Enjoyed a trip to the library. Brought home seven books, ten CDs and five DVDs. The CDs will be ripped, of course and two of the DVDs are from a spankin' new library acquisition - the complete PBS/Ken Burns series, JAZZ. I brought back the first two in the series. The other three are for the kids - one each, National Geographic, Nova, Nature.
I'm interested to know what process/method you use to rip your CDs. I'm a EAC/Lame/The GodFather man myself.
EAC/FLAC
One of the things I am fighting right now is that my "good" reader/writer went KAPOOT! I have tried using a relatively simple Samsung unit, quite modern, but honestly my ancient Pacific Digital DVD-ROM reader rips with far fewer errors on any kind of media. It's funny, I paid about four hundred dollars for a top grade Plextor, which went nuts and burned itself up, and it was a "little better" at reading than the old DVD ROM internal that I paid about forty dollars for.
I have never seen one write better than the Plextor, though, and I've been through a lot of writers.
I use a number of software players for various reasons. For when I connect directly to the M-Audio sound card I use Winamp, because it sounds better than any other I've tried.
I also use a Logitech external DAC which accesses Windows Explorer and saves its own library file on each drive (and thus accesses my entire 2TB of music files) via USB. It makes even better coupling to my audio system (no, I'm not running computer speakers of any sort, other than a set of Klipsch Pro Media for quick background music, but my system is connected to my computer through the Logitach device).
What I really want to get (for playback) eventually is a Squeezebox and have the best Burr Brown chips installed, along with a beefed up power supply and modified output stage which is more tolerant of impedance mismatches in the downline stream.
Oh, some of the AudioPhools I have been in contact with online swear by removing the power supply from the Squeezebox entirely and subbing in a system of rechargeable lithium batteries. This removes a level of EMI from the unit (the main reason to get this part of the process out of the computer box, by using an external DAC in the first place), offering the most pure DC power available to us, supposedly. It makes sense, but my way of thinking is that you need more current on certain occasions than small batteries can produce and removing the power supply, beefing and buffing it up some, to a remote location and cabling it back with Teflon shielded solid silver twisted cable would be better for my needs. That way, you could use "left hand rule" to your advantage as you bring the cable, carrying your power supply, back into the unit from various angles. Besides I hate depending on re-chargeable batteries for anything.
