[kd4ylq]

I've used my Bluesound Vault to rip CDs to FLAC files - effortless, a quick. Anything else I rip or download, I use MP3Tag to make sure the metadata and artwork are as I want before I add it to the Vault. The vault has a USB port that I back all the files up to a little 2Tb drive with on a regular basis. No issues yet, that weren't my own fault I mean.

[RipVanW]

I've considered switching to dbpa for years, just haven't had the time to do a real comparison between 2 or 3 cd's ripped from 2005 EAC to 2022 EAC and 2022 dbpa.  I like to compare and see if there is any real difference before diving into anything. 
...
I'm re-thinking how I listen and what I listen to these days.  So, organizing music is on my list of to-do's.. but it'll be a very long process unfortunately.

It's been a while since I made the original post on this thread, so I figure it's time for an update.

After much internal debate, I decided on usie dBpa and rip to uncompressed FLAC.  Yes, that format took more disk space, but for me, having my primary source material (secondary if you count the original CDs) be both lossless and uncompressed just felt right.  The metadata compatibility and self-contained CRC check on the audio were the main reasons for selecting FLAC over WAV.  Yes, dBpa required me to pull out my credit card (actually PayPal, if I recall right), but in this case the time-saving that the software provided was worth the money for me.

Regarding EAC vs. dBpa, there was a trade-off that I had to force myself to live with.  With EAC I've always generated .cue files so that I could make a perfect dupe of the disc in the future.  After searching the dBpa forums, I found that dBpa only produces .cue file when you rip the entire CD to a single file, and only when you load a processing add-on - and even then there were people who said they were having problems.  I'm going off of memory from reading I did over a month ago, but that's basically what I recall.  In the end I decided that the chances of me needing to dupe a disc was slim, and I could always use EAC to go back and create the .cue files for the collection if I wanted to (double the work I know, but I punted that until later).

Tonight I finished ripping my entire CD collection, consisting of 580 discs and 7,924 tracks.  The log files created after each rip contain the time spent per track ripping, so with some scripting I could go back and total it up, but the short answer is it took quite a while.  dBpa shortened the time dramatically, but it still was a chore and took many evenings almost non-stop ripping.

For anyone reading this now or in the future who hasn't tried dBpa but is considering it, here's my experience with the ripping cycle:

• Place CD on drive tray.
• Click the Eject icon in the dBpa software to close the drive door (my PC was on the floor, so the mouse click resulted in a little less back stretching than reaching in further to press the CD drive button).
• Wait about ten seconds for the program to read the disc and search the Internet databases for tracking info and artwork.
• Do a sanity check on the metadata and artwork that dBpa pulled.  The tracking and other text metadata is usually correct, but the artwork isn't always right.  The more popular the CD, the more likely their choice of artwork was ok, but in roughly one out of seven cases I found myself making notes about artwork needing to be replaced.  It was either totally wrong (usually due to earlier/later pressings having different artwork), subtly wrong (missing logos, borders being cut off, colors being off), or just poorly scanned (low-res, a photo taken from a distance, etc).  About halfway through the process I found that I could click on the three dots below and to the right of the default image, and select from other images that dBpa found on the Internet.  Sometimes that helped, other times not.  If, like me, you're picky on the artwork embedded in the file being identical to the CD booklet, there's going to be some work (and probably scanning) to be done.  If not, it will usually find you something close.
• Click the Rip icon and watch it process the disc - or just walk away.  Sometimes it will scan the disk at high-speed (32x in my case), other discs will scan at 4x (and in the middle).  There doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason.  I had brand new CDs that I ripped the shrink-wrap off of rip at 4x, and other old ones at 32x.  Usually if it starts off slow, it will gradually increase over time (e.g. starting at 4x, ending at 7x, or sometimes much higher).  Similar discs may take two minutes, ten minutes, or (if they have errors) much more.  I could usually tell how fast it was ripping them by listening to the motor in the drive, even if I wasn't looking directly at the screen.
• When the rip finishes, usually the CD tray will eject by itself.  If it doesn't eject that means it didn't securely rip one or more tracks, usually meaning the drive reported CD2 errors while reading the disc.  Sometimes the rip doesn't match the Accurate Rip database but there were no errors detected by the drive, in which case it will still eject the CD.
• Scroll down through the log summary window that displays after ripping finishes and look for any red X's.  Any X means something didn't match, but if the tray ejects, none of the red Xs were fatal.  One case is a track where the AR didn't match, but it still ripped securely (no reported drive errors).  Chances are they aren't bad rips, but something didn't match.  The other possibility are tracks which failed to rip securely (one or more errors reported by the drive), and those are definitely not bit-perfect.  I decided up front that I would make one pass on every disc and leave the clean-up for later, so I made notes on any red X that I saw and went on.
• Swap the completed CD for the next CD and click Eject to load it into the drive.  The ten seconds waiting on dBpa was enough time for me to put away the completed CD, and pull out the next one so it would be ready in queue.

Important note:  I discovered after ripping everything that when you put the CD back into the drive, it doesn't remember and display the Rip Status display.  If you purchased their PerfectTUNES software (I did), there's a utility in there that will show you all of the tracks where there were problems with the Accurate Rip matching (anything with the red X, not just the fatal ones).  Without that software, the only way to find the discs that had those issues later on is to hover the mouse over the filename in Windows Explorer, assuming that you enabled the Explorer extensions.

All in all, it was an efficient process.  I didn't have to use a different program to pull tracking or artwork, and it auto-filed them in a reasonable manner on the drive (not that I won't be doing some clean-up).  For me, it was a good choice, even if it doesn't (easily or the way I want it to) do .cue files.