……………,…and do not forget, money 
Indeed, but there appears to be a trial period with dbpoweramp which would deal with my immediate ripping needs.
My issue is going through the learning curve of how to use it. I don’t have a great deal of spare time on my hands.
I would even welcome it if Antipodes completely removed the ripping function from their servers. Only the bare essentials should be installed on the servers, and only those things that improve my sound. I feel completely at ease with Antipodes in this regard and will continue to work with them. I’m only interested in sound quality and server/player solutions that enhance my audio experience. Everything else should be omitted from the servers. And yes, dbpoweramp costs money—€40, I think. But you can use it not only for ripping but also for editing almost any audio file. Do you really want to go through the cumbersome process of editing or post-processing audio files on the server itself?
Today disagree. I purchased Antipodes because it has a ripping function. I shouldn’t have to walk upstairs to another part of the house to rip a CD, then spend time editing it, backing it up and moving the various files to the server. But that’s my opinion. I can understand why streaming in so popular now.
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The strongest evidence that someone truly values timely CD ripping is whether they have pursued redundancy. For example, they might keep a PC or Mac available to handle ripping when the Antipodes service is down. If timely ripping were genuinely that important, it would be easy to justify investing a little extra effort into an alternative method. Yet, ironically, those most derisive of Antipodes handling of the ripping service’s downtime seem the least willing to do so.
Last night I ripped a SACD that Acoustics Sounds delivered yesterday. Ripping is done on a Sony blu-ray player that’s attached to a TV in a spare bedroom. It takes a number of steps to accomplish this but the end result always justifies the effort. Ripping CDs using dBPoweramp can be accomplished in far fewer steps. Not once did I ever consider this a poor use of my time as the end result always justified the effort. I should be embarrassed to admit, but I kind of enjoy feeling of accomplishment that comes from this effort.
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There are plenty, e.g. Aurender ACS100, Innuos Zen Mini, Naim Uniti Core, Shanling CR60, Bluesound Vault 2i to name a few.
There are video tutorials on YouTube. See the one named “Ripping my CDs to a FLAC archive using dbPoweramp” as a quick skim suggests that it’s a good one.
Totally agree with that.
I had a reflexion about this and I believe a “no fallback” situation is not desirable for future FW Update
I’d like to suggest a very simple fallback mode that would greatly improve robustness without changing your current metadata provider or business model: a “Raw Rip (No Metadata)” option.
The idea would be:
- If the Advanced Meta-Data API fails after a reasonable timeout/retry policy, the server still rips the CD to FLAC (or WAV → FLAC) and stores it locally.
- Files are written under a dedicated folder, for example:
RawRips/<timestamp>_<DiscID>/trackNN.flac - Tags are minimal placeholders (Unknown Artist / Raw Rip / Track NN, etc.), just enough for the internal library logic.
- This folder is fully accessible through the existing SMB/NFS shares, so the user can later retag and rename the files using an external tagger (dBpoweramp, Mp3tag, MusicBrainz Picard, etc.) on a PC or Mac.
- Once a “Raw Rip” folder has been manually tagged, the server can pick it up on the next library rescan (or with a dedicated “Rescan Raw Rips” action) and treat it as a normal album in the main library.
This approach would:
- Provide graceful degradation when the metadata provider is temporarily down: users can still rip and archive their CDs instead of being blocked.
- Avoid introducing any new metadata provider, licence or aggregation logic – it’s purely a local fallback.
- Limit UI changes to an optional setting (“Allow raw rip when metadata is unavailable”) and possibly a dedicated “Raw Rips” view or filter.
For power users who are comfortable managing tags on a mounted share, this would be extremely valuable: we can keep using the Antipodes transport and ripper quality, but finish metadata work ourselves when the online service is not reachable, and work in bulk session !!
@MarkCole What do you think about that ? feasible ?
Best regards,
Vincent
I absolutely agree. It may well be that the ripping function isn’t important to every Antipodes buyer. But it certainly is to some of us, and when I want to use it I expect it to work 100% of the time. If it was a £100 component then no. But on a £10K component absolutely yes.
I fundamentally disagree with this. I have little spare time on my hands to rip CDs, and when I actually find a small window then it needs to work. This is ripping CDs, not rocket science. This is a £10K component, not a £100 one. One final point: I spend enough time in front of my laptop, and I get thoroughly sick of the sight of it (I’m sure the feeling is mutual). Hence as much time away from it as possible is great.
I have found time to download dbpoweramp this afternoon, and I’m working my way through my CDs as I write this. Yes it’s an easy process to understand, but nonetheless it means other stuff on my never ending to do list hasn’t got done.
Rant aside, and at risk of derailing this thread, the upside to my incarceration in front of my laptop is that I have installed Plex, and I managed to get it to talk to my K41 (it’s actually quite intuitive). My music library on my SSD is now on the Plex server, which could be very handy indeed. I’ve bought a Cayin DAP, and want to get the flac files from my K41 onto the DAP. Based on advice from Mark C this is the best way of going about it.
It will also mean that I can transfer my new rips from my laptop drive onto the K41 through Plex. Very handy.
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For what its worth, back when I was ripping cd’s I found EAC rips to sound better than dbPoweramp rips. Every time. No idea why.
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Some friends and I did this comparison but could find no differences. Both apps are highly configurable with some settings that allow one to optimize usage for the specific optical drive. That might explain some of the differences, though I think I recall that these only come into play when the drive struggles to read the data. Though the settings themselves may cause the drive to struggle less often.
There was a list posted at one time showing the drives that result in the fewest errors when matching rips to their database. I had obtained one of the better ones back when I embarked on ripping my entire library. I stopped sweating small stuff like this.
The number one reason to use either dBPoweramp or EAC is that both ensure a “perfect rip”. Even a small smudge on the bottom of a disc can cause a failure to create a perfect rip. Most other ripping products will just take a guess at what the correct data should be when a smudge or scratch might prevent accurate retrieval. I will obsess about stuff like this. It’s exactly the reason I would never use a ripper that can’t use the AccurateRip database. I rarely buy CDs these days but when I do, it’s usually used CDs that I buy.
These days I either play the cd or stream from Qobuz or similar, as both sound better than playback from a hard drive. EDIT: in my system
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I must say I’m getting a bit unnerved here. I do have about 50 UHQCDs waiting to be ripped. And I have to take them with me to our Island Home when I leave for the Holidays and then I can’t rip them anymore.
Would be great to at least get a straight answer from Antipodes, whether this dysfunction is permanent now or if there is ever going to be a fix.
There’s a lots of BS in the official responses currently unfortunately. Antipodes is losing credibility here.
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None of my colleagues said anything nonsensical here!
Launching a product to the market in the EU and with a dysfunction occurring, cannot be put aside by stating it’s a third party component fault Antipodes cannot do anything about it. The product’s functional integrity is always solely the manufacturer’s responsibility.
Based on EU law, if there is a functionality described in the manual which cannot be executed, that is a serious product flaw which can lead to a mandatory retraction of the product from the market. This will of course result in lawsuits and legal compensation of the buyers.
It has become painstakingly obvious that Antipodes does not understand the legal mandates emerging from selling products in the EU. Handling of this issue has been mismanaged from the get go. Business School books are full of cases about companies going bust as a result of ignoring justified consumer/ customer complaints.
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