Foobar2000, EAC and Plextools Ripping Test

Intro

The following page shows the results of a test I ran using the aforementioned ripping tools. All the apps are capable of error detection and recovery and I wanted to see which were capable of consistently retrieving the same data on seperate passes. For the purposes of this test I used a disc I have managed in the past to get consistent recoverable errors.

A copy of the log files can be found here: logfiles.zip. Foobar2000 doesn't generate a log file but does report any attempts to recover any errors within it's console window.

Foobar2000 Config

• Foobar2000 v0.9 beta 8
• Read Mode: Secure
• Allow slow down: disabled

Plextools Config

• Plextools Professional v2.21
• Recover Best Sector
• Retries: 10
• Maximum Errors: 10,000

EAC Config

• Exact Audio Copy v0.95 pb3
• Secure Read Mode
• Drive caches audio data: checked
• Drive has Accurate Stream feature: checked
• C2: unchecked

Source

• Original CD
• Artist: Soul II Soul
• Album: Club Classics Vol One
• Year: 1989

Results

Track Number	Foobar2000 rip 1	Foobar2000 rip 2	Plextools rip 1	Plextools rip 2	EAC rip 1	EAC rip 2
01	0e296a9b	0e296a9b	0e296a9b	0e296a9b	0e296a9b	0e296a9b
02	d29aa5f6	d29aa5f6	d29aa5f6	d29aa5f6	d29aa5f6	d29aa5f6
03	aea195a3	aea195a3	aea195a3	aea195a3	aea195a3	aea195a3
04	8930d922	8930d922	8930d922	8930d922	8930d922	8930d922
05	d3cff004	d3cff004	d3cff004	d3cff004	d3cff004	d3cff004
06	da4b2d50	da4b2d50	da4b2d50	da4b2d50	da4b2d50	da4b2d50
07	d67844f6	d67844f6	d67844f6	d67844f6	d67844f6	d67844f6
08	c959eed2	71b4edb1	c4162e1a	4e1ca8b2	ad0375b7	fc584d1e
09	9ab7ef8a	9ab7ef8a	9ab7ef8a	9ab7ef8a	9ab7ef8a	9ab7ef8a
10	130309a7	130309a7	130309a7	130309a7	130309a7	130309a7

Observations

• For my drive and this disc, all three apps managed to detect and report the errors.
• None of the apps managed to successfully achieve consistent CRCs on subsequent re-rips.
• Foobar2000 reported that the secure mode rereading was successful. Yet, subsequent re-rips returned a different CRC.
• Plextools reported that is was unable to recover errors.
• EAC reported suspicious positions.
• Foobar2000s secure ripping is new and still in beta. So no definitive conclusions should be made yet.