CD Ripping Services Compared Guide

[dang]

Checkout our latest Guide: CD Ripping Services Compared (http://reviews.designtechnica.com/guide44.html)

[Ioman]

Sweet article. I would probably use Slim Devices and rip my collection into FLAC format, that way it would play on my Cowon X5. I guess a high bit-rate MP3 format would be fine.

I am thinking about buying the Sonos unit for home which supports FLAC so that would be a good format for that as well.

I guess as an Apple iPod user, you would want AAC. The Sonos system supports non-protected AAC files too, so that would be another option.

[ECA]

The format I SEND has to be Aduio CD?? Or can I send them the MP3, and get some other format back??

[davebarnes]

Pathetic article.
There is no mention of the quality of the rips.
There is a huge difference between rips done by Apple's iTunes and EAC, for example.

[MusicShifter]

Sweet article. I would probably use Slim Devices and rip my collection into FLAC format, that way it would play on my Cowon X5. I guess a high bit-rate MP3 format would be fine.

I am thinking about buying the Sonos unit for home which supports FLAC so that would be a good format for that as well.

I guess as an Apple iPod user, you would want AAC. The Sonos system supports non-protected AAC files too, so that would be another option.

If you're interested in both FLAC and AAC, why not just go with MusicShifter.com's "Deluxe" package and get both?

The pricing for MusicShifter.com's Deluxe package ($0.99/CD) is cheaper than Slim's normal package which just offers one format.

http://www.musicshifter.com/

[ECA]

At what bps...

[neuroking]

I was going to ding MusicShifter for advertising on the forums, but he/she/it opinted out a pretty big omission. That Deluxe package does include rips to both a lossy and lossless format, so 2 for the price of 1. Not bad at all.

Oh, and davebarnes is an asstard. If you want to compare formats, that's an entirely different subject. This is for services. You want format comparisons, I'm sure there are several million other articles out there. And who puts their phone number in their sig anyways?

[Ioman]

Pathetic article.
There is no mention of the quality of the rips.
There is a huge difference between rips done by Apple's iTunes and EAC, for example.

Well I was not going to get into details, I am just glad to see that there is a service that provides FLAC ripping.

But since you are on the subject, why don't you tell us all what the difference is between rips done by Apple's iTunes and EAC?

[deedub]

Hya Suzie,
Nice article! You should know the link to Ripdigital actually links to slimdevices...
ciao!

[AVBob]

Speaking as an AV Installer, you forgot the most important information. Riptopia.com is the only service with a partnership with Gracenote, the same company that supplies the metadata for iTunes, Yahoo music, Sony, etc. We use Riptopia for high end installations because the the combination of Riptopia's quality of data processing plus Gracenote creates digital music collections that are better quality then if you bought your whole collection from an online music store. The others mention "Data Grooming" because they don't have Gracenote and have to try to clean up their tagging.

[MusicShifter]

Speaking as an AV Installer, you forgot the most important information. Riptopia.com is the only service with a partnership with Gracenote, the same company that supplies the metadata for iTunes, Yahoo music, Sony, etc. We use Riptopia for high end installations because the the combination of Riptopia's quality of data processing plus Gracenote creates digital music collections that are better quality then if you bought your whole collection from an online music store. The others mention "Data Grooming" because they don't have Gracenote and have to try to clean up their tagging.

AVBob,

Actually Gracenote does not provide as good results as AMG (All Music Group), we've tried both.

Gracenote is the same database that iTunes uses. And while it does an ok job most of the time, there are more metadata errors and inconsistencies than AMG's database.

The line about not having to use "data grooming" because XX database is so high quality is just B.S. Grooming is necessary.

Regarding Riptopia's "high quality of data processing", have you tried MusicShifter to compare?

http://www.musicshifter.com/

[martinwguy]

Hi all!
There's another solution to automated ripping: make yourself an Urlwitzer, which
is a totally automatic home CD ripping box.

