Best program to rip cd’s

[Menno]

Good morning from the Netherlands,
I enjoy my Zenith for some years now. My favorite albums are ripped on the Zenith, with hardly any problems.
Others I rip on my laptop and then move the files to my NAS. With some problems sometimes, especially with some older and a little damaged cd’s.
Are there any suggestions for the best ripping program?
Any ideas what external usb cd/blu ray device to use for the ripping? At the moment I am using an LG cd/blu ray device(external).
Trying to improve the process

Best regards
Menno

 

[Stephen Healy]

Hi Menno, there probably won't be a huge difference between the optical drives, the software will be more important. On a Windows PC, i only really have experience with Exact Audio Copy which seemed good.
I can't think of any obvious ways to improve the process, beside relocating a lot of the files inside the ZENith over to the NAS instead, then carry on using the ZENith ripper using the storage space that has been made available.

 

[Menno]

Hi Menno, there probably won't be a huge difference between the optical drives, the software will be more important. On a Windows PC, i only really have experience with Exact Audio Copy which seemed good.
I can't think of any obvious ways to improve the process, beside relocating a lot of the files inside the ZENith over to the NAS instead, then carry on using the ZENith ripper using the storage space that has been made available.

Hello Stephen,
I also use exact audio copy. It is better than some other programs in my opinion also.
Now and then an album could not be ripped completely.
When I put the album in the zenith the cd is ripped successfully.
So it looks like the zenith ripping software and the zenith cd player are superior.
I am not very good in relocating from the zenith to the Nas

Menno

 

[DanCollier]

Hi Menno,

You can simply access your devices music folder via a PC or MAC and copy the music from there onto your NAS.
See this helpful support article which will show you how to access the folder - https://innuos.com/kb/accessing-the-music-files-on-the-innuos-server/

 

[Menno]

Hi Menno,

You can simply access your devices music folder via a PC or MAC and copy the music from there onto your NAS.
See this helpful support article which will show you how to access the folder - https://innuos.com/kb/accessing-the-music-files-on-the-innuos-server/

Hello Dan
Just gave it a try and it worked perfectly and very easy.
Thnx for the tip. I appreciate it very much.

 

[alanrew]

Hello Stephen,
I also use exact audio copy. It is better than some other programs in my opinion also.
Now and then an album could not be ripped completely.
When I put the album in the zenith the cd is ripped successfully.
So it looks like the zenith ripping software and the zenith cd player are superior.
I am not very good in relocating from the zenith to the Nas

Menno

When ripping problematical CDs, I've found that using different hardware can help. While ripping my CD collection (500+ CDs) I sometimes has to rip some tracks on my current PC & some on my old PC then merge the 2 sets of files.

I use dBpowerAmp for ripping on Windows which works very well & can deal with faulty CDs by ripping at low speed & re-reading blocks until errors are dealt with.

The only CDs I couldn't rip had 'bronzing' (AKA 'CD rot') so I had to buy new copies.

 

[Menno]

When ripping problematical CDs, I've found that using different hardware can help. While ripping my CD collection (500+ CDs) I sometimes has to rip some tracks on my current PC & some on my old PC then merge the 2 sets of files.

I use dBpowerAmp for ripping on Windows which works very well & can deal with faulty CDs by ripping at low speed & re-reading blocks until errors are dealt with.

The only CDs I couldn't rip had 'bronzing' (AKA 'CD rot') so I had to buy new copies.

Thanx for your response.
When EAC can’t rip a cd I rip it on my Zenith. After that I copy the files from the Zenith to my laptop and do some retagging.
The original is than removed from the Zenith (the 4TB disc is 87% full)
Then I copy the Album from my laptop to my NAS and rescan.
For me this is a good solution to the problem I had.

I got this tip in the answers to this thread

 

[TomasB]

On a related note, I am unable to rip a hybrid CD/SACD on my ZENith mk3. When trying it for a second time, it just spins the disc for a while, then spits it out.

At first I didn't even notice the rip had failed because I left the machine unattended (so didn't know for how long the disc was spinning before being ejected) and there was no error message or warning in the system events log. (By the way, the album in question is Temptation by Chantal Chamberland, highly recommended!)

Plan B: rip the disc in a Verbatim model 43888 external BR drive connected to my iMac (using the Apple Music app set to AIFF, which is similar to WAV), then copy the files to my NAS and finally import the music to the ZENith. This is a little awkward but quite painless.

