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Poll

Ripping Programs

E.A.C
[ 216 ] (78.3%)
Plextools
[ 4 ] (1.4%)
CDex
[ 47 ] (17%)
Feurio
[ 2 ] (0.7%)
Audio Grabber
[ 7 ] (2.5%)

Total Members Voted: 329

Topic: Ripping Programs (Read 23115 times) previous topic - next topic
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Ripping Programs

I think for safe extraction Plextools or EAC should be used & for badly scratched CD's Feurio even though plextools is fast & good. Anyone got good points of CDex? (ripping part)

I would use Feurio for all ripping & apond finding an error switch to EAC/Plextools for that track but does Feurio (burst mode) report all errors or just C2?.

Ripping Programs

Reply #1 –
I have high hopes for PlexTools, but there's one thing Plextor absolutely has to add to it: support for cuesheets.

Ripping Programs

Reply #2 –
I use EAC for all my ripping.
When the CD is dirty I use washing-up liquid to clean the CD.
When the CD is scratched I polish the CD with silver-polish or first with copper-polish when the CD is extremely scratched.
With those two tricks you don’t have to use another program (except for protected CD’s of course).

Ripping Programs

Reply #3 –
The support for many different cd units in EAC (including mine) makes the choice obvious since I don't have a Plextor. EAC has excellent support for external compressors, tagging when encoding, more than satisfying error correction, test crc and copy crc comparison, cue-sheet generation. In short, EAC ny needs perfectly and I have no reason to change at the moment.

Ripping Programs

Reply #4 –
I'm missing some unix programs in the list.

grip + cdparanoia

Ripping Programs

Reply #6 –
Quote
I'm missing some unix programs in the list.

grip + cdparanoia

Yeh, also Musicmatch, Audiocat, forgot.

Ripping Programs

Reply #7 –
ripperx+cdparanoia
-niels

Ripping Programs

Reply #8 –
I've been using EAC all this while, but I just found out that cdex is open-sourced, so I'll be making a move over to cdex soon.

Ripping Programs

Reply #9 –
tangent:

Quote
I've been using EAC all this while, but I just found out that cdex is open-sourced, so I'll be making a move over to cdex soon.


Huh? What an argument...

I like to accept minor compromises for the sake of using open-source software (like Monkey's Audio vs. FLAC), but I'd never switch to something as inferior as CDex if there's great software like EAC available, be it open source or not.

CU

Dominic

Ripping Programs

Reply #10 –
Quote
but I'd never switch to something as inferior as CDex

Inferior?

Now I'm offended.

(look at the left side of this post)

Ripping Programs

Reply #11 –
I use Linux so I use cdparanoia. There is a great frontend/cd ripper Jack. It has support for mp3, ogg, even mpc...  and it is very configurable(maybe to much:-)

Ripping Programs

Reply #13 –
Quote
Is there any possibilities of adding the option for a cue-sheet in cdex in a future release?

Everything is possible. 

Edit: OK, somebody point me to some CUE format specification please. I'm too lazy to google it.

Ripping Programs

Reply #14 –
CDex is doing a good job.

EAC does not recognize my CD writer (Cyberdrive) so the CD-copy or CUE-write options are not really a point to switch.

Ripping Programs

Reply #15 –
Quote
I'd never switch to something as inferior as CDex


I've used CDex with cdparanoia to rip nearly 700 albums to oggs on lots of different OSs with lots of different CD and DVD drives and I quite honestly get great results on even horribly scratched cds which are unplayable on my hifi.

I tried EAC before trying CDex and had immense trouble setting it up. I gave up.
I tried it again last month and again had major problems getting it to even run. After following several hints here I got it to run, but the UI has a horrible sluggish feel to it and it locks up on a couple of my badly scratched cds.

You can all slag CDex off to your hearts content but even complete novices can get perfectly good results from CDex while I see any number of computer geeks posting "how do I get EAC to work" questions all over the net each week.

The only thing I really disagree with is that cdparanoia full isn't the default - it's not noticeably slower doing rips.

And because it's open source I get to use a modified version of CDex which automatically queries cddb, rips and then ejects any cds I put in the machine without any user intervention required. Very nice.

