Ripping CD's to Flac

[ben62670]

What is the best tool for the job that transfers album info to the rips?
Thanks
Ben

[punk-roc]

I use Exact Audio Copy (EAC).

steveinaz started a thread similar to this that probably has some answers too..

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/show...ht=CD*+ripping

Jason

[ben62670]

Thanks. I tried searching, but...

[punk-roc]

No worries, its easier to find when you know its there =) I remembered his thread

[bigaudiofanatic]

iTunes, under options select apple lossless that is all I use. not to meantion the library is well organized to find what I am looking for.

[olilugo]

Ben to answer your question directly I use a windows app called winamp to rip cd's to .flac format
http://www.winamp.com/

It is free
I have also tried itunes to rip the CD's to the .m4a format.
Both of these formats are lossless and I have to say I can not hear the diffrerence between the two file formats.

One thing I have found as far as functionality is when you have a cd that one song follows the other like in a concert CD. winamp will rip all tracks individually but if you happen to shuffle then the end of the sond end very hard and its not the same as listening to the CD.
Itunes has a way to join several tracks or all track of a CD which means the CD entire track will play and the hard cut between tracks will be just like listening to the original CD.
I hope this helps.

I would love to hear other people experience between these two formats as they both use more space and I am tempted to drop the flac format and just go with .m4a format.

[mdaudioguy]

+1 to EAC. I've been using it for years to rip to multiple formats. I wish I had settled on one format years ago. Went with mp3 years ago, due to file size, since storage and transfer were both issues back then... not really issues anymore. FLAC is a great solution, IMO.

I know I'll get bashed for this, but I still find that mp3s encoded at a high enough bitrate (320?) sound about the same to me as a CD. I know, either my ears or my gear's not good enough.

[ben62670]

EAC keeps crashing and says there is no CD in the drive

[mdaudioguy]

Ben to answer your question directly I use a windows app called winamp to rip cd's to .flac format
http://www.winamp.com/

It is free
I have also tried itunes to rip the CD's to the .m4a format.
Both of these formats are lossless and I have to say I can not hear the diffrerence between the two file formats.

I don't think m4a is a lossless format, IIRC.

[mdaudioguy]

EAC keeps crashing and says there is no CD in the drive

Did you run the configuration wizard, where it checks the features and capabilities of your drive(s)? At what point is it crashing?

[ben62670]

I open it and shortly after it says that it is not responding. I can't even get to any of the tools. I am running Win7 64bit.

[mdaudioguy]

I run it in 32-bit W7. Not sure if that's the problem, though. I thought W7 64-bit was supposed to handle it either way.

[mdaudioguy]

You could always try uninstalling and reinstalling using an older (XP?) compatibility mode.

[intangible]

I usually just use Foobar2000, which runs fine on Windows 7. EAC does a more thorough job error checking (I think, it's been a while since I last used it), but it takes longer, and I always figured if I heard issues with a file I could just rip it again.

[Earthy]

I found this thread http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=91901 and dl'd EAC configured with settings from here.. http://carltonbale.com/cd-audio-extraction.

I'm using W7 64bit on an I5 with no problems (so far).

[bikerboy]

Hi Ben,
I found Media Monkey works well for me. I rip to flak and covert to mp3 for use on my phone. I use win 7 32 bit. When you use random you can have fade out/ in if you want.

[ben62670]

I have had no issues converting to WMA. It tags properly with track numbers, names, and the artwork. I have not found a single FLAC converter that works right yet!!!

[ben62670]

Ben to answer your question directly I use a windows app called winamp to rip cd's to .flac format
http://www.winamp.com/

It is free
I have also tried itunes to rip the CD's to the .m4a format.
Both of these formats are lossless and I have to say I can not hear the diffrerence between the two file formats.

One thing I have found as far as functionality is when you have a cd that one song follows the other like in a concert CD. winamp will rip all tracks individually but if you happen to shuffle then the end of the sond end very hard and its not the same as listening to the CD.
Itunes has a way to join several tracks or all track of a CD which means the CD entire track will play and the hard cut between tracks will be just like listening to the original CD.
I hope this helps.

I would love to hear other people experience between these two formats as they both use more space and I am tempted to drop the flac format and just go with .m4a format.

It does what it should right out of the box!
Thanks
Ben

[olilugo]

Glad to hear.

[heiney9]

dB Poweramp

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/

or

Media Monkey

http://www.mediamonkey.com/

Media Monkey is the best program I've ever used.

H9

[punk-roc]

I use dB poweramp with great success for converting my. FLAC files to mp3 for when I need them in my car. Easy and fast..

Jason

[heiney9]

dB Poweramp converts cd's to FLAC and is bit perfect. Best program going for this, even better than EAC as it's more flexible.

dB Poweramp and Media Monkey are the best computer audio programs going. The capabilities and flexibility of MM is awesome both as a player and music database manager. It is an amazing piece of software. Best capability is I can upload a document file from MM of all my music into my iPod Touch so when I'm in the music store I can make sure I don't buy duplicate titles.

Being able to sync MM with the iPod means I don't have to use iTunes to load my own music on the iPod.

H9

[nclh7]

I dumped any type of lossy compression about 2 years ago(mp3, aac) and went lossless apple.

Now with the size of my hard drives, there is no need to do any sort of compression and I just take it as a 1411 wave file. Everything will play a wave file so no worries about future obsolescence.

[PrazVT]

+1 for db poweramp for the reasons H9 pointed out. I use it for FLAC (SB Touch/Classic) and for Apple Lossless (iPod for the Car). Great CD ripper.

[ESavinon]

If you have an unused old computer, I recommend Vortexbox.