Need recommendation for FLAC ripper

[gln2]

David, I had thought you were new to the dBPoweramp ripper program, and could use some tips. But, you've got your ripping process done pat! Thanks for your response.

[davef]

David, I had thought you were new to the dBPoweramp ripper program, and could use some tips. But, you've got your ripping process done pat! Thanks for your response.

Hi Glenn,

Purely based on trial and error and now over 600 ripped CD's...

[DavidD]

Hi Glenn,

Purely based on trial and error and now over 600 ripped CD's...

Wow. How much space is that?

[davef]

Wow. How much space is that?

With the magic of Terabyte drives, not very much actually. I have a 3tb Raid 1 array now with 600+ cd's ripped to both FLAC and 320kb MP3, plus several 100gigs of video files, my NAS indicates only 18% full.

[gln2]

Yes, a 1TB drive is fairly inexpensive and can easily hold all of the average person's music files. I have about 700 CD's mostly ripped to both uncompressed FLAC and 320 MP3 and this is occupying about 400 GB of space. But if you're also storing video, forget about 1TB drives, you'll need all the space you can afford!

[DavidD]

With the magic of Terabyte drives, not very much actually. I have a 3tb Raid 1 array now with 600+ cd's ripped to both FLAC and 320kb MP3, plus several 100gigs of video files, my NAS indicates only 18% full.

What software do you use for playback?

[davef]

What software do you use for playback?

Depends on the device I am using for playback. I do not use a PC for playback so in most cases, playback is handled by the device's internal DLNA client. On my iPhone I use Synology's app, which is called DSAudio.

[DaveHo]

Digging this up as I am starting to get my feet wet ripping my CD collection to FLAC with dBpoweramp as well. Dave or anyone else using it, if you could let me know what your settings & findings are that would be great!

Compression Level. Some Google searching has turned up threads on other forums where people claim they can hear a difference. Seems unlikely to me since after being uncompressed by the player it would be the same as uncompressed FLAC. The default is 5 & which is what I've been using. Sounds great to me though thus far sample size has been limited. What setting are others using? Can you hear a difference? Why offer this setting if there is no audible difference? For control over ripping times?

ReplayGain. I installed the ReplayGain DSP as recommended by the set-up guide. This is the one that does not change the audio, but adds tagging information. Thus far I've left it at the default with both the track & album gain tagging enabled. Is that what I want? Won't having ReplayGain enabled on tracks raise the volume of quiet tracks on album when they are supposed to be quieter than others? Doesn't sound like a good thing. Having album ReplayGain enabled will even out the volume from album to album, right? That does seem like a good thing.

How do I know what players use ReplayGain? Thus far I've listened to the FLAC I've ripped via the Poweramp(unrelated to dBpoweramp) player on my Android device & the USB input on my Denon BD player. I see no ability to control replay gain settings there. Can I assume it doesn't use the replay gain tags? On players that handle ReplayGain, can I disable ReplayGain on playback if I want?

Thanks.

-Dave

[curtis]

Hey Dave,

I leave the compression level to 5, and I don't use ReplayGain.

Doesn't really help you...but just putting it out there.

[Kisakuku]

What setting are others using? Can you hear a difference? Why offer this setting if there is no audible difference? For control over ripping times?

Of course there is no audible difference. It just controls the level of (lossless) compression, so only influences ripping time and resulting file size. If you have a relatively modern CPU, there is no reason not to use maximum compression. Also, EAC (Exact Audio Copy) is the gold standard for CD ripping.