For those out there who still rip their own CD's there is one Windows application that really does the business when it comes to audio quality and that is Exact Audio Copy (EAC).
And it is FREE!
I have been using EAC since it was a beta test project and it is just awesome - there is a disc-error display which lets you see how the system will re-read damaged discs until it has pulled every single data-bit from the CD. And there is built-in conversion to FLAC if wanted (I prefer WAV - but that is another topic).
The guy which makes EAC does still work to improve it and there is a new version 1.6 which came out in November 2020. I had a couple of glitches with the previous version I was using (1.4) and those appear to have been ironed out and the ripper is running very smoothly now. Also he had to change the CD info lookup from Freedb (now defunct) to another source.
https://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index. ... /download/
For the sceptics - an average CD player just does a single pass with the laser head over a disc, what it doesn't pick up then is 'made up' by internal digital error processing. An 'Accurate Rip' application like EAC retrieves all music data from a CD and creates a 'bit-perfect' music file that can then by played by an audio-streaming device, PC, etc.
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