How to ripping CDs using my CD transport

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Ripping using your CD drive is a silly idea. You may not like to hear that, but it's true. The only things you have to gain from ripping from your CD player are tedium and complexity.

Any CD ROM drive can read all the info on a Red Book CD. The ripping software puts that data into a wrapper (such as WAV) that is usable on the computer. If you recorded the SPDIF signal out of your CD player, you would get exactly the same data, but then you'd have to break up the recording into tracks, trim the in and out points, add labels and tags, save as FLAC, WAV, etc. The likelihood of error is greater.

A decent CD ROM drive and EAC or dBPoweramp software will get you exactly the same data at 10X the speed, and will preserve the track structure as well as tagging the files for you. There is nothing to be gained by recording the SPDIF signal except a waste of time - and the possibility of doing it wrong.

Trust me, I've done the experiment with several CD players and also DVD and BluRay players. There is NO difference in the data, not one bit.
 
A decent CD ROM drive and EAC or dBPoweramp software will get you exactly the same data at 10X the speed

In fact this is not exactly true... an old CDROM drive without C2 error reporting will give random data when reading errors occur.

However when you use a modern drive which correctly reports errors (as most do now) then... if it says there are no errors, then you can trust that every bit is correct...

HOWEVER if you rip using a CD transport, and there are some reading errors, which are corrected on the fly by masking, you won't get a bit perfect rip, and you won't know.

So a good PC CD/DVD/BD drive is the only way to get a bit accurate rip. A transport cannot do that...

Some CDs I ripped needed a little bit of re-polishing to get an error-free rip on the PC. They played normally on the CD player though, because it uses error masking...
 
I might suspect what is behind merlin's question. Forgive me if I am wrong. There is a clan who belives in audible difference between CD transports. I read somewhere an experiment by a member of this clan: he ripped an audio CD on two different transports. The resulting WAV files were compared and the diff was zero, they were bit identical. Still the WAV from the better transport sounded better :cannotbe: (I belong to another clan and don't try to convert others)
 
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In fact this is not exactly true... an old CDROM drive without C2 error reporting will give random data when reading errors occur.
Well, yes... that's true enough! You got me there. :) But the modern players I've tried gave me the same thing as the error rip, so I suppose there were no errors. Quite right to say that you would not know if you got errors ripping via SPDIF.
 
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You are very welcome, my good wizard. :D

I suspect SMPS used by computers can do something wrong, now I'm using a linear PSU with my computer to play music and the sound improved a lot.....
Yes, computer power supplies can be noisy, you can sometime hear the mouse moving across the screen!

But that affects the DAC, not the data stream, unless there are some very major noise issues. Getting the DAC out of the computer can be a big improvement. You may have done the same thing with your linear supply.

Just as a note: Do you know who popularized the SMPS in computers? A choice that is followed by almost all computer makers to this day.
 
pick me answer > Apple II

in my experience SMPS with reasonable ripple and hash isn't a problem on a music computer ( see for yerself > run RMAA loopback in the low -100dBs all day ) UNTIL you connect it to other gear. Connect an O' scope and things look really really bad .... why? most SMPS noise is common mode is NOT a problem until ground loops are introduced. Now if yer recording using external preamp and such be very concerned, there are ways around it, but most pros use stand alone purpose built systems not cheap PC's.
 
yeah the Analog guys get no credit. there was a 3rd Guy in the Apple early days,

Apple II wiki article

Rod Holt is credited with the Apple II power supply design. Holt employed a Switched-mode power supply design. This generated far less unwanted heat than a linear power supply, which most other home computers of the time used.[citation needed]
Isaacson quotes Wozniak saying that this was not something he could have done. "I only knew vaguely what a switching power supply was
 
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