Best CD Ripping Program

[Silent_Scream]

First of all. Does it matter what program i rip CD's with?

What's the best CD ripping program? Does the quality change between programs or is it the same?

Also, would mp3 be the best format to rip with? i'm planning on using 320kbps mp3.

Cheers

 

[Vossyrus]

I don't know which program is 'the best' but I use CDex which works perfect for me and better than a lot of programs I've tried in the past. You can rip in various formats, and pick whatever quality. For specific quality, 320kbps is great but unless you have a small collection or lots of hard drive I wouldn't really recommend it. I would say 192+ is good quality, of course you can use VBR (variable bitrate) which may technically take up more room, but the ratio of quality per space taken up is better.

Heh, I remember a few years ago when I was a n00b to this thing and real player and wmp were the only program I had to rip cds...the highest allowable bitrate was 96kbps unless you wanted to pay to upgrade the program.

 

[CAIRATH]

First of all. Does it matter what program i rip CD's with?

To some degree, yes. Especially if you are trying to rip CDs that may be slightly damaged. Doing that with a program that doesn't have decent read error correction features will result in corrupted audio files.

What's the best CD ripping program? Does the quality change between programs or is it the same?

I use Exact Audio Copy (freeware and lets you specify your own custom encoders, for which I use LAME) myself. But as long as you use a program with good error detection/correction features the quality of the uncompressed audio data (i.e. before it is being converted to mp3 or whatever) will be the same no matter which you use.

Also, would mp3 be the best format to rip with? i'm planning on using 320kbps mp3.

Depends on what you find important. Audiophiles will tell you that mp3 sounds 'bad' and that you should use lossless formats like FLAC. Personally I think mp3 sounds just fine and I rip all my CDs as high quality VBR files using LAME as encoder with the following encoding options:

--vbr-new -V 2 -b 192

That creates mp3 files with a baseline encoding quality of 192k which automatically scales up for portions of the song that require a higher bitrate in order to sound good.

 

[Belligerent]

Hope someone could answer this.
I download full albums off of blogs and when I burn them to cd there is a "skip" or a "glitch" every now and then that really bothers me. My burner that came with my compaq pc fried cause I used it too much and I thought that might have been the problem, but it wasn't, so I bought an external burner and It does same thing. Any thoughts guys? Id appreciate it.

 

[Zephyrus]

iTunes has worked great for me. It's ripped every CD I own. Strangely the only album it has trouble with is Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk. I couldn't get the bonus tracks off of it before it went dead. Anybody else have this problem with that disk?

 

[CAIRATH]

Hope someone could answer this.
I download full albums off of blogs and when I burn them to cd there is a "skip" or a "glitch" every now and then that really bothers me. My burner that came with my compaq pc fried cause I used it too much and I thought that might have been the problem, but it wasn't, so I bought an external burner and It does same thing. Any thoughts guys? Id appreciate it.

Try burning them at the lowest possible speed instead of the maximum speed your burner is capable of. You might also want to try buying better quality media if you aren't using that already. Don't use cheap nameless brand CD-Rs but get some CD-Rs specifically for audio and manufactured by a decent brand. They'll be less likely to end up as coasters and will also last longer in general.

 

[DC Metal]

I second EAC. It is a great program that gives you lots of control. Excellent tutorial here.

 

[hibernal_dream]

Cairath's post is excellent. I'd say the quality does change between programs, I've had some errors and skipping tracks. EAC is good. Don't bother ripping to lossless if you can't hear the difference between mp3 and FLACs. There is a audible difference but it takes a good stereo and even better ear to make it out.

 

[Belligerent]

Thanx for your advice guys.
Ill try burning lower than 24x, and if that doesn't work? Then ill try Cdex

 

[entanglement]

--vbr-new -V 2 -b 192

I use the exact same setting actually. At times of course when I'm not encoding to FLAC.