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Best Ripping for Classical

Joe P said:
Jonboi,


Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Star Trek is what you want.

Joe
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Oops! - I love science fiction, and used to watch all the various iterations of the Star Trek TV series - have a couple of the movies, one on DVD and the latest one on Bluray - formidable sound track to say the least!

Kind Regards

John
 
onlyconnect said:
Error correction is not the same as accuraterip.

Accuraterip checks your rip against an online database for accuracy, using checksums from other people who have ripped the same CD.

Error correction does not always get you a perfect rip; worse, it does not tell you (maybe it does not know) when it has failed.

Most of the time it makes no difference; but if you don't use AccurateRip or alternatively play back your rip and listen carefully for errors, you may discover later that you have a glitched rip.

I have no idea why Apple doesn't use AccurateRip, other than "not invented here".

Tim
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Hi Tim

Thanks for that information.

I'll do some reading, albeit at this stage I'm pretty happy with the way iTunes seems to work, in that I want a system that works simply, reliably and elegantly such as to get the job done with the minimum of fuss.

I find it a very time consuming and somewhat onerous exercise; albeit the sonic results are excellent, as is the increased versatility of being able to access ones music collection on the fly.

I take the point about listening to the rips etc, but as I've well over a thousand CD's to rip, with 350 done so far, it's not really a practical exercise for me personally, albeit others more concerned may wish to do so.

Whatever the demerits of ITunes may be, and I'm sure there're a few, the results bear sonic comparison with the finest and most expensive dedicated CD players I've ever heard, which is enough for me, - again speaking personally of course - others will want or expect different things.

Thanks again

John
 
onlyconnect said:
Well if I had a lot of ALAC I'd convert to FLAC. My Yamaha receiver plays FLAC but not ALAC.
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Just a (hopefully) neutral observation for those, who may be still deciding;

I'm not an apple hater, I simply don't own any apple machine anymore (last one was Apple ][). Based on that, I've never even heard of ALAC before coming to this forum (and hifi community in general) and I'm *very* tech/computer-oriented guy and hobbyist musician with lots of FLAC, Vorbis (ogg) and mp3 files.
Now if apple players/systems can't play FLAC, that basically means that there are two worlds - the apple one with ALAC and the non-apple one with FLAC.

Make your choice, but know that both are lossless and open (ALAC since 2011), so you can easily convert anytime.
 
You could use a PC to rip all of your cds using DB poweramp, if you prefer apple lossless then just select that as the output format from the drop box:).
set DBPA to use accurate rip (+secure rip) and it will rip the CD and read it as many times as it needs to to ensure it is accurate to a comparison data base online. in most cases it will rip a cd in a couple of mins as I dont restrict the speed, if its accurate its accurate and the speed will automatically drop if it has a problem reading the CD, amaizingly it will also fix a skipping CD ;).

Before it starts to rip it collects the tagging data from 3 independant online data bases and decides which is the most accurate but you can allso view and choose which set of tags you think is correct if you wish and you can also edit or substitute the cover photo as well.
once you have ripped all your CDs just drop them onto your Mac in Itunes if thats what you like to use.

Alan
 
Both Apple and Microsoft are intensely irritating in their behaviour over formats. Theirs are the only player devices that do not support FLAC.

Looking at the devices I have, none of them support apple lossless natively (Sandisk Sansa clip, NAD C390DD, Squeezebox 3, Nexus 4, Asus Transformer, Ubuntu 12.10) although for the computer and androids it is possible to download software to play them. All handle FLAC natively.
 
I suppose I could run windows on my mac if dbPoweramp was worth it, but would it really offer me the solution to the metadata problem? Doesn't seem so when I read the same complaint as mine re classical info from PC users too.
 
The ripping and the metadata issues are separate. You certainly want to get the best rip you can. Ripping isn't fun, doing it once is ok, doing it again isn't. I ripped a few albums with iTunes many years ago, and the results were patchy, but that was many many versions ago. I used EAC which is free, configurable, but rather hard work. I now use dbpoweramp and once set up its pretty much perfect. I originally ripped to multiple formats, but I now just use FLAC, as dbpoweramp can convert between formats quickly and efficiently if I ever need something else. I convert to MP3s for the car or portable devices, but have given up on iPod/iPad/Phone music, except for holidays. 320k MP3s are pretty good though!
My main PC is an iMac, but I run a windows server with Dbpoweramp, TVersity and Logitech Media Server on it, mainly so I can run Dbpoweramp.

Metadata is another issue entirely. Dbpoweramp does the best job that I have found in finding the info, but the classical stuff still ends up in a mess. I generally hand edit each classical album, but I've got a huge backlog to fix. One day I'll find or write a program that will batch edit them the way I want them. The fact that many classical albums can have multiple composers, orchestras and conductors on one album makes life very difficult, but the one big pleasure with streaming is the fact I can listen to my favourite classical piece without the horror of some totally inappropriate filler track killing the moment after the glorious finale...
 
I don't use it as I have J River and dbpoweramp but the sonata music server I mentioned earlier in this thread has I believe extended fields for the additional metadata for classical music. It also has access to a database to fill these. I don't know if this is over and above what can be done in dbpoweramp but would have thought it is worth looking into for people with extensive classical music collections.
 
So far I've been using XLD to rip and editing the metadat in iTunes. It's worked reasonably well but I'm also wondering if JRiver might be a good solution now it is out for mac. Does anyone have experience of it? Also am I able to transfer files with metadata from iTunes to JRiver without going through the ripping process again?

Thanks
 
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