The one thing that would be nice for me is integrated FLAC support - decompression speed is much more important than compression speed for me (converting a few CDs worth of FLACs to MP3 is _much_ quicker than APEs) so Monkeys isn't ideal.

Ripping Programs

Reply #16 –
and once again..,
Quote
I'd never switch to something as inferior as CDex


Where you got that idea, i have no idea.
You get that idea somehow, and then spread it, and then others think it's inferior too. Maybe that's how you got that idea..

Not "inferior", not bad, not ok, not quite good, not good, great. Anyone who's reading this, try it sometime.

Ripping Programs

Reply #17 –
I actually found CDex to be more of a pain to set up than EAC when I tried it.  Maybe it was just that I found quick tutorials about EAC, but even after finding a few for CDex I still think EAC was easier to set up in advanced mode.

Ripping Programs

Reply #18 –
I use EAC on Windows and grip + cdparanoia on GNU/Linux...
The reason I don't use CDex on Windows is not cdparanoia. I think cdparanoia and EAC are equally good, but its unclear bloated architecture (Winamp PlugIns, loads of dlls)...

EAC is just a good professional software and has many features CDex is still missing.

But as long as you rip with a cdparanoia based app or EAC I don't care.

dev0
"To understand me, you'll have to swallow a world." Or maybe your words.

Ripping Programs

Reply #19 –
Quote
Edit: OK, somebody point me to some CUE format specification please. I'm too lazy to google it.


Everything you want to know is in the helpfile of cdrwin. If you don't want to download  & install it you can follow the link in my sig.

Ripping Programs

Reply #20 –
According to the user reports, the full paranoia mode of CDex (the cdparanoia library) often does a better job on scratched CDs than EAC's secure mode : Always much faster, and sometimes less click (sometimes more) than EAC.

Let's be plain, EAC is not meant to read scratched CDs. It is inferior to CDP32, CDex, or Plextools for this task. What it does well is telling if there are errors, not correcting them. In that task, only Plextools can rival it, and only with Plextor drives.
CDex and CDP32 doesn't always tell if there were errors. Even Feurio is better at this, with it's C2 support.

CDex vs EAC error reporting (not correction) test : http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....=ST&f=20&t=3164

Ripping Programs

Reply #21 –
Quote
EAC is just a good professional software

And an amateur one, in addition 

Ripping Programs

Reply #22 –
Using EAC for a year or so...and it does a good job.
Most of the disks I rip are badly scratched, but in very rare
ocasions EAC gave up.(LG 12x8x32).
Recently I've got an old(but very little used) Plextor 12x SCSI
CD ROM drive and I'm impressed with its DAE precision!.
It dates back to '97, but its the best one I ever used
This Plextor -plus EAC or Plextools-  are just incredible!

LIF
"Jazz washes away the dust of everyday life" (Art Blakey)

Ripping Programs

Reply #23 –
Hey! And what about CDDAE! (I'm talking only about ripping).
I tried lot of programs (Audiograbber + Audiocatalyst, CDEx, EAC...) and I choose CDDAE because it's the only I found the "READ TWICE" feature...
I think reading twice the same track is better than using correction algorithms...
Does anybody know such a program?
Bye!
"Every man dies, not every man really lives"

Ripping Programs

Reply #24 –
Roberto:

Quote
(look at the left side of this post)


I know, and you know I know.  We had a long e-mail conversation on features for the then v1.40 release of CDex at the beginning of the year.



264556:

Quote
I tried it again last month and again had major problems getting it to even run. After following several hints here I got it to run, but the UI has a horrible sluggish feel to it and it locks up on a couple of my badly scratched cds.


I don't understand - from the very first time I have used EAC which was in the days of 0.9pb10 (and I was a complete n00b back then), it has mostly worked fine for me. The only problem I have is that it crashes on me if I have Ultra DMA activated for the DVD drive - if I set it to Multiword DMA, it works fine. (I admit I took a long time to work that one out (maybe Pio2001 remembers the endless thread at r3mix ) - I'm not sure whether EAC is the one to blame or the VIA chipset drivers. )

With the configuration wizard, it's pretty easy to get EAC to run properly. Just to test how it works, I followed the instructions of the wizard and changed no other settings - I got perfect LAME 3.92 --aps MP3s.

