Hi Lev,
I have not closely compared the different formats. It has been interesting reading everyone's opinions. This is what I chose for the time being. dbPoweramp for CD ripping. It does many of the same things (if not all) that EAC does and seems easier to use. I rip to FLAC, as it seems to insure all the metadata is better preserved than WAV files. I've heard many arguments both ways, so I figured if I did Flac, I could always convert them to WAV if needed. dbPoweramp also will do some DSP processing and I have set it up so it will decode HDCDs and preserve the extra bits they provide and when you look at the files with eLyric you can see those extra bits as compared to a normal Redbook CD file. I don't believe that EAC will do this so if you have many HDCDs in your collections, (I did!) then this might be worthwhile. Someday soon I'll try FLAC vs Wav to see if I hear a difference.
I do use JRiver at times to tag the files, etc. and use it for playback over the latest version of eLyric. I think it has a more analog sound especially vs. the 2.10 version of elyric. I liked eLyric 2.8 the best and am hoping that sound comes back in the next version.
Hope this helps,
Steve
I have not closely compared the different formats. It has been interesting reading everyone's opinions. This is what I chose for the time being. dbPoweramp for CD ripping. It does many of the same things (if not all) that EAC does and seems easier to use. I rip to FLAC, as it seems to insure all the metadata is better preserved than WAV files. I've heard many arguments both ways, so I figured if I did Flac, I could always convert them to WAV if needed. dbPoweramp also will do some DSP processing and I have set it up so it will decode HDCDs and preserve the extra bits they provide and when you look at the files with eLyric you can see those extra bits as compared to a normal Redbook CD file. I don't believe that EAC will do this so if you have many HDCDs in your collections, (I did!) then this might be worthwhile. Someday soon I'll try FLAC vs Wav to see if I hear a difference.
I do use JRiver at times to tag the files, etc. and use it for playback over the latest version of eLyric. I think it has a more analog sound especially vs. the 2.10 version of elyric. I liked eLyric 2.8 the best and am hoping that sound comes back in the next version.
Hope this helps,
Steve