so I'm unsure which version is right for me.

I'm not scared of taking the time to learn, as long as it doesn't take me to 100 different places to learn how to use the software and what all the options are for.

I'd also like to know what the best recommended drive for ripping and playback is out there right now. In my previous searching, I seemed to run into a bunch of people that didn't know or care that there might be a difference. Perhaps this is the place I should have been asking all along.

Thanks for any input anyone can provide.

[Spoon]

Re: Looking for the best possible quality

Plextor px-230a is quite hard to beat.

[JDuc]

Re: Looking for the best possible quality

thanks for that feed back.

may I ask why that's the drive? what makes it better than the others? does it read more accurately? how does it handle the 1s and 0s better than any other drive on the market? this is an area I've not quite been able to understand and haven't been able to find any good information on on the net.

also, which version of your software would you recomend for someone like myself? the more basic version perhaps?

[Spoon]

Re: Looking for the best possible quality

>does it read more accurately?

Yes

> how does it handle the 1s and 0s better than any other drive on the market?

When the cd is damaged it can read through the damage better. Otherwise every drive on teh market would be equal and there would be no need for secure rippers, which is not true.

[LtData]

Re: Looking for the best possible quality

As for which version of dMC you need, see here for the differences between the versions of dMC: http://www.dbpoweramp.com/db-versions.htm

The short version is: if you don't need ultra-secure CD ripping, multi-CPU encoding or Reference-only codecs (Fraunhoefer IIS mp3, Real Helix Encoder, BWF MP2), just go with the PowerPack and MP3 Encoder. Also, if you want to later upgrade to Reference, you can do that for an upgrade price.

[Poseidonas]

Re: Looking for the best possible quality

There are many other reasons why a Plextor burner is better.

1. Only brand which can self-adjust the laser beam to the speed and *brand of media. Any other burner can only have one beam strength as it speeds up the burn, which makes the pit depth uneven and decreases the "volume" of the audio sample. Plextor makes a 2x audio CD burn nearly identical to a 52x audio CD burn! [PoweRec tech]

2. Only brand which can self-adjust the laser beam to the wobble of unevenly weighted media.

3. One of few brands which can actually "remember" the last burn spot the laser was etching when a buffer underrun occurs, and thus can continue the burn unhindered. The result is amazing: nearly indistiguishable! [B.U.R.N.-Proof tech., licensed from SANYO].

4. One of few brands which can very quickly jump over read errors with almost no loss in speed.

As for quality recording, the two absolute best in reproduction of audio samples is .CDA/.WAV and .FLAC. FLAC is the compressed version, but is still a "lossless" codec. For playback in Apple media, use the .ALC codec. I do this myself, and then convert to VBR MP3 or WMA when using for playback in "MP3"-players.

[Spoon]

Re: Looking for the best possible quality

there is no .alc file rather Apple Lossless (ALAC) which is stored in the .m4a container

[wmoonshine]

Re: Looking for the best possible quality

1. Plextor Drives: I started with two LG GSA-H22L DVD drives 6 months ago. After ruining over 15 double-layer Verbatim DVD+R disks while burning data, I upgraded to a Plextor PX-760A and haven't had any problems since. My only complaint is the drives come supplied with Roxio software instead of Nero -- I find Nero's disk writting software better.
2. As for LossLess Compression: Monkeys Audio (.APE) is slightly better than FLAC according to tests I ran over a year ago. See also the table at http://www.monkeysaudio.com/comparison.html for a comparison of the performance of most of the popular lossless compressors.

[math]

Re: Looking for the best possible quality

I'm also looking for a good drive for ripping audio. I've looked around and the only Plextor I can find (reasonably priced) is a px-800a. Does anyone know if all Plextor drives are good at ripping audio or is just particular models?

After searching around it seems that LiteOn drives are also seem to be rated quite highly, but again I'm not sure that this necessarily means they are also good for ripping audio.

I'm currently using an NEC ND-3540A but I've heard bad things about their support for C2. Having said that I seem to be getting good results according to accurate rip.

Any info would be very much appreciated, as googling around for info on audio ripping seems to throw up threads or info which are quite dated.

[LtData]

Re: Looking for the best possible quality

wmoonshine: regarding the test at the monkey's website, they are up to 3.99 in dMC, 4.01b2 on the website and FLAC is up to 1.1.4, so I'm sure that the results have changed a little.

[Spoon]

Re: Looking for the best possible quality

Generally Plextors are OK with better than average c2 support.