High Speed Ripping Laboratory for EAC

EAC is outstanding for what it is - but it is not the last word on error-free ripping. You have a considerable investment in those 2-300 discs. If it were me...

I'd invest in a decent Plextor (I use a Plextor Premium-U USB external CD drive)drive and use the Plextools Professional software to rip utilizing its native error correction. The reason I prefer this method over EAC is that I was in a situation similar to yours with some scuffed discs. While comparing the two programs I found that EAC choked on them and I could not satisfactorily rip these discs. However, utilizing the Plextools software the program was able to recognize the disc error (caused by the surface scratches) and forced the CD drive to spin down to sub 1x speeds in order to recover the data - I was absolutely amazed. Now I've had a few discs that just had too many bad car rashes to make it through error correction so the software does have its limitations based on how bad the surface condition of your discs are. I've had a few where it took close to 2 hours for the program to recover the data - but it did and I was able to preserve a backup copy prior to trashing the disc. Perhaps there is a way of setting up EAC to perform better but I'm just too lazy to do all of that software tweaking. Plextools does it for me right out of the box with just a few mouse clicks.

Plextor makes good drives. The Plextools software has features specific to the drives themselves, making the combination an absolute powerhouse utility for this type of application (ripping). Also, check out the link I submitted in this thread. Apparently utilizing some of the more advanced features of Plextools and certain CDR media, you may be able to produce better sounding copies of your original discs. I personally have not had time to try this but a nice added bonus nonetheless should it prove to work.

Anyhow, my experience - your mileage may vary. Good luck.

it doesn't really take that long to EAC a cd. what speeds have you seen while extracting? some drives are faster than others. If you don't get any good drive recommendations here, you might want to visit a computer forum ask what drives excel with eac (or perhaps just google it). One machine i set up for EACing had a lite on cd-rw drive that maxed out at about 25X. that is only 3 minutes per disc! If the discs are really beat up it can take longer, but i would start with the best drive you can find to increase your chances of fast extraction.

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.

Thanks for info so far and slothman, very interesting points!

Of course, I would like to do this as quickly as possible, but not if I lose one single bit of data or have one skip in my hard drive based file.

Other than the type of software to use, or the choice of drives, it sounds like this is still a pretty tedious and manual process?

Re ripping services, yes, I know they exist. But since even on AUDIOgon, I am constantly defending my choice of avoiding compression, I find it hard to imagine that any profiteering ripping service would really want to go to the trouble to ensure perfect, bit for bit copies.

Worse, I have nightmares that they would say that, and then slip in some easier algorithm, or I would find I had screechy recordings or skips long after I had paid their bill.

Looking forward to more ideas and suggestions.

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 :).