DbPoweramp. Fast, efficient, simple setup, great auto metadata.
I think you’re right that the data providers might be the crux of the metadata issue, but I still find db poweramp overly difficult to setup and use. Maybe I’m just unrealistic in my expectations, and db poweramp may be the best there is, but it falls a long way short of what I consider acceptable. You wouldn’t be happy if your streamer needed to be rebooted every other album and thats how I see having to edit metadata.
Perhaps streaming hires from Tidal/Qobuz is the answer for me, but the OP asked about ripping software and my honest opinion is that I havent found one I could endorse, and having paid for the db poweramp collection of programmes, I feel it doesn’t perform as expected.
I don’t question the quality of the music retrieved from the CD, but the metadata, artwork and album recognition is woeful and falls a long way short of my expectations. When you set it to find missing artwork and half the tracks on an album come back with a different cover to the rest, I’d say it doesn’t work.
Other people may be happy spending days correcting errors, but not me. It doesn’t meet the standard I expect, but YMMV.
EAC has long been surpassed by DBP and XLD
If you search for EAC or dbpoweramp you will see proponents for both.
I use EAC and it performs perfectly for me.
When I started ripping my CD collection I used EAC to begin with. No complaints about the quality of the rips but it was taking the best part of 20 minutes per CD. DBP does it usually in under 5 minutes on the same computer and the rips are every bit as good. No brainer as far as I’m concerned and DBP’s built in tag editor and format converter are the cherries on top. The built in batch converter was great for converting my library from FLAC to mp3 for the memory stick to plug in to the car as well.
I have ripped 700 CDs in the past 3 months with dBp and am wondering what you find overly difficult. The dBp documentation gives a few recommendations to set up secure ripping instead of the default burst mode, which admittedly involves some testing of the capabilities of the CD drive. This is probably unavoidable as drives differ. But seems straightforward with the documentation.
Once set up, I pop up the CD, check metadata and fix it as necessary (depends on the music you are listening to, it is not that often for me although I have some odd music), and press Rip.
At the danger of someone accusing me of shilling for Roon, there is that option. Roon has a lot of additional metadata and tends to fill in the gaps quite reliably. You have the option of ripping directly into Roon for least work. I use dBp anyway and fix up the metadata there, so that the files have at least the basics & covers correct. Then I copy them to Roon.
One way or another, ripping 1500 CDs is going to be some work, it is unavoidable.
I have not seen this once with dBp for 700 ripped CDs but maybe I am doing something different. How do you “set it to find missing artwork”?
I too have ripped over 600 CDs on dBPoweramp with only a handful causing issue e.g. copy protection, rare CD etc
The biggest issue was boredom doing it all! 
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dBP has found a few hidden tracks on cds that I never knew there.
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Did you manage to get it to rip any of the hidden Track 0s? (Ones before the main tracks.) Damien Rice and David White are a couple of examples where this happens. If so, what did you need to do?
Yes. And David Gray was one of those track zeros. I don’t remember doing anything other than defaults. Sorry.
Thanks. I must have another go.
I did, usually they were simply listed automatically as track #0 and ripped without issue. IIRC in a small number of cases I had to enable the “defective by design” mode in the dBp ripper settings.
Edit: If I recall the dBp docs correctly, it also depends on the CD drive whether it will read them
Good call - I might have to try multiple machines.
If you’re on a Mac XLD is free and rips as well as Dbp easy to setup and edit metadata
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If you have a lot to do and likely will continue to rip occasionally then I would suggest you get say a dell optiplex second hand, it will be like 80 quid and put a spare drive in it. Install daphile on it, and you have your self an automated ripper.
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I have been using windows media but it ain’t been capturing all the album artwork for some reason. So I want to try it out on the Mac either using Flac or ALAC software, displaying album/artwork on my newly bought NDX2. I think showing the album/artwork on the display would be a nice touch instead of a music note.
Good call. I have 3 pre-owned Dell Optiplex computers that I bought from a company called Refurb.io, and they are excellent. Fast, current, stable. They’re all I need because I’m not a gamer.
I mention the optiplexes because the larger models have four sata ports so reasonably a solution for a powerful NAS as well. Obviously they are as ugly as sin so you dont want them near the hifi, but then a server shouldn’t be near the hifi anyway.