Problematic ripping CDs

[Dave2002]

I've been trying to rip many of my CDs to hard drive, as now I'm getting quite good success with the equipment, and I can play them in different rooms fairly easily. However the process seems to be a "works/doesn't work" one. I use an iMac with iTunes.

The process goes like this. Insert CD into computer slot. Wait for iTunes to import it. Import it. Remove Cd.
Then the next step, which now seems necessary is:
Listen to a track or two. If obviously distorted, put CD in the reject pile for later consideration, otherwise put the CD in the pile for storage. Remove the files from iTunes as corrupt. Don't bother to try again - won't work!

The CDs which are difficult/impossible to rip are repeatedly so, and also on different equipment. I have other access to other machines, and the
results are always the same on Apple machines, so it's very unlikely to be the CD/DVD drive in the equipment. Most of the CDs can be ripped on PCs using other software, but it's such a tedious process for me, that I'm going to defer that for later - probably much later. I really dislike working with PCs unless it's absolutely necessary.

There isn't huge consistency in this, though there is a slight consistency.
I have managed to rip some of the BBC Music Magazine discs without problems, but others don't work.

Ones which didn't work for me include the latest, with Stephen Isserlis, the Bruckner 3 from a few months back. On the other hand it's not all BBC MM discs, as I managed with the Berlioz Symphonie Funebre recently. I suspect that older BBC discs are easy to rip. EMI, Decca, Philips and Naxos discs usually rip very easily. Discs from BIS are suspect, or ones which originate from BIS, such as Neeme Jarvi's Martinu Symphony set. Only one of those rips satisfactorily - the one with Symphonies 3 and 4.

It is really rather disappointing, as I've now finding more CDs which have this problem when ripped on iMacs. Apparently one, the CFM Horenstein Mahler 2 has pre-emphasis, though whether this explains the problem I'm not sure, and I don't know whether this is a characteristic of all the others which have been difficult to process.

The odd thing is that iTunes gets the track details correct, and goes through the motions of reading the discs, so something seems to go wrong with the bits once they've been read in. Discs which are severely scratched usually fail to read in at all. Maybe there will in the future be a version of iTunes which will overcome these problems, but I'm not holding my breath.

[johnb]

The fact that some CDs ripped with iTunes sound dreadful almost certainly means that many of those which sound OK are sub-optimal and are not ripped bit-perfect.

I'm apologise for stating the obvious but there is a very simple solution.

The standard recommendations for accurate ripping of CDs are EAC and dbPowerAmp.

Both of these are Windows programmes.

I've always used EAC and have never had a problem.

CDs which have pre-emphasis are rare - the only ones I have come across are the Vegh Beethoven String Quartets (Aulos) and the recent Horenstein M1 disc. (EAC has a column on the far right which indicates if the disc has pre-emphasis, but the column is easy to overlook, especially with the latest version of EAC.) It is possible to de-emphasise the ripped files using free software such as SOX, but the process is somewhat tedious. (For what it's worth I give anyone who is interested the method I've used if they pm me.)

[MrGongGong]

Even though I now use a mac exclusively I never use iTunes except to sync the calendar on my phone
I find it irritating, limiting and in terms of sound quality rubbish
If I need to rip something I use
Max (not Max/Msp or I use an audio editor (usually Audition) to import the files without compression
Max is free and I seem to get good results, I used to use Nero as a ripper which worked well

[antongould]

Dave
I would listen to the full track as what has happened to me a couple of times with itunes is that everything seems OK but it hasn't "got" the whole track - the timings say it has but it hasn't or at least it won't play all of it!

[Stunsworth]

I use a Mac/iTunes. A few years ago I ripped my entire CD collection without too many problems. There were problems with some older Hyperion CDs due to to the known problem of 'bronzing'. Hyperion replaced those free of charge. Other than that there were only a handful of discs that wouldn't rip.

I should add that I ripped everything in a lossless format using an external CD drive, and I can't say I find the sound quality 'rubbish', it's as good as the original CD IMHO.

[Dave2002]

The standard recommendations for accurate ripping of CDs are EAC and dbPowerAmp.

Both of these are Windows programmes.

I've always used EAC and have never had a problem.