There is one single problem that causes a hell of a lot of problems for many users - it's that EAC doesn't work properly when you start it the first time. You have to restart it once before running the config wizard in order for it to detect the drive features properly. If you don't do that, you most probably get an incorrect drive configuration and therefore can't rip properly. If it wasn't for this single stupid bug, a lot less users would have trouble with EAC.

And what do you mean with "sluggish feel"? EAC has a standard Win32 interface, it shouldn't respond more slowly than any other app's GUI. If you're talking about the long delays that occur when trying to abort the ripping process or scrolling in the status box during ripping - yes, I have to agree.



SK1:

Quote
You get that idea somehow, and then spread it, and then others think it's inferior too. Maybe that's how you got that idea..


No, that's my own opinion, based entirely on my own experience.

I'll try to list all points in which, in my opinion, CDex is inferior to EAC (in no particular order), you'll see that I have taken very close looks at both programs.
  • It doesn't have a Wave editor (I use the EAC wave editor a lot, I have never needed a separate tool for this so far).

  • It can't burn CDs. All right, EACs CD writer doesn't work well with my burner, but it's there and works fine for many other people. EAC is the only tool that can directly copy audio CDs securely.

  • According to Case, the Paranoia mode is complete useless on drives that use caching.

  • You get no information at all on the ripping status. When a read/sync error occurs, EAC will tell you exactly at which position there may be a glitch. It will also report timing problems. CDex's extremely informative "X" isn't really a help.
    Also, what would a newbie think when the estimated remaining time display suddenly goes up to something like 6 hours?

  • CDex's error reporting is sparse already - but sometimes it doesn't work at all! I think I wrote this here a few days ago - I've had CDex report a good rip, although there was a fat glitch. EAC reported a read error at this very position.

  • CDex has no option to skip tracks that cause sync/read errors - very annoying.

  • There's no possibility to write a log file. If someone has the PC shut down automatically after ripping, he won't have any idea which tracks were successfully extracted and which weren't. EAC writes detailed log files, and it even does so automatically if you use the shutdown feature - the Write Log File option doesn't even have to be explicitly activated. That's well thought through.

  • No support for CUE sheets. If you swear by CDex and don't want to use EAC, how can you make secure 1:1 copies of CDs?

  • The default encoder setting is LAME 128kbps simple stereo ((!)) MP3. Now, for how many crappy MP3s floating round the net do you think CDex is responsible, being one of the most widely used rippers among "normal" users? (EAC does a lot better, having --aps as the default encoder setting when using the config wizard.)

  • CDex's GUI is ugly. You get the impression that it was just thrown together in a totally mindless way, while EAC's looks clean and tidy. Could you guess without reading the info text what the buttons in the right-hand toolbar mean? I can't. Being old 3D buttons, they don't even look pretty. The buttons at the top of the screen, however, are "normal" flat buttons. And the settings button appears in both toolbars - see what I mean with "thrown together"?
    Also, I find it annoying that CDex ignores the settings for the system font and uses the old and hard-to-read MS Sans Serif instead.

  • What do you do with copy-protected CDs? EAC can rip them on many drives using the "Detect TOC manually" feature, but with CDex, you're often stuck.

  • CDex can't delete digital silence from the beginning or the end of tracks.

  • There's no option to launch the encoder in the background while ripping carries on (I'm *not* talking about on-the-fly encoding, it's something different).

  • There's no possibility to have CDex ask you for an output folder each time you rip a track. I personally find this quite annoying.

All right, there are a few points in which CDex IMHO has advantages over EAC, so just to be fair, I'll list them too:
  • You can configure the filename format of the playlists.

  • CDex can decode any format you want, because it uses Winamp plugins.

  • There are more options to configure ID3 tag writing, e.g. the possibility of writing only ID3v2, or the conventions for track numbers.

I think my arguments are perfectly valid. With so many points speaking against CDex, it's quite obvious for me that EAC in general is the better solution. BTW, CDex has been around for much longer than EAC, if I'm not mistaken.



Pio2001:

Quote
What it does well is telling if there are errors, not correcting them.


I agree completely. But it's exactly that that is so important if you want to be sure that you got a good rip, so EAC is basically the only choice for this.



Comando_Gruya:

Quote
I choose CDDAE because it's the only I found the "READ TWICE" feature...


EAC has it (Action -> Test & Copy).


CU

Dominic