Ripper recommendation

kfr01 · « **Reply #20 on:** 31 Jan 2006, 05:49 am »

Do you see the same pattern I do?

All the tracks you've picked so far have a ' character in the name.

Could be a stupid flac programming error. When does it stop the encoding?

Edit:

Seems I might be correct... at least part of FLAC has a problem with some quotation marks:

http://lee.org/blog/archives/2005/04/26/how-to-use-cdex-and-flac-together/

...

Sounds like a programming mistake I might have made in my previous career.

RoadTripper · « **Reply #21 on:** 31 Jan 2006, 06:09 am »

Not all have an apostrophe in the title of the first track. One other data point is that the FLACced files all look good in that they all get compressed and they all have reasonable file sizes, in proportion to their original WAVs.

I do know that the FLAC software will balk on filenames. I've got a lot of Opera and the freeDb track titles must have been input by Europeans because I get a lot of French and German letters that in some cases FLAC will skip a track because of a 'File Not Found' error, even though EAC had no problems with the strange characters. In this case, however, the tracks just don't show up at all in the result.

I am replaying the 'Arnold Overtures' rip (WAV only) and it sails on through fine into track two (and all the others). I fear there is no other FLAC compressor engine available. I am aware that numerous frontend GUIs are available, which I suspect all front the same .dll.

RoadTripper · « **Reply #22 on:** 1 Feb 2006, 05:04 am »

I just ran a test and now have hope that this problem has a work-around. The Rossini Semiramide Opera CD has a lot of problems. I started to mess around renaming the first WAV track that wouldn't transfer from Server side to Squeezebox side of the Slimserver HTML interface. When I did a rename of the first offending file, which happened to be the second track, lo and behold the first two tracks 'loaded'. So I messed with the 3rd track filename and it, too, loaded. This was promising.

The renames I was doing were really non-sensical. In some cases I just renamed the file to its original name. But it was working.

So I decided to re-rip the CD without using FreeDB to apply track names. Guess what, the whole CD loaded fine. At least in this one case I have a good workaround. I suspect that when I FLAC it, it should be fine as well.

rajacat · « **Reply #23 on:** 1 Feb 2006, 05:30 am »

Quote from: rajacat

Has anybody used this program. I find it very user friendly.

Sorry about the repeat posts.

kfr01 · « **Reply #24 on:** 1 Feb 2006, 05:58 am »

Quote from: Seminarian

I just ran a test and now have hope that this problem has a work-around. The Rossini Semiramide Opera CD has a lot of problems. I started to mess around renaming the first WAV track that wouldn't transfer from Server side to Squeezebox side of the Slimserver HTML interface. When I did a rename of the first offending file, which happened to be the second track, lo and behold the first two tracks 'loaded'. So I messed with the 3rd track filename and it, too, loaded. This was promising.

The renames I was d ...

Amazing. I'd be really curious to know what the offending characters were.

RoadTripper · « **Reply #25 on:** 1 Feb 2006, 06:46 am »

I'm guessing we won't find out what the offending characters were. I have a lot of opera and in many cases, it seems Europeans are the ones supplying FreeDB with track names. I am getting hit with all kinds of weird characters and accent marks, umlauts, you name it. The weird thing is most of the time, it doesn't cause any problems.

In the Rossini Semiramide case, the track names were relatively innocuous looking. Simple accent marks in some cases. In others, nothing weird at all. It almost seems like one bad track name would result in a cascade of bad tracks.

Go figure.

kfr01 · « **Reply #26 on:** 1 Feb 2006, 02:08 pm »

Well, in any event, I'm glad you got to the bottom of it and you're now able to enjoy those cd's on your sb that would choke before.

Cheers,

Karl

Nick B · « **Reply #27 on:** 1 Feb 2006, 06:29 pm »

I came across this website http://www.poikosoft.com/ and the software appears to be much more user friendly than EAC. Also, there are options for reading and correcting error-prone discs. It does have a $35 fee. Anyone have experience or opinions regarding this program?

mgalusha · « **Reply #28 on:** 1 Feb 2006, 11:07 pm »

Quote from: Nick B

I came across this website http://www.poikosoft.com/ and the software appears to be much more user friendly than EAC. Also, there are options for reading and correcting error-prone discs. It does have a $35 fee. Anyone have experience or opinions regarding this program?

I've used it for years and yes, it's quite a bit friendlier than EAC. If you enable the Error Detection & Correction options it seems to work as well as EAC. I have tested this by ripping the same CD with both programs and doing a binary compare on the resulting WAV files. All were bit for bit identical. The only caveat is that it's not free. I purchased it in about 2000 and it was less expensive at that time, I think $25 or so. It does have a nice transcoding engine built in that works very well.

