A few questions from a new user

[chileboy]

I'm a newly-minted registered user of dbpowerAMP Reference, and after using CD Ripper for several days - quite happily, I might add! - I have a few questions.

I think these should properly be posted here, rather than Support or elsewhere (but I could be wrong).

I'm ripping everything to FLAC.

• How important is it for AccurateRip to return "Accurate"? Almost all of my CDs return "Accurate", but occasionally a CD is "Inaccurate" on every track, even though the disc is clean and I cannot see any physical defect. I have a pretty good ear (I think) and the rips sound identical to the CD.
• Am I correct that the number in parentheses next to AccurateRip is the number of rips for that track which have been submitted to the database? If I have a rip that does not "match", and I "Submit" it, how is that reconciled in the database? What I mean is, how does the DB "know" which one is accurate? And how does it differentiate between what might be a different pressing? I'm pretty sure that on more than one occasion, a CD showed as "Inaccurate" when I believe it was actually comparing it to a different release.
• Sometimes it seems I have to manually click the drop-down next to "Meta" and click "Retrieve from AMG" before it will pull in the information. Other times, it does it automatically. What might cause that?
• When I first started using the registered version, I noticed it seemed to start ripping the next track when it was still compressing the previous track, which saved time - now it seems it does that only rarely, if ever. I can't find any option which controls that.
• Sometimes I will change the tags manually after a rip using Windows Explorer. It's easy to highlight a number of files and change the Genre in one shot (for instance). I notice that when I do that, Windows seems to actually create a new copy of the file and delete the old one, which can take quite awhile on a a number of large files. I've never seen that behaviour before in Windows - is that an unavoidable by-product of using FLACs? I'm thinking that changing the tags actually changes the file size and compression. Actually, if that's the case, I'm surprised Windows is smart enough to handle it.

I guess that's it for now!

Thanks,

- Mark

[Spoon]

Re: A few questions from a new user

If all the tracks are inaccurate then yes it is likely a different pressing.

Just press the main meta button again to reget the info. If it fails then it could the internet link to amg which is having problems, or even amg.

If ripping in secure mode it has to finish the ripping completely, rather than burst rip where they are queued up to encode whilst the next track is ripped.

Flac has the tags at the front, so the whole file has to be rewritten.

[chileboy]

Re: A few questions from a new user

Thanks very much for the reply, Spoon.

I actually found most of this addressed in other threads (or figured it out)after I posted this - So I apologize, I should have been more thorough in my searching before I asked these questions.

I think you are correct about not having a link to the Internet when the retrieve meta fails. I realized it happens only at the office - I believe the firewall is blocking whatever ports AMG needs. Is this documented somewhere?

Not that I rip rather than work!

- Mark