Automatisch settings for bit depth and sample frequency?

[LeoW]

Hi there,
I am an absolute beginner in using the CD Ripper and I have a probbably silly question.
Is it possible to tell the software to use the CD's bit depth and sample frequency for the generated flac files automatically?

Best regards,
Leo

[Dat Ei]

Re: Automatisch settings for bit depth and sample frequency?

Hey Leo,

there is no need to config the software for ripping a CD to flac. It uses the Audio CD standard 16 bit and 44,1 kHz.


Dat Ei

[garym]

Re: Automatisch settings for bit depth and sample frequency?

That would be the default behavior of the CD ripper. If you are ripping a CD (which is going to be 16/44.1), the FLAC files created will be 16/44.1 unless you add a DSP at the ripping stage to change that to something else. (and there's no good reason to do that by the way)

Edit: Beat me by a minute.

[LeoW]

Re: Automatisch settings for bit depth and sample frequency?

That would be the default behavior of the CD ripper. If you are ripping a CD (which is going to be 16/44.1), the FLAC files created will be 16/44.1 unless you add a DSP at the ripping stage to change that to something else. (and there's no good reason to do that by the way)

Edit: Beat me by a minute.

Thanks for your reply. I already found out that 16/44.1 is the default setting (red book).
But what about the HDCD CD's? as far as I know these are 24 bits and I don't know about the sample frequency.

[garym]

Re: Automatisch settings for bit depth and sample frequency?

HDCDs are not actually 24 bit (I recall they are 20bit) and they are 44.1 (note HDCD are *not* hi-res files such as 24/96 or 24/192).. To get a bit perfect copy of these one rips them as a normal CD. If you play these files back through an HDCD capable player (not many left by the way), the player will pick up the fact that they are HDCD and play them using the full 20 bits). Actually one can play these rips through foobar2000 player with the correct component installed and foobar2000 will also decode properly.

There is a HDCD DSP in dbpoweramp that will essentially rip these as 24 bit files (doing the "HDCD conversion" for you in essence). You can read all about it here:

https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?27540-Ripping-HDCDs-Best-practices

Also note that many HDCD CDs don't actually contain the important aspects of an HDCD CD (e.g., Peak Extension) and thus doing the above is irrelevant. foobar2000 HDCD component can allow one to see if the files have such HDCD aspects. Search the forums at hydrogenaud.io for information on this, and also for discussions on whether it is important to do any special ripping with HDCDs.

p.s. I can tell you that for me personally, I have 100s of CDs that are HDCD (mostly Grateful Dead) and In my pretty good system, I hear no difference between playing a FLAC just ripped like any CD (16/44.1) and the same CD ripped using the dbpa HDCD DSP. I've not done a controlled blind comparison however. But it was enough to make me realize it wasn't needed. And I've read elsewhere that many of these disks don't use peak extension in any case, so shouldn't matter. You can also read about all this at the Steve Hoffman forums here (warning, some of these posters are simply wrong....audio myths are allowed at Steve Hoffman, unlike hydrogenaud.io).

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/does-hdcd-make-a-noticeable-difference.311991/page-12

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/hdcd-ripping-properly-to-24bit-flac.716442/

[LeoW]

Re: Automatisch settings for bit depth and sample frequency?

Thanks Garym,

This advice is of great help to me.
Also thanks for the references, it offers me a good starting point to learn more about the subject.
Guess that I still have to learn a lot about ripping CD's.

Best regards,

Leo

[garym]

Re: Automatisch settings for bit depth and sample frequency?

You're welcome. (I wouldn't get too bogged down into the HDCD issue....it's a real rabbit hole if you start digging too deep). And keep in mind that if you rip all your HDCDs as regular 16/44.1 FLAC files, in the future you could always CONVERT those in a batch manner with dbpoweramp using the HDCD DSP and create new FLAC files that are 24/44.1. You wouldn't have to rip those again.