Best software for ripping CD to FLAC

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Best software for ripping CD to FLAC

dafman

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#306877 30-Aug-2023 10:15

In the past I ripped all my CDs to MP3, but am now looking to repeat the process and rip to FLAC.

What is the most efficent software for ripping CDs to FLAC, including bring album art across?

As always, thanks in advance.

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#3121805 30-Aug-2023 10:17

Try Exact Audio Copy - it's free to use and supports any encoder you like.

Also supports album art.

May not be 'efficient' but it is 'exact'.

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Behodar

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#3121810 30-Aug-2023 10:44

Note that last time I used EAC I had to manually enable "run as administrator" otherwise it would claim that there was no CD drive.

xpd

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#3121811 30-Aug-2023 10:46

Behodar:

Note that last time I used EAC I had to manually enable "run as administrator" otherwise it would claim that there was no CD drive.

Interesting... wonder if that's why I couldn't burn some CDs on my new system recently... will give that a go and see what happens :D

XPD / Gavin

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Behodar

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#3121813 30-Aug-2023 10:51

It took me a while to figure out why I had to reinstall/repair it all the time, until I twigged that the installer was running as admin (via UAC prompt) and that those credentials were being passed onto EAC for its initial launch.

cddt

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#3121819 30-Aug-2023 11:08

My go-to for audio CDs is abcde : A Better CD Encoder.

https://linux.die.net/man/1/abcde

outdoorsnz

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#3121877 30-Aug-2023 13:18

2nd for abcde. It did a very good job converting my CD's to flac.

For GUI. I found Asunder CD ripper very good.

And if you have time. MusicBrainz Picard if you want to sort / clean up your music library.

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Shindig

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#3121887 30-Aug-2023 14:09

EAC was my go to in the 90s

The little things make the biggest difference.

rhy7s

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#3121922 30-Aug-2023 15:13

Seconding EAC or CUETools

richms

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#3121938 30-Aug-2023 15:52

I used to use EAC and then fix the tags up in foobar2000 since there's so much braindead crap in them from the tag databases

Richard rich.ms

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#3121945 30-Aug-2023 16:01

richms: I used to use EAC and then fix the tags up in foobar2000 since there's so much braindead crap in them from the tag databases

I was once trying to troubleshoot an issue with some playback software and ended up posting a screenshot somewhere. Someone told me that something was seriously wrong because the whole view didn't look right (this was totally unrelated to the actual issue I was having). After some back and forth, it turned out that it looked "wrong" because I'd had the gall to put the artist's name in the Artist tag.

richms

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#3122124 31-Aug-2023 10:27

Behodar:

I was once trying to troubleshoot an issue with some playback software and ended up posting a screenshot somewhere. Someone told me that something was seriously wrong because the whole view didn't look right (this was totally unrelated to the actual issue I was having). After some back and forth, it turned out that it looked "wrong" because I'd had the gall to put the artist's name in the Artist tag.

That's an unusual thing to get worked up about.

Mine is usually people that insist that every disc of a multi disc album needs to have a different different album name by putting the disc number in there instead of the tags actually made for it. Also people that restart the track numbering from 1 on every disc because that is the limitation of the CD format it was ripped from.

Square brackets with artist names in the track name of compilations with the track artist being Various Artists is another annoyance.

Richard rich.ms

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Behodar

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#3122196 31-Aug-2023 12:53

richms:

Square brackets with artist names in the track name of compilations with the track artist being Various Artists is another annoyance.

That there is the exact one that the forum guy was complaining about, but in the opposite "direction": he was adamant that the artist name should be in the Track Name field, not the Artist field. Sigh.

dafman

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#3159602 15-Nov-2023 09:03

Thanks for all your comments.

I downloaded EAC - it took an age to configure (link here) , which was fine as it is one off - but the kicker was that it took 30 minutes to rip one CD to FLAC.

I have over 400 CDs to rip, so that's a non-starter.

I've swapped to Anyburn which required no set up and rips to FLAC within about 5 mins.

I did a compare of the same CD rip between EAC and Anyburn - both 16bit 44.1kHz, similar in file size, although Anyburn consistently had a marginally higher bit rate than EAC.

Behodar

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#3159604 15-Nov-2023 09:11

dafman: but the kicker was that it took 30 minutes to rip one CD to FLAC.

I have over 400 CDs to rip, so that's a non-starter.

It takes 2-3 minutes on my machine. Presumably one of those random settings you've changed based on that site's "advice" has slowed it to a crawl.

richms

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#3159630 15-Nov-2023 09:58

Or the drive is one that doesn't support the cache clearing so has to have more reads thrown at it to use up the cache so it actually re-reads the parts.

Does the other software get the pre-gaps correct?

Do your rips have a matching CRC from accurate rip? (If that is even still a thing these days)

The audio CD spec was never designed to have it read back bit accurate which is why there is so much hassle getting things to do it reliably and repeatable, and some drives just totally suck at it.

Richard rich.ms

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