The philosophy behind AccurateRip is quite simple - each time an audio track is ripped (recorded to computer) it is compared with rips from other people around the world, this allows a confidence report to be generated. The report might say that 4 other people had exactly the same results, this would guarantee your rip was without error, or the report could say that 3 other people disagree with your rip, the likely hood is that your CD has a scratch, or should be cleaned.

After Installation

dBpowerAMP Users: Check AccurateRip option in dBpowerAMP Settings (presented after install), or check Audio CD Input >> Options >> AR Enabled
Exact Audio Copy:  copy accuraterip.dll from c:\program files\illustrate\dbpoweramp  to EAC's install folder 

Configure Your Drives

Before AccurateRip can be used it must find the correct read offset for your CD drive(s), read offset what is that? every CD drive has a slight reading offset, this value tends to be fixed for each type of drive and is constant (if the drive does not support AccurateStream, ie it has a varying offset each time a track is read then AccurateRip cannot be used, it will never configure).

AccurateRip will find the drive offset using keydiscs, a key disc is a CD someone else has ripped (with a configured read offset) the CD must have more than 5 tracks of a certain length. To configure AccurateRip insert known keydiscs into your CD Ripper (a list of keydiscs is on www.accuraterip.com) if it is recognized (there are many different pressings of the same CD, each pressing is different) AccurateRip will automatically offer to find the drive offset.

When an offset has been found for a drive it has to match an offset already in the drive database, otherwise AccurateRip will require 3 keydiscs that give the same offset. Once configured it is recommended that the disc used to configure accuraterip is ripped to check the accuracy of the drive (see below on how to interpret an AccurateRip report).

Important: If AccurateRip requires 3 discs to configure, DO NOT use 3 CDs from a 3 CD Album / Compilation set.

Online / Offline Database

If your computer is connected to the internet it is highly recommended that the Online database is used (default option), if using an offline database it must be downloaded and installed periodically to ensure it is up-to-date.

Ripping with AccurateRip

Before ripping a CD give it a light clean before ripping, it helps. If AccurateRip recognizes a CD as being in its database it can offer a report at the end of ripping, as an example:

Track Ripping Status [Disc ID: 002eb017-eb11ed11]

1 Track not present in database. [d7b33b6f]
2 Accurately Ripped (confidence 3) [e8af03aa]
3 Accurately Ripped (confidence 3) [067140b4]

_______________________

Track(s) Accurately Ripped: 2
**** Track(s) Not Ripped Accurately: 0 ****
Track(s) Not in Database: 1

This report tells us that track 1 was not in the database (perhaps not ripped by the person(s) submitting the disc, perhaps the submitted results conflicted - more on that later), tracks 2 and 3 were Accurately Ripped with a confidence of 3 - this means 3 other people have ripped those tracks and got the exact same result, with a matching Confidence of 2 or more you can be 100% sure that your CD Rip is identical to a perfect rip!

The numbers in the [ ] are a CRC results for ripping, you can ignore those. Say things were not so good, if for example track 2 of your CD had a bad scratch then it would have said it was not accurately ripped (same confidence of 3), if the confidence level was 2 or 3, or higher then you can be fairly certain that your rip has the error, but if the confidence was only 1 then you cannot be sure if it was your Rip or the other guys Rip that had the error.

If a CD returns inaccurate results for all the tracks, then either your CD or the submitter(s) have lots of scratches, or a more likely reason is the pressing of the CD is different.

Your results will only appear in the database after submitted (and the database is rebuilt, which happens once every 2 weeks).

Submitting Your Results

AccurateRip needs submissions to flourish, for each CD your rip (good or bad, it all goes into the database that is how it works) the results are stored locally, after awhile of Ripping many CDs you can submit your results (recommended once a week):

dBpowerAMP: select Options Menu >> Submit AccurateRip Results
Exact Audio Copy: Database >> Send AccurateRip Results

There are two ways to submit results, by HTTP (the internet - have to have a active connection before submitting), or by email. HTTP is the easiest, by email places a file on the desktop to be emailed to the address shown, after emailing delete the file. Submissions take about two weeks to appear in the database. An automatic reminder can be set to display the submit page every xx days.

Proxy settings are available if your computer requires such to reach the internet.

If you have two CD drives you can rip on one drive first, submit the results then re-rip on the second drive.

Prologue

Many thanks to Panda's help in creating the online submission scripts.