This AUDIO CACHING business

CD, DVD and (Ultra HD) Blu-ray Writers LiteOn / PLDS / Sony Writer
#1

One of the reasons I’ve bought my Liteon dvd 163 was that Erik Deppe (CD Speed) has crowned it with “the king of DAE” title. For the past year 'n a half I’ve been ripping happily with it, amongst other things.

Lately though, the Engineers of LiteOn fixed the firmware so that the drive caches audio. Also the 163D and the 165 are caching. According to Andre Wiethof and other EAC gurus, caching is terrible! And indeed, when I let EAC test my 163 with a recent fw and set the extraction options, I get about 11x average ripping speed in secure mode.
So my king of DAE went down from 38x average in AudioGrabber to 11x in EAC secure!

Of course I can downgrade to gh5e and I did for awhile and was getting more than 20x again. But I was asking myself: Are the LiteOn engineers really so stupid? If they are, why did I get a Liteon at the first place? So I made a bit of research and my conclusion and MHO is:

Audio caching is ONLY bad for the secure mode of EAC!
For anything else its actually good! including for burst mode in EAC.
Would you rather buy a Diskman with or without shockproof? Sure with shockproof! What is shockproof? It’s audio data caching!

Actually it is the secure mode that is incompatible with audio caching.
Secure mode is reading every sector twice and compares the two. If they are the same it goes further. If the drive caches, then EAC gets the second read from the buffer, meaning 2 identical reads even if there was an error. So when Andre invented the secure mode he was not planning it for a drive that caches.

The LiteOn has 512Kb buffer, why not use it?
I agree that EAC is probably the best ripper there is, and it’s my favorite, but nevertheless I went back to the caching GH5Q again. I’m using secure mode only for special things, the rest I do in burst. And even EAC says that burst mode is sometime better, specially for scratched cd’s…

I believe that overall, audio caching is better, definitely for on-the-fly burning.

I think it’s time for Andre Wiethoff to develop a secure mode which is compatible with the king of DAE! :cool:

#2

What’s EAC?

I use Deppe’s latest DAE (from cdspeed2000) and if needed convert to mp3s using dbpowerAMP’s dmC (from dbpoweramp.com). I use ECDC 5 Plat. to burn. I’ve tried Nero but couldn’t figure out how to change the order of the songs I wanted to burn.

I don’t burn on the fly so it is not important to me. I always burn from HD and my Philips PCRW804 does a great job. Only 8x but sparkling quality (it was a birthday present and I don’t want to pay for a Lite-On 48125 when what I have works).

Sounds like you know what you’re doing, any tips to make things easier for the rest of us who are still figuring it all out?

#3

EAC = exact audio copy
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
According to many audiophiles the best audio extraction program. It does a lot more too, like mp3, audio editing, database and it’s a decent burner as well. It costs 1 postcard :wink:

To change the order of the songs in Nero, just drag a song to where you want it in the track list, it’s that simple.

Everyone has a favorite setup. I use EAC for extraction and mp3 encoding/decoding and Feurio for compiling and burning the audio. Data I do with Nero, cloning with Clonecd. CDRwin and Fantomcd for some other jobs…

Special tips? Just keep on keeping on… :cool:

#4

I tried dragging and dropping. It didn’t work for me. Oh well. I’m used to ECDC so I’ll stick with it. I’ll check out EAC. I usually peak out at 40x or so with DAE.

#5

EAC is not the fastest, only the best quality.
Chances you will grow away from ECDC, most advanced users sneer at it heavily, but if it does the job for you, ok. It usually shows its ugly face if you install other burning programs, and when you try to get rid of it…

#6

I couldnt give a shite about EAC so should audio caching make me loose sleep?

#7

How does EAC compare to CDex for extraction, especially CDex’s ‘Full Paranoia’ Ripping mode?

#8

I only use ECDC for burning. I had Nero and ECDC once and learned the hard way. I haven’t had any problems with it, especially since I removed Nero. Why sneer if all you use it for is burning? DAE can also check quality of ripped audio against original. I’ve never had an error during the few times I’ve had it check, so I leave the error check off.

#9

I think people sneer at EZCD because it’s so… bad. Especially 5, which is bloated and ugly looking (imo).

I’ll admit, I used EZCD when I had my HP4200 2x1x8 writer, version 3.0 and 4.0. Back then there really wasnt much else out there to use, or what there was, wasn’t really friendly if you were new to the whole CD-R world.

Another reason may be the trauma caused by the constant BUFFER UNDERRUN errors you’d get.

#10

Ugh, EZCD Coaster Creator. Glad I never installed that POS on any of my systems.

:Z

#11

I would really appreciate some input on the true subject of this thread. There are so many Liteon owners who rip their audio with EAC in secure mode, would be great to hear their opinion.

Many thanks :cool:

#12

I have never understand the use of audio caching either… Is it really usefull for copying on the fly? I can copy on the fly with my ltd163 gh0e.

#13

I don’t pretend to understand it fully either, but it’s logic that a buffer helps the device to supply a steady data stream. Without a buffer, the smallest hiccup in the reading process or in the pci bus might mean an audible error, or worse.

I think the example of the Diskman I gave is valid. A diskman without a buffer will skip or jitter on the smallest shock.

#14

I’ve tried ripping w/ EAC a few months ago, the option menus are cluttered (read too damn many), and it’s slow. Even though I followed all the directions of this guide, the result was no different than if I were to use AudioCatalyst, which uses the Xing codec. Would appreciate it if someone could give me some links to better guides so I can try the process again. BTW, I get 2 files after the rip, the WAV and MP3. Couldn’t figure out how to instruct EAC to audio delete the WAV files.

#15

EAC’s menus are a bit cluttered, and it’s not the most elegant and refined program. It’s also not the fastest audio ripper, but it isn’t trying to be the fastest. I used AudioGrabber once, but I would occasionally get a click or a skip in a track ripped with it. With EAC (at least in secure mode) I have never had anything but perfect rips, even on scratched CDs. Most rippers will skip over errors without telling you anything, or re-read them until it thinks it has the correct information. EAC will tell you about any and all read errors, and keep reading and using error correction until it either gets the correct data, or if it can’t get the data, it will tell you about it and you can have it ignore the error and continue or you can tell it to abort the rip for that track.

Regarding AudioCatalyst, I sincerely hope that people stop using this program and the Xing mp3 codec. The codec cuts off higher frequencies, but I’m sure some people can’t tell the difference, so that’s fine for them. I choose LAME for encoding because it sounds better to me.

Getting back to the topic of this thread, I think caching is a good thing. EAC’s secure mode simply wasn’t written with caching in mind, but that doesn’t make caching bad. There will probably (hopefully) be an improved version of EAC that takes advantage of audio caching drives.

#16

For anyone really interested in EAC, here’s the address of the English language forum of EAC, where Andre, the author is participating as an active member:
http://www.digital-inn.de/forumdisplay.php?forumid=14

For those looking for another good ripper, there’s Cdex, a fine and reliable freeware, which many find simpler than EAC. Check it up at:
http://www.cdex.n3.net/

#17

CDex’s paranoia extraction mode is an old extraction method very stressing for the drive’s motor. The EAC’s secure mode its far more advanced.

#18

Let me just post the EAC guide for dummies here so I don’t forget.:bigsmile: And another one. Plus discussion.

#19

I guess you just have to decide: Guaranteed quality with EAC or penile self-enhancement with the “faster” proggies.