Interesting that most people are using dbPoweramp for ripping. I always thought that EAC was the holy grail of ripping software. How is it better than EAC?
From a blog post I wrote in 2015...
When transferring a computer program from a CD or DVD to your computer, a simple one bit error in the transfer can render the program unusable. So one would assume that since a computer can read a program CD or DVD with total accuracy, copying music from a CD or DVD would be equally accurate. Unfortunately, such is not the case.
The reason is that computer files employ very sophisticated built-in error-correction. In the process of transferring files, these protocols allow the system to identify and correct read errors on the fly, resulting in a bit-perfect copy of the original program file. Music CD’s also have built-in error correction, but this error correction was designed before CD’s became a medium to distribute computer programs and is much more rudimentary. Without the sophisticated error correction used to transfer computer files, there is simply no way to determine whether a music file read from a CD is accurate or not.
One bit errors in music files are probably not all that audible. After all, there are 44,100 samples per second in a standard RedBook CD file and it is doubtful you would ever hear a one bit error in one of those samples. None-the-less, when ripping music from a CD, the goal should be to do it with zero errors.
Most audio ripping software available today will do a good job in this regard. But, again, there is no way to know for certain if the rip was a perfect bit-for-bit copy of the original.
A NOVEL APPROACH
A program called dBPoweramp (considered by many to be the gold standard of ripping software) tackles this problem with a rather novel approach - AccurateRip. Let’s say that 100 people on 100 different computers rip the same music track. And let’s say 96 of them end up with exactly the same result. It would be safe to assume, then, that those 96 copies were bit-for-bit accurate and the others experienced errors somewhere in the transfer. If you use dBPoweramp, each time you rip a music track, the results of your rip are compared to a database of all previous dBPoweramp users who ripped that same track. If your rip was identical to the files the majority of users obtained before you, chances are your rip was accurate. If it varies from the majority in the database, the assumption is that you need to re-rip that particular track. It is a simple concept, but it is the most sure-fire strategy yet devised to insure that the copy you ripped is accurate.
- Jim