You'll need a PC you're not using, with
- a hard disk (preferably large, of course)
- a network card
- a home network with a DHCP server (probably included in your broadband modem)
- a CDROM reader

The Urlwitzer installer comes on a normal 700MB CD that you put into the CDROM drive, set the BIOS to boot off CDROM (if it isn't already set that way) and turn it on.
The installer doesn't use whatever is already installed on the hard disk, waits 30 seconds to make sure you're sure, then automatically wipes the hard disk clean, installs a specialised tiny linux system on the hard disk, ejects the CD and reboots.
Let me say that again: this compact disc WIPES ALL DATA OFF THE INTERNAL HARD DISK WITHOUT ASKING YOU TO SAY "Yes I'm sure". I just wanted make sure you'd got that clear... :)
From then on that computer needs no screen or keyboard, it just sits on the
network and waits. When you put an audio CD into the CD drawer, it looks the CD up on the internet to find out artist, album title and track names, creates
a folder on its hard disk and rips the CD into separate files for each track.
When it's finished it automatically ejects the CD and you put the next one in.
The resulting set of artist folders containing MP3s appears magically as a Windows Network Fileshare, as a web page (just point your browser at the
address assigned to that box:8500 for a page full of album-cover thumbnails!):
click to stream music from it!

The ISO image of the CD can be hard to find: it was produced by Tonic Domains Corporation but seems not to be being distributed officially at the
moment. Your best bet is to look for it on the file sharing networks.

Fantastic software!

M

[suckbot]

they're reviewed here as well review (http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/reviews/review_grades/C208)

[dj_rob]

I recently had my entire collection ripped by Awaken (http://www.awaken.com) a month or so back. I don't know why they aren't in the list. I chose them after calling several services for 3 reasons: 1) They were the most flexible to work with. I had a lot of special requests and they accommodated all of them. They even backed up my FLAC on DVD, which none of the other services would do (or if they would they wanted to charge me a LOT.) Awaken did it for free.; 2) They have great tag handling. I have a lot of foreign, ecclectic, and CD singles and everything came back perfectly. They told me on top of the software which cleans stuff up (which it seems most services have) they have a person manually review every order.; and 3) Most important to me they were the only ones that do professional CD repair. My collection has been "well loved" so this was a huge factor for me. If I would have ripped it myself or had someone else rip it there would have been a lot of skips. It was also important to me that the audio was good, and these guys put a lot of effort into making sure it is good.

I say if you are going to spend that kind of money you should talk to the service first! I'm glad I did.

Enjoy the holidaze.

[MusicShifter]

I chose them after calling several services for 3 reasons: 1) They were the most flexible to work with. I had a lot of special requests and they accommodated all of them. They even backed up my FLAC on DVD, which none of the other services would do (or if they would they wanted to charge me a LOT.) Awaken did it for free.;

"None" of the other services offer a DVD FLAC back-up?

MusicShifter does.

3) Most important to me they were the only ones that do professional CD repair. My collection has been "well loved" so this was a huge factor for me. If I would have ripped it myself or had someone else rip it there would have been a lot of skips.

Which means that they use one of these DiscDoctor gizmos that actually damages your CD more (try it once and take a look, it's horrible).

A little brasso on a 100% cotton cloth works the best.

http://www.musicshifter.com/

[dj_rob]

I have to say that when I got a notification with your reply it sure seemed awfully rude for a professional service. I wasn't trying to knock you guys, but I'll be frank that your attitude makes me glad I didn't use you. The companies I checked with either wouldn't rip FLAC to DVD or charged a lot more for it, except for Awaken (http://www.awaken.com). There are a lot of you guys out there and I checked with 5 that I thought had good sites. If you do the FLAC too then that is great.

I actually asked Awaken what they used to repair the CD's because this was a big concern of mine and they uses Azuradisc (http://www.azuradisc.com/) machines, which are professional CD repair and cost like $20,000 each. They are the same ones used by NetFlix (http://www.netflix.com/). They couldn't repair damage to the label side of the CD's because that contains the actual info, but for some of my discs that were seriously scratched they came back good as new. I can literally play them now with no skips and I had pretty much stopped mixing with them because they had gotten so bad.

