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Re: FWIW...

Posted by pburke (A) on April 18, 2006 at 07:53:58

In Reply to: FWIW... posted by Greg Ewing on April 12, 2006 at 09:47:57:

For me the question is not about "hearing" a difference, but if the tools are truly interchangeable. It is a technical issue: are the rips bit-identical between the two tools? There are plenty of file comparison utilities out there to verify what's happening.

If the files don't match, then one of the tools (or both) is not bit accurate. Even more interesting: perform multiple rips with each tool and compare between each rip cycle to see if the tools are creating identical files between rips. If one tool doesn't do that, then you know that particular program is flawed.

Things get even more complicated when you throw the CD/DVD mechanism into the equation as a possible factor for errors. If you ever installed EAC, you know there are a number of "features" on CD ROM and DVD ROM drives that can negatively affect the accuracy of a rip. EAC offers you a lot of options to get the most from drives that are by design not likely to work well for ripping, while I think iTunes just doesn't want to confuse users with such pesky details :)

Ignoring potential bit differences which may or may not be audible, the deciding factor for me is that I can rip entire albums to "image with cue sheet" with EAC and and listen to the "album" as it is on the CD, with the exact gaps between tracks as found on the original CD. I also can play individual songs from the same cue-sheet, without needing to rip it twice or take up twice the space on my drive for full album rips and individual tracks. I don't think there's any way to do that in iTunes.

I actually have an iPod to walk to work with music, but for that use I rip the albums again in iTunes, straight to 160k mp3s, since there's no point to waste drive space on better formats when using an iPod or computer speakers for playback.

Peter

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