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Ripping Speed? Wave Files/Sound Quality

I just started dumping alot of my music into my 750 gig external hard drive and was wondering if a slower ripping speed will have an effect on sound quality? I have been using J River Media Jukebox 12. My burner i don't think can rip any slower than 4x or 8X. The strange thing is that i have my CD-Rom set to rip at the slowest setting and i also have JRiver MJ 12 to rip at 8x, but when i see my ripping progress in MJ12 it regularly shows the CD's ripping at 14X and 15x? But once in awhile a CD will slow down from the beginning and rip at between 4x and 8x(fluctuates during the ripping process). Am i getting less fidelity with these higher speed rips and is there a way to correct this? I listened to a cd that just by chance the machine and program decided to rip at between 4x and 8x and it sounds really good. Just trying to get the best fidelity while taking all this time to rip my collection into the hard drive. Would prefer not to have to do this twice!
Thanks for any help.
seekburk
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drubin
3,274 posts
 
Thanks, very clear and helpful. And I'm sorry to be so dense about this, but would EAC be meaningfully better at capturing the data of an audio CD than, say, iTunes, which also rips at whatever speed it needs and uses error correction?

All of this argues for the inherent superiority -- theoretically at least -- of a hard drive based music system, doesn't it, since the data will be captured with whatever it takes to read it all, in contrast to the real-time reading of your typical CD transport (the new PS Audio transport will be an exception). Assuming jitter is managed sufficiently well.
mlsstl
1,438 posts
 
I personally don't know how extensive the iTune error correction system is. EAC has an "Accurip" feature that compares your rip against a database and gives you a "confidence" reading for the quality of your rip.

However, over the years I've not had too much problem ripping disks. As noted before, I do most of mine on a Linux system, but I have done ripping on a variety of other systems over the years and never been displeased with results when the CD is in good condition. I use a music server with a Squeezebox and an external Lavry DA10 DAC. It handles my collection in a way that allows me to enjoy the music without constantly obsessing over things.
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drubin
3,274 posts
 
>Squeezebox and an external Lavry DA10 DAC

That's exactly what I'm running right now.
shazam
205 posts
 
For a long time, EAC was the only software that did truly accurate ripping because it was the only one that did data validation. Many (most?) others have caught up and are, for the most part, just as good from a technical standpoint. So long as the ripping software has a "secure" or "paranoid" mode that verifies the data, you can feel pretty good about it. Even better if it verifies the rip against a database like EAC (EZ-CDDA does this now too).

Extraction is actually one of the most solid aspects of PC Audio technology. And if you compress to a lossless format (like FLAC), that is equally if not more solid of a technology.
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