Look these guys did a good job for me. I know they are your competitor, but I don't think it makes you look good to trash them when you clearly don't know much about their service.

[FatAndHappy]

Speaking as an AV Installer, you forgot the most important information. Riptopia.com is the only service with a partnership with Gracenote, the same company that supplies the metadata for iTunes, Yahoo music, Sony, etc. We use Riptopia for high end installations because the the combination of Riptopia's quality of data processing plus Gracenote creates digital music collections that are better quality then if you bought your whole collection from an online music store. The others mention "Data Grooming" because they don't have Gracenote and have to try to clean up their tagging.

You are confused.

All Media Guide (AMG) supplies metadata for the iTunes Music Store, Yahoo Music, Sony Connect, and many others. AMG's database is created by a team of professionals with common standards. AMG is considered to be the gold standard for quality throughout the CEDIA industry.

Gracenote's database is created by collecting amateur user submissions via the internet with no common standards. This method is fine for gathering large amounts of data, but it is a bad way to maintain quality standards.

"Data Grooming", by the way, was created by media conversion companies to deal with the problems of using Gracenote's low quality user-submitted data.

If Riptopia is using Gracenote's data "as-is", without some kind of "grooming" or data post-processing, their customers are getting sub-par service in a highly competitive industry.

I hope this helps to clear up your confusion.

[AVBob]

The reason you don't use Gracenote, Musicshifter, is that they only make license agreements with national companies. Is it not true that they they have over 5 million CDs in their metadata database? Is it not true that their partners are Apple, Sony, Yahoo, and Riptopia?
I believe AMG has about 500,000 CDs in their database.
If you want to work with the AV industry, you need to work with the best, and Gracenote is the best.

AVBob,

Actually Gracenote does not provide as good results as AMG (All Music Group), we've tried both.

Gracenote is the same database that iTunes uses. And while it does an ok job most of the time, there are more metadata errors and inconsistencies than AMG's database.

The line about not having to use "data grooming" because XX database is so high quality is just B.S. Grooming is necessary.

Regarding Riptopia's "high quality of data processing", have you tried MusicShifter to compare?

http://www.musicshifter.com/

[AVBob]

You are either working for AMG or uninformed yourself. Don't evoke "CEDIA Gold Standard" when talking about AMG. They have album art and about 500,000 CDs in their database. Gracenote has over 5,000,000 CDs and have a sophisticated system to clean their data. And when combined with Muze album art, there is no better combination for metadata.

You are confused.

All Media Guide (AMG) supplies metadata for the iTunes Music Store, Yahoo Music, Sony Connect, and many others. AMG's database is created by a team of professionals with common standards. AMG is considered to be the gold standard for quality throughout the CEDIA industry.

Gracenote's database is created by collecting amateur user submissions via the internet with no common standards. This method is fine for gathering large amounts of data, but it is a bad way to maintain quality standards.

"Data Grooming", by the way, was created by media conversion companies to deal with the problems of using Gracenote's low quality user-submitted data.

If Riptopia is using Gracenote's data "as-is", without some kind of "grooming" or data post-processing, their customers are getting sub-par service in a highly competitive industry.

I hope this helps to clear up your confusion.

[Ioman]

I think microsoft uses AMG for their Windows Media Player software. Or at least they used to.