>>>>Most of the CDs can be ripped on PCs using other software, but it's such a tedious process for me, that I'm going to defer that for later - probably much later.
>>>>I really dislike working with PCs unless it's absolutely necessary.

Using EAC I'd have to go through a rather lengthy process to get the files into a format I want to work with. I've tested - it takes maybe 20-30 minutes per CD plus tedious manual effort, versus almost no effort on my part done on my iMac in the background. Hence my reject pile.

After all, the rejects can always be played on a CD player.

Mr GG
I have tried Max ( http://sbooth.org/Max/ ), and also on some of these troublesome CDs. It works sometimes, but it's more tedious than iTunes. There's also XLD - http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/234...ssless-decoder - it just takes more time testing out the various different pieces of software. I might try these again later on my reject pile.

Steve
Interesting that you used iTunes, but with an external drive. I do have a very good external CD/DVD drive from LG - a chunky model, from the days when such things were available. Perhaps I should try connecting that to my iMac, though I'm not sure if I can get drivers for it. Using that drive I hardly ever had any problems - but it was hooked up to a PC, unfortunately.

The interesting thing is that the failing CDs are pretty much repeatable over different iMacs - and I do have access to many, so either there's a systematic problem with all the iMac drives, or there's something in the software which makes these discs hard to rip.

Anton
I tend to take the view that if a few of the tracks seem OK at the start they'll probably be OK. The ones I'm weeding out are the ones which are just so obviously bad, which is a very quick test. I trash the rips as soon as I've detected one bad track. So far I think this is a reasonable testing procedure.

[johnb]

Using EAC I'd have to go through a rather lengthy process to get the files into a format I want to work with. I've tested - it takes maybe 20-30 minutes per CD plus tedious manual effort, versus almost no effort on my part done on my iMac in the background. Hence my reject pile.

Sorry but that certainly isn't my experience and I have ripped about 1000 CDs using EAC. However, I suppose it depends on what format you want to use.

EAC can rip straight to FLAC and it takes around 8 minutes per CD. The only manual intervention required is editing the freedb track and album information as per one's own preferences.

(Having said that, one DVD/CD drive I have, that in my newish HP PC, is extraordinarily slow when using EAC. My other two drives both take about 8 minutes per CD.)

As they say "you pays your money and takes your choice".

[Dave2002]

Sorry but that certainly isn't my experience and I have ripped about 1000 CDs using EAC. However, I suppose it depends on what format you want to use.

EAC can rip straight to FLAC and it takes around 8 minutes per CD. The only manual intervention required is editing the freedb track and album information as per one's own preferences.

I don't want to go to FLAC as it's not (easily) iTunes compatible. Strictly there's not much to choose between ALAC and FLAC, but I found the route to ALAC via FLAC introduces yet more delays. I figure that if I ever want to go back to FLAC I can do a batch convert from my ALAC ripped library - though I am aware that it might take a while - days maybe!

Getting the database information is yet another headache, but it's there whichever route one chooses. Stan Brown's suggestions are helpful - see http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/

Actually, if you're targeting a PC (you are) then the approach you are taking is perfectly reasonable. Trying to work round to run the library on an iMac would take quite a lot more time, as there are inevitably delays in moving the files across, and in converting from FLAC to ALAC etc. That's why I allowed 20 mins plus. On a PC I reckoned I could rip a CD in about 4 minutes - at least for getting the bits off the CD, but there is almost inevitably some tidying up to do afterwards - for example when the CD database needs completely redoing because the tracks are labelled incorrectly.

[Dave2002]

Even though I now use a mac exclusively I never use iTunes except to sync the calendar on my phone
I find it irritating, limiting and in terms of sound quality rubbish
If I need to rip something I use
Max (not Max/Msp or I use an audio editor (usually Audition) to import the files without compression
Max is free and I seem to get good results, I used to use Nero as a ripper which worked well

MrGG

Do you use any kind of player/music software on your Mac? I've personally not found any good alternative to iTunes which will run on Mac OS X, except that I do use the Squeeze server to feed several Squeezebox units. Mostly I use iTunes to handle the ripping and library organisation. It's not perfect, but generally adequate. Maybe your Mac is work only, so that music never gets near it. If you know of players which do the job, I'd be glad to know of them.

