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[a2hoo]

This may be a bad question, but is the quality of ripping better using  EAC (Exact Audio Copy) and the LAME plugin vs. Media Center (and the LAME plugin)?

Certainly, Media Center is faster, but I have no idea if using "-alt preset standard" , there could be a sound difference or quality difference between Media Center and EAC.

I own MC so  that isnt an issue, I am just curious

thanks

[cct1]

When you rip in MC9, change the setting to "digital secure."  That will give you essentially the same quality rip that you can get with EAC.

I encode using version 3.90.2 of the LAME encoder, which I prefer, that I use as an external encoder through MC9--MC9 uses version 3.93.   You still get a darned good encode with 3.93, but 3.90.2 is just a little bit better.

[Omni]

When you rip in MC9, change the setting to "digital secure."  That will give you essentially the same quality rip that you can get with EAC.

I don't think JRiver has officially stated that they flush the drive's cache between every read.  (If they did, I missed it.)   Given this, my general rule of thumb has been to use MC on brand new CD's (no scratches) and EAC with used (older) CD's (with scratches).

You still get a darned good encode with 3.93, but 3.90.2 is just a little bit better.

On what do you base that on?  3.90.2 has been tested more thoroughly, hence why Dibrom keeps it as his "recommeded" build (actually, he is recommending 3.90.3 which enables -Z by default); but I don't think anyone has proven (via ABX tests) that 3.93 is inferior to 3.90.

For the record, though, when encoding to MP3, I use 3.90.3 myself.  Also, since I switched to APE half a year ago as my primary encoder,  I haven't been too active in the MP3 forums, so maybe it has been proven and I just missed it.

Omni

[a2hoo]

I was using 3.90.2 with EAC...

How do I set it to digital secure....

In the external encoder box on media center, i enter "--alt-preset standard"  Is there a way to enter digital secure in addition or is that an opposing encoding option to aps??

Also is there a difference in Wav encoding between MC and EAC or does MC go directly from .CDA to .MP3?

[nameless]

I don't think JRiver has officially stated that they flush the drive's cache between every read.

This is the closest I've seen (taken from this post):

JohnT wrote:
The first time it does a secure rip from a drive it hasn't seen before, MC automatically calculates the actual cache size used by the drive when reading audio CD's. From then on it uses that cache size to ensure that data is getting read direct from the drive on every re-read, rather than from the cache. The previous cache algorithm failed on many drives with large cache sizes.

He stops short of saying that the audio cache gets flushed, but I can't see what else he could be getting at here.

[Omni]

<jogging memory>  Thanks, nameless.  Now that you mention it, I do recall John stating that.

So now, I guess, it is just a question of how important proper read offsets are to you, a2hoo, whether or not to use MC over EAC.  Since you are converting to MP3, you are definitely not archiving, so I would say definitely stick with MC to do your ripping.

By the way, to set "digital secure" mode, go to Tools-->Options, and then in the "Device Settings" tab, click on "Advanced Ripping Settings."  In that dialog box, its just one of the "Copy mode" options.

Omni

[cct1]

Lame version 3.90.2 was the last build where the presets were tested and optimized for that build  (you can read about it at hydrogen audio).  There is a difference using  --alt-preset standard with 3.90.2 and 3.93--it's noticeable too.  I came across this accidentally, but try ripping/encoding with the two seperate versions, and compare the two files--you'll see what I mean.  Not a huge difference, but noticeable to me, although admittedly not everyone may notice a difference.

[a2hoo]

does anybody know if media center handles conversion of .cda to .mp3 differently than say EAC, if the LAME 3.90.2 is used on both programs (using external encoder on MC)

[Omni]

There's nothing special about "cda" files.  They are just standard 16-bit, stereo, 44.1 kHz wave files.   No "encoding" takes places to make them suitable for mp3/ape/ogg/whatever encoding other than tacking on a RIFF header.  Pretty much every encoder has to use a wave file as its input, and even if you don't explicitly specify a wave file as the input, one is created in your temp folder behind your back.

No program encodes any better or any worse than any other.  The differences are in the details like speed, tagging, library management, etc.

For your purposes, you should just stick with MC (assuming you are using the latest 9.1 beta where they fixed the cache problem).  The only drawback is that you can't control the task's priority like you can in EAC.  This means that during the rip, your PC will be very sluggish under MC.

Omni

Update:  Out of context, that second paragraph up there doesn't read very well.  I meant that if you are using the same external encoder (like lame), then it doesn't matter what third party application is using it:  the results of the encoding will be the same.