Ripping CD's - Bypassing Computer CD Player

The transport in a CD player has to deliver the bits without retries for data errors given the need to deliver the bits in real time. The drive in a computer is not under any real time constraints, so it can resample as much as necessary to get an exact copy, as long as the CD is not really damaged. In fact, the computer drive should do a better job of insuring that all the bits are correct.

That said, there used to be regular reviews of drives for ripping. Not sure if those reviews are still being done or not. In the early days, everyone swore by Plextor drives. But they have not been made since 2005 or so. Latter Plextor drives were just re-badged from large suppliers.

Using a ripper like dBpoweramp you should have no trouble with pretty much any drive in your computer. dBpoweramp will also check your rip against other people's rips, which is an added level of assurance.

Good software for ripping is the key. End of story.

For .wav on WIndows, I found free Windows MEdia Player included in Windows to work very well in general for many years.

I am in trial period with DBPoweramp for ripping to FLAC starting last night with a few CDs ranging from very good to questionable condition. IT provides a lot of useful information and options for ripping. It resorted to a block rip mode for a few tracks on CD that were apparently damaged. This was dog slow when it occurred and I had to skip those tracks. It seemed fast and reliable under most circumstances though. ALso the way it auto tags using multiple database sources and provides supplemental album art choices off the internet as a contingency when needed is the best I have seen so far for tagging at rip time. I would pay to use this over EAC I think in that my recollection is EAC auto tagging may not be as sophisticated? Mediamonkey RIP to FLAC has not floated my boat at all to-date in terms of speed and overall user friendliness, especially for tagging.

Ain't it funny how a $50 computer CD drive does a better job of ripping CDs than a $10,000+ "audiophile" player?

And yes, dbPowerAmp is the bee's knees of CD ripping software. It also does a heckuva job transcoding ripped discs to other formats like FLAC, etc.

Long story short, Nab2, your PC's CD drive coupled with dbPowerAmp will do a fantastic job of ripping your CDs - end of story...

-RW-

RL, So far I am using mostly MusicBrainz Picard to autotag FLAC after ripping. Is there a tool from dbpoweramp vendor that enables tagging similar to while ripping that automatically pulls best metadata from the 4 multiple metadata DBs dbpwoeramp rip software uses?

Musicbrainz/Picard is a great tool but only uses Musicbrainz and none of these DBs seem to always trump the other. Each has different content available and tagging works best by using multiple source DBs still these days it seems/

Thanks for the answers. I've used both Exact Audio Copy and dBpoweramp for ripping my CD's but was concerned. As Dtc noted there used to be reviews on the quality of the drives and Plextor came out on top. My current drive is a Plextor, but thought (apparently mistakenly,)that the quality of the drive might have something to do with the quality of the rip. I see the logic of "digital" ripping being independent of the CD drive in the computer, but it doesn't feel right.

I usually rip to WAVE rather than FLAC, but have done both. Perhaps for the same reason (feelings over reason).

Thanks.