[RndTbl] EAC equivalent for Linux - found! (more or less)

[Trevor Cordes]

On 2023-03-24 Adam Thompson wrote:
> I, and I know a few of you, have long been looking for an equivalent
> tool under Linux to Windows’ Exact Audio Copy. I just stumbled upon a
> new (to me) possible contender: Whipper. Source at: GitHub -
> whipper-team/whipper: Python CD-DA ripper preferring accuracy over
> speed<https://github.com/whipper-team/whipper> Binaries appear to
> mostly be in your distro’s repos?  Or so the github page reports, at
> least. It does use the new-ish libcdparanoia to do the ripping, under
> the hood – it seems that product has matured and more or less reached
> parity with EAC.

I checked libcdparanoia-based rippers out again maybe 2-3 years back
and it was still massively inferior to EAC.  I really wanted to switch,
but it just wasn't there yet: still.  So unless it's made massive
strides in 3 years, I'm dubious.

I've been doing this EAC stuff since 1997 (when I got my first burner!
coaster city!) and have it down to a science.  Last paranoia attempt I
would do my best to get the same output as EAC, but doing cmp -l on the
results I'd find weird bit flips and other strangeness.  Someone was
reading it wrong.  Since my ears trust EAC after this bazillion years
(and since if I wanted to I could verify with AccurateRip), I'll need
wav files that exactly duplicate EAC bit-for-bit (minus variable
headers).

Not saying you haven't found it!  Just saying every time I get my hopes
up, I get disappointed.  I found paranoia especially bad at handling
scratches.  EAC will only ever really barf on horrifically bad CDs.  It
might take all night to rip, but it will get there if it's possible.

When I get a mo, I'll give it a try again!  Cutting the reboot-to-XP
step out of my ripping would save time and let me kick Bill out of my
basement.

On 2023-03-24 J. King wrote:
> I've been using cdparanoia for several years as the basis of a script
> which will rip multiple discs as a set (I mainly buy operas on CD
> nowadays), convert the result to FLAC, add track and disc number
> metadata, calculate Replaygain, and finally open the files in
> foobar2000 for further tagging.

Ha, ya, guys who are still doing this probably have refined their
method by now, just like us. :-)  My set of scripts and purpose-made
mini-ripper-computer are quite insane at this point.  But it all works
great and lets me get through my regular piles of a 100 CDs pretty
quickly.

Opera, eh?  I'm a huge fan.  I accidentally bought a 2 copies of
Mehta's Turandot fat-box set and I'd love to trade if you have an extra
(legit!) copy of any (complete) rendition of the same, or Butterfly or
Aida or Rigoletto.  Hope you're going to Cosi Fan Tutte: see you there.
(PM me with muug in the subject!)