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Whipper: Accurate Audio CD Ripping

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Re: Whipper: Accurate Audio CD Ripping

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very promising: supports macOS 10.8 and later, last updated in 2021, and it read my whole CD collection in just a couple of minutes. Thank you for the suggestion.

I wonder if it's still being developed. It's concerning that it's still an Intel-only build instead of a Universal build that can run natively on Apple Silicon hardware.

I recently contacted the developer about this. He replied that the only reason he hasn’t released a native Apple Silicon build is that he doesn’t have an Apple silicon Mac yet. I was tempted to fund raise and send him one!

Re: Whipper: Accurate Audio CD Ripping

#152

So why would ripping CDs result in less than perfect copies - I thought digital information would almost always be read correctly?

Audio CDs and data CD-ROMs use different encoding modes.

Data CDs have an extra layer of error correction. Audio CDs have less error correction because small bit errors are not a big deal for your listening experience. Most CD players quietly interpolate over small errors in a way that you probably don't even notice.

Re: Whipper: Accurate Audio CD Ripping

#153
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>your cd rips are 8-12x more accurate than anything streamed of Spotify?... >...How did you calculate a factor by which lossless is better than lossy? I specifically typed accurate, not better.

>your cd rips are 8-12x more accurate than anything streamed of Spotify?... >...How did you calculate a factor by which lossless is better than lossy? >I specifically typed accurate, not better. Yeah OK, that's just wording. Which two factors did you specifically compare, that gave you the 8-12x figure?

The 'two factors' are not two factors. Frequency range, bit depth, and whatever lossy algorithm is used, all play a role. A lossless rip matches the original audio as stored on the CD. A lossy rip will commonly 'lose' between 8-12x of that information. Lossy audio, like mp3 and m4a, 'throw away' information that is otherwise maintained in a lossless audio file. Hearing the difference is not being questioned, but the integrity.

Re: Whipper: Accurate Audio CD Ripping

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why MP3? It's simply not a great codec to target. If you have a music server, then why not flac? If space is an issue, then why not Opus (which almost everything supports now) or HE-AAC which has nearly as much support as MP3. You can target the same MP3 bitrate and end up with a more transparent encoding. You can decrease the bitrate and have the same quality as your mp3 encode with a smaller bitrate. I honestly don…

Well, I've done a number of ABX listening tests (apt install abx) and to my chagrin simply could not tell the difference. I challenge everyone who feels strongly about this to actually bust out abx and do some listening tests comparing flac to LAME-encoded extreme MP3s and prove to yourself that flac matters at all on your equipment. And then share your results with us if you want! https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpage…

The dinamics of mp3 is much lower.

Re: Whipper: Accurate Audio CD Ripping

#155
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why MP3? It's simply not a great codec to target. If you have a music server, then why not flac? If space is an issue, then why not Opus (which almost everything supports now) or HE-AAC which has nearly as much support as MP3. You can target the same MP3 bitrate and end up with a more transparent encoding. You can decrease the bitrate and have the same quality as your mp3 encode with a smaller bitrate. I honestly don…

"Why MP3? It's simply not a great codec to target. If you have a music server, then why not flac?" I still encode to plain old 128k mp3. Here's why ... First, I keep the WAV originals and those are what I listen to on my music system, in my music server, etc. Second, if I am using the mp3s it is because I am going to some unknown place to interface with some unknown tool to play these - let's just make life simple an…

I'm really sorry for dogpiling on your setup here, but why keep wav files rather than flac? Flac files are lossless compression, so you can always get the exact same wav out of them, they take less disk space and they can hold Metadata. Flac support is also really common these days.

Re: Whipper: Accurate Audio CD Ripping

#156
post #22
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait what? How does this work? Which CDs had music stored before the start of the first track?

Every audio CD has a list of tracks with their respective start times, so you can jump to specific songs. The first song also specifies a start time, which does not have to be zero. If it isn’t, the player will skip some of the audio, but you can still reverse back into it. It’s funny how a CD is more like a tape with contiguous content and an index, rather than a file system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_al…

WHAT THE FUCK

I bought hundreds of CDs from 1990 through to about 2005, some of them on that list, and I never had a clue about this technique.

I knew about hidden tracks at the end after a silent gap - e.g. Nevermind had a hidden track after 10 minutes of silence at the end, was fun to schedule it on a CD jukebox in a bar...

Re: Whipper: Accurate Audio CD Ripping

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it's still being developed. It's concerning that it's still an Intel-only build instead of a Universal build that can run natively on Apple Silicon hardware.

I recently contacted the developer about this. He replied that the only reason he hasn’t released a native Apple Silicon build is that he doesn’t have an Apple silicon Mac yet. I was tempted to fund raise and send him one!

My understanding is one can build a Universal app on either platform. Debugging the Apple Silicon side does require an Apple Silicon Mac but a well-developed app with a constrained feature set might "just work." They could make a Universal build and offer it as a beta to those who wish to try.

I don't know where they're located but a refurbished Mac mini from Apple is $589. AWS EC2 M1 Mac instances are ~$16/day ($0.65/hour, 24-hour minimum).

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/FGNR3LL/A/refurbished-mac...

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2022/07/general-a...

https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/dedicated-hosts/pricing/#On-Deman...

Re: Whipper: Accurate Audio CD Ripping

#159

So why would ripping CDs result in less than perfect copies - I thought digital information would almost always be read correctly?

Unlike DVDs, CDs don't have sector information. They're just a long continuous spiral of bits, so there is no easy way to tell exactly where on the spiral the head is pointing, especially as many CD players, when you tell them "go to here", will miss slightly. To compensate for this, data CDs include intermittent data on the spiral that says "you are here", but audio CDs don't do this. The only way to ensure that you…

The real question is why you'd ever need a bit-perfect copy of an audio CD when CD players never gave bit-perfect playback in the first place and nobody could tell the difference.

Edit: honestly I don't get it. Do you export all raw images from your camera to PNG too? JPG is good enough, and single-pass CD rips are just fine too.

Re: Whipper: Accurate Audio CD Ripping

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Audiophile nerds have moved on to digital formats that are much higher res than CD or have gone 100% analog.

There is a commercially available digital format/medium that has higher res than CD? Like, there are 96kHz discs being sold out there? And there are labels out there mastering and producing these discs? Sorry this is news to me! I thought 96kHz encodes were upsamples or homemade rips from analog formats.

Yes, obviously, its called SACD and its a couple of decades old. Even DAT is better than cd, if you're only comparing sampling rate. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD
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