Nick B · « **Reply #29 on:** 2 Feb 2006, 01:21 am »

In addition to your response, I received a PM from a guy who said you recommended Easy CD-DA Extractor from poikosoft.com to him. He is very happy with the program and ease of use. Good to know that your bit by bit
comparison was identical. My CD's are all in good shape, so read errors shouldn't be a problem. $35 is a small price to pay for user-friendly software.
Thanks for your comments.

RoadTripper · « **Reply #30 on:** 5 Feb 2006, 12:45 am »

Well,

After having reached a point where nearly half of my rips were failing, I decided to rescan my whole 85 GB library. This marks the first rescan I have done at all. Why I never seemed to need to rescan I don't know. But having done it, it (provisionally) has solved the problem and now my rips are working.

ksie · « **Reply #31 on:** 7 Feb 2006, 12:40 pm »

As I said in my previous post, I had exactly the same experience. I had gone along ripping, without re-scanning, and then all of a sudden one of my album directories had songs that Slim could not read/recognize. Really don't understand how this (apparent) auto-scan does or doesn't work.

On a similar topic, when I do a re-scan I can not tell when the scan is done. The message "Your directory is being scanned" doesn't seem to go away. Maybe I have never actually finished a scan, but this also happens when I'm just scanning for "new" music, so I have to believe that the scan gets finished. ????

Maybe it's a question for the slimdevices.com Forum...

Karl

avta · « **Reply #32 on:** 7 Feb 2006, 03:10 pm »

ksie

Try hitting the Refresh button on your browser after re-scanning and see if that fixes it.

Guy

ksie · « **Reply #33 on:** 7 Feb 2006, 04:29 pm »

Hi Guy,

I think I've tried that, but maybe not. Anyway doesn't Slimserver by default refresh every 30 seconds?

Also, back to the original thread subject, found a good tip from dwc (Dan) about updating the database after ripping (last post in the thread):

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=24530

Might save a little "Rescan" time.

Karl

Horizons · « **Reply #34 on:** 13 Feb 2006, 08:56 pm »

After reading literally hundreds of posts regarding EAC and FLAC problems both here and on other forums, I find it amazing that more people don't just use iTunes lossless with error correction.

I tried EAC/FLAC and AB'd it with iTunes lossless and I cannot hear the difference. iTunes ripping is two mouseclicks and I always got error messages with EAC. EAC SW is a royal PITA IMHO. Its proponents have an almost religious superiority complex defense when anyone critizises EAC too.

The only drawback with Apple Lossless I have found is that I can't fast forward/reverse with Apple lossless through my SB3.

I can live with that.

ctviggen · « **Reply #35 on:** 13 Feb 2006, 09:04 pm »

I've had one error message with EAC/FLAC, and that was when it tried for hours to read data from one song of a Jimi Hendrix CD. Apple iTunes gladly imported this same song, which sounds completely like noise.

I honestly don't think EAC is hard to use. And to attack people for having a superiority complex is just strange.

I prefer to use EAC because I think (though haven't tested) that it does the best data extraction. Although I'm not sure how you'd do a bit for bit comparison between Apple Lossless and EAC. Perhaps one day I'll do a test to settle this for myself. I do know that EAC seems to actively work at extracting data and iTunes just cruises through extraction. I have to think that EAC is doing a better job, particularly since the Jimi Hendrix song wasn't read by EAC yet iTunes gave no error whatsoever for that song.

miklorsmith · « **Reply #36 on:** 13 Feb 2006, 09:18 pm »

I use EAC and have for some time. It's free, uses freeware codecs, and isn't that tough to use. It's a great tool.

If you or others want to use Itunes or some other junior-league, kid's program, be my guest. I'm always looking for someone to ridicule.

Seriously, it seems a lot of folks use Itunes here and exchange information related to it. I haven't heard attitude over anyone's choice of ripping programs.

Horizons · « **Reply #37 on:** 13 Feb 2006, 09:22 pm »

Quote from: ctviggen

I honestly don't think EAC is hard to use. And to attack people for having a superiority complex is just strange.

I guess I am still bruised from some of the threads on another forum (hydrogenaudio) that equate non-EAC users with morons, idiots, stupid, etc. I just don't believe that people who choose iTunes over EAC are either too stupid to know the difference, too ignorant to figure out EAC, or too deaf to appreciate the extraction wonders of EAC.

philipp · « **Reply #38 on:** 13 Feb 2006, 11:22 pm »

Quote from: miklorsmith

If you or others want to use Itunes or some other junior-league, kid's program, be my guest. I'm always looking for someone to ridicule.

Wow, horizons, it looks like "they" are following you over here to AC!!!

Seriously though, without error correction iTunes certainly is a junior-league ripper. With it, it's as good as anything out there IMHO.

mca · « **Reply #39 on:** 14 Feb 2006, 12:38 am »

I have read many posts about people prefering EAC/FLAC over iTunes or vice versa. Interesting thing is I have never read about anyone doing a comparison between the two.