[mediaserverguy]

I wanted to comment after reading this thread. I am an avid music server user.
While Gracenote has been around many years and has monopolized the market with their user-submitted data, AMG has built a database that is professionally entered. Gracenote is limited to just a few data fields and most of their results always say rock as a Genre. As well their inflated stats are from many of the same discs and CDR's etc...
AMG has both the breadth and depth of data. That is why companies like Control 4, Qsonix, Virgin Digital, iMuse, MusicGiants, Ready to Play and many more have picked AMG over Gracenote this year. I think COntrol 4 switched as well. I spent some time at Cedia and EHEXPO this year and was impressed with the many AMG logo's at so many booths. The trend is going towards quality. While Gracenote can recognize a lot of CD's, the word on the street that it is only a small difference. With the AMG database you have access to the many subgenre's, bio's, reviews, moods themes, tones of an album and you don't have to scrub the data like you do with Gracenote.
Try to manage your collection on an iPod with all the mispellings.

As a huge media server junkie I see the trend for the devices to be using AMG more in the future.
The movie data is amazing as well. Control 4, Elan, and iMerge all use their DVD recogntion.
We are very lucky they entered into this market.

[FatAndHappy]

You are either working for AMG or uninformed yourself. Don't evoke "CEDIA Gold Standard" when talking about AMG. They have album art and about 500,000 CDs in their database. Gracenote has over 5,000,000 CDs and have a sophisticated system to clean their data. And when combined with Muze album art, there is no better combination for metadata.

You sound like a shill for Gracenote, "AVBob" (lol).

Gracenote's claiming to have five million CDs is a laugh. Is that counting all the duplicates and CD ROMs? I wonder how many real CDs they actually have in there?

And if the Gracenote-Muze combination is such a great combination for metadata, why did Apple change to AMG for the iTunes music store?

[FatAndHappy]

I think microsoft uses AMG for their Windows Media Player software. Or at least they used to.

That's right. So does Musicmatch and a bunch more.

[AVBob]

Ok, I agree that billboard top 100 can be handled fine by AMG. But AV guys need to process a lot of CDs, some old some new, from a lot of different collections, and the combination of Gracenote (breadth) and Muze (depth) just can't be beat. If you don't have some affiliation with AMG directly, you have to admit to that.

(By the way, FatandHappy, I am enjoying this...I think the AV community really needs to get educated)

That's right. So does Musicmatch and a bunch more.

[mediaserverguy]

I have been using a Qsonix device with AMG. Previously had an iMerge.
I spoke to the sales guys at Gracenote and AMG and did my research as well. My collection is a mix of popular and obscure. I must say I was a little hesitant when I bought it, but the recogntion rates are excellent with AMG. Getting the data and depth from one service and not having to deal with all the mispellings and poor genre's of Gracenote and missed cover art with Muze is a great improvement over what I got before. I did not have to edit anything at all. Plus AMG's classical data is awesome. Gracenote's was awful.
You are correct that it is great we can have this discussion. Finally this market is not monopolized by one company. Happy to have a choice!

[jtfields]

But since you are on the subject, why don't you tell us all what the difference is between rips done by Apple's iTunes and EAC?

I assume he is referring to EAC's Secure Mode ripping which verifies that you have a bit-perfect copy. I use it myself. It also generates a logfile so that you can see the result of the rip and what the error rates were.

Also, within a particular lossy format there can be quality differences among codecs. For example, for MP3's LAME is popular for its encoding quality.

[FatAndHappy]

I think the AV community really needs to get educated

I think professional AV installers are pretty smart and understand high quality when they see it.

"According to Audio Commands' John Clancy, Vice-President of Residential Sales, ReadyToPlay provided his company with more metadata than ever retrieved by a CD conversion service. “This is a ground-breaking project for our industry," said Clancy. "We knew the sophisticated needs of our client could only be met by ReadyToPlay working with AMG data. This was a complex project with results that exceeded our expectations.” he said. "

http://www.readytoplay.com/PressReleases/RTPAMGpressreleaseFINAL.pdf

AMG seems to be the wave of future, AVBob. You should study up on providing high quality to your "customers" (oops, I forgot, actually you work for Gracenote!).

[ECA]

BULL,

Very few AV(audio video) persons want to even touch a computer.
You will find a business person in the back, and a few geeks that set it up, and probably fired...
And an assembly line set up.