Good drive for ripping cd's to FLAC?

[Bucknekked]

How are you checking if they're the same?

There are a couple of ways you could do it depending on how your OCD is affecting you on any given day.
One, is to just compare the file sizes on the songs. That's effective, but not very geeky. Sometimes you just gotta put on your geek when the OCD is strong. When I was making sure I was getting consistent rips (doing the rip test x5) I would take the output of the rip report , save it, and compare. Here is one for a new CD, Cheryl Crowe, Be Myself. Bright and shiny new. Compare enough of these reports and even on a bad OCD day, it looks pretty consistent.

Notice the Read errors and other hardware errors are at 0. They are pretty consistently at 0.
On used CD's where there are lots of surface problems, you may see retry counts etc.

The next thing is the Accuraterip summary. This compares not only are your rips internally consistent from one to the next, but it compares your rips to known copies with a confidence level. Rips are never 100% matches (or I never see them 25/25 as a confidence level). The Accruate rip summary also finishes with a confidence level statement "All tracks accurately ripped". Good enough.

This was done in secure ripper mode. There is another level called "CDPARANOIA". That one goes in to overdrive and doesn't finish a high percentage of the time. I don't use it anymore.

 

[NINaudio]

Is that from EAC bucknekkid? My logs aren't showing the stats at the end like yours on read/jitter errors, etc...

 

[Bucknekked]

Is that from EAC bucknekkid? My logs aren't showing the stats at the end like yours on read/jitter errors, etc...

I dont use EAC. I dont think they have a Mac port. The report is from XLD. Another ripper. Most rippers put out a report with similar stats.

 

[NINaudio]

ah, ok. It doesn't seem the latest version of EAC has those error stats in it, but the log does have a lot of the other info.

 

[Blue Dude]

I use EAC for disc ripping, and if you get no errors in secure mode, or an Accurip "accurately ripped" score, they are perfect with no possible improvement. Sometimes for bad discs, secure mode comes to nearly a standstill, and the (eventual) results aren't really worth the wait. In those cases, I've used burst mode with better success, but only for those tracks that are truly stuck. EAC will tell you those sections that are questionable, so you can listen to them or view them with a WAV editor to see how bad it is. Sometimes you just can't tell there were errors and you can listen to them as is; sometimes it's worthwhile to rescue the audio by snipping out bad samples. And sometimes it's a lost cause and you should replace the disc. (Some libraries have surprisingly thorough collections. Technically piracy? I suppose, but if you're archiving a disc you already own I could make the case that it's at least morally defensible. DON'T do this if you don't already own that exact title or you're ripping off the artist.)

Also consider using CUEtools, which contains a free utility for repairing slightly damaged audio files. It performs a checksum analysis of your files and compares them to perfect copies. If some are only barely damaged, it'll use the checksum data to repair them to perfect condition. I use it as a matter of course to verify all my audio files, which mostly don't need repairing.

 

[NINaudio]

I use EAC for disc ripping, and if you get no errors in secure mode, or an Accurip "accurately ripped" score, they are perfect with no possible improvement. Sometimes for bad discs, secure mode comes to nearly a standstill, and the (eventual) results aren't really worth the wait. In those cases, I've used burst mode with better success, but only for those tracks that are truly stuck. EAC will tell you those sections that are questionable, so you can listen to them or view them with a WAV editor to see how bad it is. Sometimes you just can't tell there were errors and you can listen to them as is; sometimes it's worthwhile to rescue the audio by snipping out bad samples. And sometimes it's a lost cause and you should replace the disc. (Some libraries have surprisingly thorough collections. Technically piracy? I suppose, but if you're archiving a disc you already own I could make the case that it's at least morally defensible. DON'T do this if you don't already own that exact title or you're ripping off the artist.)

Also consider using CUEtools, which contains a free utility for repairing slightly damaged audio files. It performs a checksum analysis of your files and compares them to perfect copies. If some are only barely damaged, it'll use the checksum data to repair them to perfect condition. I use it as a matter of course to verify all my audio files, which mostly don't need repairing.

Thanks BlueDude! I've been skipping tracks that secure mode gets really bogged down on and then using either of the other two options offered to rip them afterwards. You can only use cuetools on the wav version, correct? I EAC set right now so that it rips to wav, transcodes to flac, and then deletes the wav. I did a few tests where I just went to wav and tried to open up cuetools, but it never did open.

 

[Blue Dude]

I use CUEtools on the folder that contains the entire disc's FLAC files. It uses the FLAC metadata to select the correct album for comparison, so make sure the metadata is correct.

 

[NINaudio]

I use CUEtools on the folder that contains the entire disc's FLAC files. It uses the FLAC metadata to select the correct album for comparison, so make sure the metadata is correct.

OK, that's great. How do you go about attempting to repair a file with cuetools if there is an issue?

 

[Blue Dude]

There's a repair tab to change the tool to repair mode. IIRC, the tool will notify you if it's repairable in the log output.

 

[NINaudio]

Been working with the Lite-on today. About the same speed as the asus. Gets through the errors on my test cd faster than the Asus or LG.

Lite-on Model

 

[jmalecki05]

I use a Pioneer BDXL, which works perfectly with all my media (CD, DVD, Blu Ray). Software for audio is iTunes and make MKV (and occasionally Ripit) for video. (I have used Windows Media Player and was equally happy) Audio is ripped to WAV, archived, and then I create any other formats (ALAC, etc...) from copies of the WAV. I maintain all audio tracks (English only) on video and do not retain subtitles.

I rip to a Western Digital portable hard drive and use Samsung micro SD cards for playback in my digital audio player (Fiio X5). Unless the media is brand new, I clean with glasses spray and wipe (in vertical strokes) with a cloth designed to use with eyeglasses. Unless the media quality is poor (eg. library or other heavy use / scratches), I am very successful with clean rips. Occasionally, I will re-rip if the media does not sound / look clean, but that is the exception and not the rule. Memory is cheap (and keeps getting cheaper), so I don't transcode, although Handbrake is wonderful for converting a blu ray into a 720P video when I want to conserve HDD on my MacBook (for flights etc...)

I guess my take away is that any basic over the counter hardware will achieve similar results.