High Speed Ripping Laboratory for EAC

There are a number of services that will rip CDs for you. SlimDevices provides such a service, and a quick Google for "CD Ripping Service" will yield a number of additional resources. You'll need to query the companies directly for details on how they perform their ripping, but I'd assume that any that offer lossless formats will do so with some measure of reliability.

If you choose to rip yourself, then EAC is a fine tool and will provide good results. However, the actual performance of the tool is very dependent on the hardware used (e.g. some CD-ROM drives will only rip at 3x using EAC, while others run at 16x and greater) which might be a consideration if you're planning to purchase new hardware for this purpose. Also, each drive has an optimal read offset value that must be computed and configured into EAC for the rips to be completely accurate. AccurateRip can be installed along with EAC and will provide the correct settings automatically for your drive when a key disc is ripped.

Ketchup - Are you sure that Secure mode ripping was enabled when you got 25x ripping speed? I've had several LiteOn drives and with the Secure ripping configuration the best I achieved was about 4x. Outside of Secure mode (e.g. Burst mode) I was able to achieve 15x and better, but the program won't guarantee accuracy with that setting. If you're really getting that speed with LiteOn drives in Secure mode, would you mind posting the model you're using?

I'd also like to second the comments about Plextor drives mentioned previously. I use a Plextor Plexwriter Premium CR-RW with the Plextor Plextools software and I get quite accurate rips at greater than 20x speed using the very highest level of error detection/correction. However, this drive has been discontinued and I don't know if the current models of DVD-R provide the same degree of precision. Perhaps someone with more knowledge about these drives can comment on the current lineup.

Cwlondon - I probably share your skepticism of ripping services, and if you do pursue this route I'd very much like to hear about your results. I know that the folks at SlimDevices are quite concerned with audio quality, and the gentleman that runs the company is fairly active on their own Audiophile forum. It would surprise me if the ripping quality of their service was hugely compromised for better margins, but there's no way to know for sure.

That said, I've ripped my entirely collection of about 1000 CDs and I can certainly say it's a process I'd like never to have to repeat. It took many, many months in front of the computer and represents a huge investment in time and energy. I'm very careful to maintain multiple backups of the music so that I'm protected against hardware failure or theft because, quite frankly, the ripped music represents a much higher value to me than the CDs themselves. In this context, a few hundred dollars to have someone else rip the music actually looks like quite a bargain.

That said, it would be very interesting to find someone has used their service and compare the rips with those from a properly configured EAC setup. If 5-10 random CDs all turn out to be identical, that would be enough evidence (to me) that the ripping process they use is at least adequate. This might be worth fishing for.

Anyway, best of luck with improving your ripping results, and let us know if you work out a good time/labor saving process :).