Has anyone else noticed compatibility issues with hybrid CD/SACDs on the ZENith?

 

[Esscee]

Did you try using "Assisted Mode"?

 

[Stephen Healy]

On a related note, I am unable to rip a hybrid CD/SACD on my ZENith mk3. When trying it for a second time, it just spins the disc for a while, then spits it out.

At first I didn't even notice the rip had failed because I left the machine unattended (so didn't know for how long the disc was spinning before being ejected) and there was no error message or warning in the system events log. (By the way, the album in question is Temptation by Chantal Chamberland, highly recommended!)

Plan B: rip the disc in a Verbatim model 43888 external BR drive connected to my iMac (using the Apple Music app set to AIFF, which is similar to WAV), then copy the files to my NAS and finally import the music to the ZENith. This is a little awkward but quite painless.

Has anyone else noticed compatibility issues with hybrid CD/SACDs on the ZENith?

SACD and other high-res discs are not compatible for DSD ripping - this is notoriously difficult to do, and a quick look on Google around this will illustrate this.
The normal 'CD Redbook' layer of the disc is not protected to the same extent at all, so what you will find is the first time you inserted the disc into the Innuos, it should have ripped the normal 16/44 CD layer. When you put the disc back in the Innuos again, it should have detected it as a duplicate. If it did not rip anything at all, even the normal CD level, then there could be something particular to that disc.
There is a strong chance your Verbatim ripper will not work either, as you usually need very specific readers/players (often Sony or Oppo) to rip the DSD layer our of CD. The files would need to be .dsf or .dff, you would have to downmix to PCM if you wanted to use AIFF.

 

[TomasB]

SACD and other high-res discs are not compatible for DSD ripping

I know. I’m only interested in the CD layer for now.

If it did not rip anything at all, even the normal CD level, then there could be something particular to that disc.

Yes, this is what happened. I.e., nothing happened at all.. I have a couple of other hybrids to rip as well, so I will soon find out more I guess.

 

[TomasB]

Did you try using "Assisted Mode"?

Yes, now I have. It makes no difference. Also changing to quiet speed doesn’t help. The ZENith CD drive remains unable to find the CD layer of this hybrid CD/SACD. I shall try it with other similar discs in the next week or two.

 

[Midway]

I have always used iTunes to rip my CDs as ALAC files. I use the iPhone to play in a couple of our cars and currently through my Anthem STR preamp via USB and an Apple Camera Adapter. The adapter allows me to bypass the iPhone DAC and use the DAC in my STR preamp. I will connect a Stream1 to that input when it arrives.

I have a car and an AVR I play FLAC files on via USB memory stick drives. I use MediaHuman Audio Converter to convert my ALAC files to FLAC files. I could convert to MP3 and just about any other format if I wanted. I can’t say I’ve used a lot of converter options but this has worked well for me so far and I like the ability to create FLAC playlists from my iTunes playlist through a batch process.

https://www.mediahuman.com/audio-converter/

I have never used Exact Audio Copy. Does it have the ability to create FLAC playlists? It seems more often recommended that MediaHuman. If I started using EAC it wouldn’t be a time advantage over Stream1 ripping except for doing it in the comfort of my office, either way using an ASUS BW-16D1X-U External Blu-ray Drive.

I don’t know how to find the answer and there probably wouldn’t be a significant difference but I would like to know if a CD ripped directly to the Innuos Stream1’s internal M.2 SSD would be better than an iTunes imported CD, saved as ALAC and then converted to FLAC at the highest settings in the MediaHuman Audio Converter? I only have around 500 CDs but that could still take some time but I would consider it to get the most out my Stream1.

Thank you.

Edit to add, Most searches come up with a variant of the following;

Given that both are mathematically lossless, conversion is lossless too.

The reason for this is that the signal can always be reconstructed to its original form when a FLAC/ALAC file is decoded. Thus, they are equivalent and you should experience no loss when transcoding — even when transcoding multiple times.

The only error I could imagine would be an arithmetical one, e.g. through limited floating point precision in calculations. I don't think this applies to either FLAC or ALAC.

In case you only use a "psychoacoustically" lossless codec, this is not possible. Lossless in a psychoacoustic sense would mean that you can't distinguish the original and the compressed version, yet they are very different from each other. MP3 or MPEG-4 AAC use various psychoacoustic techniques to achieve this. Thus, when transcoding, the original version can't be reconstructed and you'd experience a loss of quality.