Audio CD ripping - optical drive accuracy listing

I tend to keep my audio local. Therefore, I need an accurate ripping device for my audio CD collection. Recently I found a neat listing in the dbPowerAmp forum, but I added some information as well as ways to filter and sort. Have fun!

Hardware listing

Recommendations

• Try your existing drive before buying one - it may support all required features and it is not that important to have the most accurate one
• Some of the listed drives are no longer available or very expensive - maybe try to find one in used but good condition, that is not too old or worn out
• Use Exact Audio Copy (EAC, Windows Only) with the guide’s settings, if you really wanna archive your audio CD content in best possible quality. These improve your copy even more:
  • Follow this guide
  • Error recovery quality: high
  • Secure mode
  • NEVER normalize (!!)
  • DISABLE C2 error correction (even if supported, most drives have bad implementations, so you want EAC doing the error correction)
    • EAC does error correction by reading multiple times
    • C2 may hide errors before delivering raw data
  • Use Accurate Rip
  • Use FLAC (lossless) as destination format
• If you want to use an external USB drive, buy an internal drive and get a high quality external case for it… this is much better than buying a low accuracy external drive

But why and where are the alternatives?

Well, ripping an audio CD is an art of its own and comes with numerous caveats. This would be the wrong place to explain this, but here is a great article going into deep detail on that .

While Exact Audio Copy is Windows only, it’s not the only tool you could use. However, it is the only one I PERSONALLY know for sure it is working well. Other tools that often get recommended are:

• Linux
  • Whipper
  • cyanrip
  • abcde
  • cdparanoia
• macOS
  • X Lossless Decoder (macOS)

Best drives

• overall: Hitachi-LG BH14NS48 (BD-writer, half-size)
• slim: hp GUE1N (DVD-writer, slim)
• slim BluRay Reader / DVD writer: Panasonic UJ-160

Drives with accuracy

Source: https://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?48320-CD-Drive-Accuracy-2022