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Considerable Improvement with EAC Rips

associated equipment:
-Squeezebox III w/ Transparent Reference Digital Link .wav or .aiff
-dCS Delius
-dCS Purcell Upsampler 1394 (DSD)
-Levison 336
-B&W N802
-Transparent Reference Cabling and Power Conditioning
-ASC Tower Traps

I will be short and to the point. I think error correction, or "secure ripping" is absolutely crucial to hard drive based music server performance and I think the free program EAC probably performs this task better than iTunes. The difference is audible.

On disc after disc, EAC ripped tracks had a more refined, pleasant presentation, greater resolution, improved dynamics, with better imaging and instrument separation than iTunes tracks. In addition, electric and acoustic bass was tighter with more articulation and string attack. The imaging of loud swells in the music that on the iTunes tracks would sound "congested" held together more on the EAC tracks. Vocals were not as boomy or forward sounding. It goes on and on.

I tested with a fellow audiophile and we both heard and were able to describe to each other the same type of improvement on each track in most cases. In every case we heard a material difference in the tracks and on the majority of the discs we could successfully identify and distinguish EAC tracks from iTunes tracks in a blind test.

In some cases, tracks that iTunes ripped rather quickly took over an hour to rip as EAC read and reread bad sectors on the disc. Average rip speed was around 4-6x normal playing speed and on some discs dropped as low as .1x normal playing speed. We used iTunesEncode to allow EAC to automatically use iTunes' encoders to convert the raw EAC wav into .aiff and add it to the iTunes library with the proper metadeta. The entire process of EAC ripping and adding to iTunes is one click, once setup properly.

EAC indicated it was performing error correction on several discs that were thought to be in good enough condition for real time playback on a CD transport.

As a side note, the CD drive we have used has, what based on my research (also known as googling), is the best combination of features for a CD-ROM ripper: 1. it does NOT cache audio when ripping 2. it uses c2 error correction and 3. it utilizes "accurate stream".

I believe the final result with EAC is as good, if not better than the Goldmund Mim36 transport the Squeezebox replaced. On almost every disc I found myself saying "it sounds like the old transport!"

The bottom line is that if you are seriously building an archive on PC you should probably at least test this program. If you can't bring yourself to use EAC, at a minimum, iTunes error correction should be engaged.

This is a tweak for serious listening and like a lot of audiophile upgrades the differences are subtle, but important. I could not identify a difference on my Pro-Ject Headbox SEII, Sennheiser HD600 headphones and PC soundcard, but out of my main system it was obvious to me.

In conclusion, the right drive and EAC has made the system sound better than ever, without a doubt. There may be other software that rips as well or better but I am not aware of it. It also suggests computer software may play an important role in the future of the hobby, especially with USB DACS on the rise.

At the very least, the meticulous manner in which EAC reads and rereads suspicious sections of a disc, the ability to detect and compensate for unwanted drive behavior like caching, the reduced speed at which it rips, the accuracy reports it gives, and the program's reputation give me piece of mind that my files are about as good as they could be.

It is either my imagination or the best free tweak I have found to date.
blackstonejd
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drubin
3,274 posts
 
Blackstone, you mention using the right drive, but don't say what it is.

You make a credible case, but I continue to be skeptical of claims that more precise ripping will make a big difference. After all, your Goldmund transport doesn't do EAC-like re-reading. From everything I know and have read, getting the bits right is not the hard part of all of this. But I appreciate that you are not the only one making these claims.
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drubin
3,274 posts
 
Let me ask, has anyone run EAC under Parallels on an Intel Duo-Core Mac? Had good results?

One ugly question that enters my mind from time to time is whether the PC is a better platform than the Mac for computer audio, for whatever reason. I've never heard anyone say so, but I have a mild impression that the audiophiles who are truly thrilled with their computer audio systems seem to be running Windows machines more than Macs. As a mainly-Mac user for 20 years, I sure hope I'm wrong.
blackstonejd OP
153 posts
 
Drubin, first, I DID say what the "right" drive is. It is a drive that 1) does not cache audio, 2) uses c2 error correction and 3) uses "accurate stream". Mine happens to be a SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S203B. Those three features are not present in all drives and EAC test your drive and tell you what features it has. Whether it caches audio seems to be luck of the draw. If your drive caches audio, EAC has a means of defeating it.

