willyhoops;193920 Wrote: > It's a shame that the accurate rip market is divided into a choice > between these two products. By being free EAC ironically kind of > destroyed the market so that one ends up using one of these two. EAC is > dead slow, dbpowerAMp is buggy (fails to rip last track on % of discs > with % of hardware, crashes machines to the point of having to turn > them off at the power), and both of them have dreadful interfaces with > long learning curves for what is basically a pretty simple product. > Moral - for the good of the world don't give away software for free > unless you have done the perfect job becuase it will distort > innovation.
Disagree lots :) Firstly EAC is only really slow if you are pretty paranoid. You can make it fast but lose the certainty (and indeed, the whole point of it!). I think the flexibility is good. Secondly EAC is not so hard to set up - there are loads of guides, including on the Slim wiki. Just follow it, and in 20 minutes you're done. Yes you may not understand everything fully, but it will do what is required. (BTW I do agree that there are improvements that could be made.) Thirdly it's hard to claim that giving people free software that may be buggy or difficult to use is stifling innovation (or preventing companies from making money). Just by making it open source, anyone could add to it and sort out the problems. Even if it is not open source, anyone could reproduce its functionality easily enough and try to charge money; their success would depend on people's value of what they add. For almost every computer task there is free software and money software. The money software is often, but not always, better, and the developers make their return. I can't think of many situations where the presence of free software has precluded the ability to charge for a 'nicer' product. The obvious example is Microsoft, which has made loads out of Windows and Office when free versions exist; there are many more examples though. The issue with EAC is that only a very small minority of users actually want 'bit-perfect' rips - for most people, fast and 'about right' is enough. Thus EAC is designed to be used by people who care, and these will normally be people who are willing to give it some time. I personally think that Slim Devices/Logitech should package up ripping software (specifically, pre-configured EAC plus AccurateRip), coming to a suitable financial agreement with the respective developers. That would make the SB more of a 'works out of the box' product too. Adam -- adamslim SB3 into Derek Shek d2, Shanling CDT-100, Rotel RT-990BX, Esoteric Audio Research 859, Living Voice Auditorium IIs, Nordost and Anti-cables http://www.last.fm/user/AdamSlim/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ adamslim's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=7355 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34232 _______________________________________________ ripping mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/ripping