[VodkaDilc]

Having read assurances on another thread that the CD has plenty of life in it still, why would I want to "rip" a CD? I willingly admit to being born in King George's reign, but what would I gain from all this "ripping"? (And I refuse to believe that I am the only person thinking this!)

NB - I do not want to listen to music when walking around and I have a CD player in my car, though I hardly ever use it. I do, however, have a wonderful and far too expensive hi-fi set-up. Am I missing something?

[MrGongGong]

MrGG

Do you use any kind of player/music software on your Mac? I've personally not found any good alternative to iTunes which will run on Mac OS X, except that I do use the Squeeze server to feed several Squeezebox units. Mostly I use iTunes to handle the ripping and library organisation. It's not perfect, but generally adequate. Maybe your Mac is work only, so that music never gets near it. If you know of players which do the job, I'd be glad to know of them.

I don't use my computer as a music player at all
I do use it for music, recording , editing , composing etc but have little interest in using it as a library (apart from storing my own things and stuff I'm working on or using to play to students etc )....... I do find iTunes irritating and the lack of ability to drag and drop or even take my own pieces and simply copy them onto a memory stick to give to someone else makes it un-usable for my purposes.

[johnb]

Dave,

I've come across this report of possible problems when using iTunes to rip to ALAC. It might be the same issue that you are experiencing - though the report is dated Jan 2009.

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/iTunes-ripping-ALAC-may-have-bug

[Dave2002]

John

Thanks. It could just be an iTunes problem. Pity if so. I don't think it's an ALAC problem, as I also tried ripping to other formats, such as AAC, with similar ear wrecking results.

[johnb]

Having read assurances on another thread that the CD has plenty of life in it still, why would I want to "rip" a CD? I willingly admit to being born in King George's reign, but what would I gain from all this "ripping"? (And I refuse to believe that I am the only person thinking this!)

That is a very good question!

In my case I got a Squeezebox (music streamer) some years ago, mainly because I had a collection of off air Radio 3 recordings in mp2 format (which is used for DAB/Freeview/Satellite). Playing them meant converting them to wave files, re-sampling them to 44.1ksps and then burning them to CD and that's just too much palaver to go through.

So I bought the Squeezebox and could then play all those files directly through my audio system via WiFi. (It can also play my mp3 and aac files, mp4 files, etc, etc, and supports cue files, which is a very useful facility for concerts.)

At around that time I also bought, ex demo, some Meridian kit. It is very nice *but* it has a slot loading player. After using it for some weeks I became increasingly unhappy with the slot loading CD/DVD handling and, as a result, experimented ripping a few CDs to my PC and then playing them with my Squeezebox - feeding its digital output into my Meridian. It worked extremely well indeed.

So, over time I ripped all my CDs to my hard drive and I now mainly play music via Squeezebox. There are a number of advantages: (a) I can easily search for a composer, etc, etc and then select from all the corresponding music - even from my arm chair if I use the remote, (b) I have easy access to all my off air recordings, (c) quality of the digital output of the Squeezebox is very high, (d) I've put all the music onto a NAS (well, actually a HP MicroServer) which is hidden in a spare room, so I don't even have to have my PC on.

There are also the bonuses of playing Spotify and iPlayer (live and listen again) through Squeezebox to my audio system.

So that is my long winded and rambling rationale.

As to whether it is worthwhile - in my case probably yes, with reservations!

[Ferretfancy]

Having read assurances on another thread that the CD has plenty of life in it still, why would I want to "rip" a CD? I willingly admit to being born in King George's reign, but what would I gain from all this "ripping"? (And I refuse to believe that I am the only person thinking this!)

NB - I do not want to listen to music when walking around and I have a CD player in my car, though I hardly ever use it. I do, however, have a wonderful and far too expensive hi-fi set-up. Am I missing something?

Not in the least ! And in my case it was George V! ( Just )

The fact that the technique is called "ripping" brands it as a soulless enterprise in my book. Better by far to sit comfortably in front of a good sound system and enjoy the best reproduction while possibly reading the notes, or following with a libretto.
As the ads used to say " Fine sets these Fergusons ! "