what CD/DVD Drive model for error free CD riping ?

[admin_exported]

I am planning to rip my entire CD collection to lossless format.

Are there different grades of quality in terms of CD/DVD (optical) drives in the way they rip a CD ? If there are, what is the best product out there for audiophiles to make sure that what ends up on the on PC is "bit for bit" what there is on the CD (before convertion to FLAC or apple lossless).

 

[basshound]

I think most drives will do a good job,more depends on the software,if you go apple lossless make sure the error correction option is turned on or if you go flac use something like EAC to rip.

 

[The_Lhc]

It makes no difference, any drive will do a perfect job and these days pretty much any software will as well.

 

[davejberry]

I used dBpoweramp with accuraterip to rip all mine to flac. It isn't free but only costs a few squids and also very good at finding album art and track info (much better than itunes or wmp in my experience)

 

[Anonymous]

the_lhc:It makes no difference, any drive will do a perfect job and these days pretty much any software will as well.

It is true that almost all drives should be able to rip perfectly, the difference is in that better drives will have less errors (over many discs) and be able to recover from more errors on discs with issues (scratched or ones having manufacturing defects).

All software should be able to rip perfectly also, the difference between secure rippers and non-secure rippers is that a secure ripper will inform when a rip is error free (by using AccurateRip) which cannot be recovered, a non-secure ripper (such as iTunes) would not do this.

 

[The_Lhc]

In theory. In practice, it makes no practical difference. I use dbPoweramp myself but there was a very interesting article posted on here not that long ago (hopefully someone will dig up the post) that showed that even iTunes will produce a perfect rip.

 

[Anonymous]

I am not disputing that iTunes can produce bit perfect rips, the difference is in error detection. Take a CD you do not want and scratch it on a concrete floor, then try ripping, a secure ripper would report there were errors, iTunes would most likely not (unless the disc is so badly damaged the drive cannot read at all).

It is estimated that around 2% of discs ripped have errors (using results submitted to accuraterip), and these are not all scratched discs, but rather discs with manufacturing defects.