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[jolo]

 
I would like to throw out this comment and see if anyone agrees or disagrees with me.

I feel that when it comes to ripping a audio CD, to ....lets saw non-compressed WAV files, that all of the ripping software will give us the exact same quality.

• I feel that "raves about EAC are totally overblown. (I used to use it for quite a while)
• I do feel that some ripping software has more options that might allow it to rip CD media that might be scratched or in some disrepair.
• I feel that Media Central's ripping software is as good and feature rich as any on the market.
• While I believe that NO audio burning software will burn a good quality CD to WAV files with any better quality than any other software, there are some additional features, friendlier front ends, some that might give an advanced user some control over how to handle errors in media, but quality of the audio, I think they make no difference.
• When it comes to ripping a typical audio CD, directly into compressed formats, their certainly will be differences in the quality of the audio, depending on the settings (size versus quality), compression products used (loseless versus lossy, when it comes to lossy, I feel that Ogg superiority over MP3 can be heard pretty easily).
• BUT ...if the audio ripping software is using the same version and compile of something like LAME 3.97, and makes identical settings, the quality will be identical.
• I think it is much more important to make sure that the original media is clean and dust free, as well as the CD player. Also the choice of media can make a big difference in the speed of the rip, consistency of the rip, having a rip fail and especially how long the media will last. I like Taiyo Yuden personally. and try to stay away from the cheaper Chinese made media.
  [h]I lastly believe that much more important than the ripping software used is making sure that the disk drive you are writing to has plenty of disk space and that disk space is not fragmented (I use Perfect Disk v..  Last point, I think it adds to the safety to re-boot before ripping or burning. I have experienced failures, that occurred, when there was some leftover "crud" sitting around in the RAM, especially if there was a error message previously in the Windows session. I also think that setting the rip speed at a very low speed, will not make one bit of difference in the quality of the audio, when doing a conventional audio rip.

I would love to hear some thoughts on this, especially if there is some objective data on this subject.

Thank so much,

Jon

[hit_ny]

EAC forced vendors as well as other rippers to do secure ripping when very few offered it at the time. It's also free. When anyone asks for just a ripping program its the default choice.

Comparions between secure rippers is a moot point now, as the difference is smaller, and mostly in terms of GUI offered, so yes if you have MC, then EAC isn't so necessary.

[BartMan01]

Like hit_ny stated - secure ripping is the way to go.  Gives you guaranteed rip quality.  Both MC and EAC do secure ripping (I don't think MC uses it by default though), so if you have MC configured for secure rip then there should no difference between MC and EAC.  Most other decent rippers use secure as well.

If the disc is damaged/degraded/or otherwise not 'normal', then having EAC around still comes in handy at times.  In those cases, I use both and see which does a better job.

[jolo]

Thanks so much BartMan01 and hit_ny.

I am relieved because I figured that I would get flamed by my query. On some heavy tech forums, there are those who seem to have almost an emotional, religious attachment to certain products, something I could never understand. I mean, I have my favorites, but I can't stand when someone says "they all suck" and that they're way is the best and only way. I mean, this shouldn't be an emotional issue.

Great information from both of you, thanks so much.

PLEASE explain what you mean about secure ripping ??

The quality issue was something that I saw in a description of another popular freeware/opensource DVD/CD players, burner/ripper. The documentation described the positive options that their product had. Then warned all, that as far as quality of audio, there is no difference between products.

I am aware that EAC was around when there were lots of issues with the lack of standards in media as well as where CD burner/rippers that could work with only a select few media types.
I think currently the big differences in Media have to do with CONSISTENT speed and how long they will last. 

I do however use only Taiyo Yuden for CDs and DVDs and Verbatim for dual layer DVDs. They have been so consistent for me over the years and I never have issues with them.

Thanks again,

Jon