Second, it is true that the Goldmund did not do any re-reading. It was also a $6k "mechanically grounded" stand alone single disc device that was designed to get it right the first time. It was a CD turntable that weighed a ton and had a clamp that sat on the CD. It also read in real time at 1x speed. My internal DVD-ROM with EAC seems to do the same job for $30. It speeds up and it slows down. That doesn't bode well for transports.

I have not tried this myself, but it has also been said in various forums that if you compare checksum values for different rips of the same track, it is not uncommon to get different values each time--the file is different. The error correction is supposed to mitigate this. EAC actually compares your rip with a database of rip checksums and will tell you how accurate it thinks your rip is. It usually falls within 98%-100%.

I am not trying to convince you that it sounds better, I am only adding my personal experience with these forums. I don't have enough technical knowledge to make an actual argument for EAC based on theory. My hope was that more people would try it and report back.
dtc's avatar
dtc
1,047 posts
 
EAC includes an option to compare 2 wav files. It is better than trying to do traditional file compares, since it understands the format and can ignore differences that are not important. I do not know if there is a similar utility to compare Apple lossless files, so I compared some wav files. I have not used EAC much but I think I did this correctly. I compared 2 tracks (first 2 tracks on John Coltrane's Blue Train). I ripped one file with iTunes to Apple lossless and then converted it to wav using iTunes. The other file was ripped directly to wav using EAC. For both tracks the EAC wav compare utility identified repeated samples very early in the track on the iTunes files, but no other differences. As I understand it the repeated samples are related to timing issues at the beginning of a track (lead in/gap differences), rather than data differences. So, if I understand the compare program correctly, there were no significant difference in the data for the tracks ripped by iTunes and EAC. If someone has more familiarity with the compare utility, it would be nice to know your experience and whether my conclusion is correct. Obviously, more trials should be done, especially with CDs with known problems. The one I used was new. Hopefully tomorrow I can listen to the tracks to see if I think I can hear any differences. Blackstonejd - maybe you could take some of the tracks that you hear differences on and try this comparison.
blackstonejd OP
153 posts
 
Dtc, thanks so much for your input here.

Here is the problem. I did the EAC comparison on the tracks below but I got the same sort of results you did. It did not really turn up anything suspicious and this was true comparing EAC paranoid mode tracks to both Itunes error corrected and uncorrected tracks. It pretty much turned up six samples at the beginning as the only difference, but +6 is also the amount of samples that EAC is set to offset on my drive.

I don't think EAC compare does a thorough binary comparison, however. I think its primary function is to determine the drive offset--which I don't think is critical to sound quality. I could be wrong.

BUT, foobar I know does a bit/binary comparison and this is what turned up when I compared the same tracks that EAC said were the same:

Comparing:
"C:\Users \Desktop\EAC TEST\The Driving Of The Year Nail.wav"
"C:\Users \Desktop\EAC TEST\iTunes\Leo Kottke\6- And 12-String Guitar\01 The Driving Of The Year Nail.wav"
Differences found: 10,048,036 sample(s), starting at 0.1579819 second(s), peak: 0.9287415 at 93.9665079 second(s), 1ch

Note: If I read this correctly, it picked up a difference at .15 seconds with a "peak" at 93.9 seconds

Comparing:
"C:\Users\Desktop\EAC TEST\iTunes\Leo Kottke\6- And 12-String Guitar\02 The Last Of The Arkansas Greyhoun.wav"
"C:\Users \Desktop\EAC TEST\The Last of The Arkansas Greyhounds.wav"
Differences found: 17,147,577 sample(s), starting at 0.1472336 second(s), peak: 0.8823242 at 84.7079592 second(s), 1ch

Comparing:
"C:\Users\Desktop\EAC TEST\iTunes\Neil Young\Live Rust\05 My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue 1.wav"
"C:\Users\Desktop\EAC TEST\My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue).wav"
Differences found: 22,194,539 sample(s), starting at 0.0000000 second(s), peak: 0.8122864 at 0.7691383 second(s), 2ch

Comparing:
"C:\Users\Desktop\EAC TEST\iTunes\Sting\Soul Cages\02 All This Time.wav"
"C:\Users \Desktop\EAC TEST\All This Time.wav"
Differences found: 25,913,572 sample(s), starting at 0.0000000 second(s), peak: 1.5827637 at 117.6406349 second(s), 1ch

I am not sure what conclusions to draw from this result but I suspect the differences I am hearing are attributable to the millions of samples that are different? Could this data be right? Could it be millions of samples? These discs were all in good to excellent condition. All of the iTunes tracks were error corrected.
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