This setup guide is a walk through of the steps involved in obtaining the best possible results from ripping Audio CDs using
Using dBpoweramp for Apple macOS?
Apple specific instructions on setting up
This is where the real work begins, effort put in at this stage will ensure best possible results - we have a saying
'rip once - rip right', ripping is a time consuming process, it should be only done once to create perfect, verified results.
Decide on an audio format, preferably a lossless audio format (a file compressed with a lossless encoder will decompress 100% identical to the source file, no audio quality is lost).
Popular audio formats are FLAC and Apple Lossless. The choice of audio format depends on the programs used for playback: iTunes prefers Apple Lossless and practically all other programs prefer FLAC.

Choose the encoder in the lower left corner of CD Ripper
Rip to sets which encoder is used, FLAC as shown here does not have many options, Lossless audio codecs do not have many options,
all compression modes are lossless, the higher modes require much more CPU
encoding time and will only achieve an extra 1% compression. For FLAC
Level 5 is a good selection (a good balance between minimal compression time and reasonable compression).
By default ripped audio files are placed in the Music folder saved under
Artist\Album\Track Number Artist - Title this option could be changed to suit using
Set next to
Naming.
Click the green menu button (top toolbar) >>
CD Ripper Options the
Ripping Method to
Secure (Recover Errors):

Looking further down the page:
[Advanced option] If your CD drive supports reading into the lead / lead out, check the option
Read into Lead-in or Lead-out (most CD drives do not support this, generally only Plextor drives).
CD drives have a fixed offset, later in this guide the offset of the drive is found, for drives with a + offset the CD drive would have to be able to read into the Lead-out, where a drive with a - offset would have to read into the Lead-in. By over-reading (if the drive is capable) the
first or last few samples can be read from the CD, in almost every instance these samples are silence, and overreading is not important. Visit
daefeatures.co.uk to determine the status of your CD drive.
Now is time to configure the CD drive for secure ripping, click
Secure Settings next to the
Secure (Recover Errors) line:

Ultra Secure:
If your drive supports C2 pointers (see later), set as Minimum Ultra Passes: 1 Maximum Ultra Passes: 2 End After Clean Passes: 1
If your drive does not support C2 pointers, set as Minimum Ultra Passes: 2 Maximum Ultra Passes: 4 End After Clean Passes: 2
Maximum Re-Reads control how many times a 'bad' section is retried, with C2 pointer support this can be set to a higher number, such as 60. Without C2 support it is not recommended that this value be increased, as there is more of a chance
of a consistent error getting through ripping.
C2 Pointers
C2 pointers are an extra level of error detection, where the drive signals back to the program there are errors. If C2 pointers are supported (have to run an actual test with special disc) use this ability. In other programs the recommendation might be to always disable C2 support, this is not true in CD Ripper, as long as it is not giving false values. Before checking
C2 Error Pointers for Error Detection, it is best to actually do a test
with a simulated damaged audio CD: take an audio CD which is never to be used again, with a black permanent marker pen draw a triangle onto the silver side of the CD (side which is normally placed downwards into a CD player):

Place this CD in your CD drive and click
Detect c2 Support, if your drive supports C2 pointers it will detect by the end of the disc - noting if a c2 pointer error is
signaled right at the start then
the cd drive might not be compatible (the above black marker test would signal a c2 error about 1/4 of the way through the test).
Caching
For secure ripper to work correctly the cache must be invalidated, this is normally done by reading an area larger than the drive caches, by default CD ripper sets a 1024KB cache. The cache can be
detected (it is likely to be much much smaller than the default value). Detecting cache size is quite difficult, it is recommended that 3 or 4 different unscratched CDs are used to detect the value. A 'no brainer'
and safe option is to leave the cache as 1024KB.
Clear Read Cache with FUA is an option which can quickly clear the cache, it should only be used on compatible Plextor drives (the older true Plextors), there is an option to test for this feature.
Continuing with the options, set these:

Secure Rip Abort options will end ripping early if the disc is badly damaged, this is important as a secure ripper can sometimes try too much to recover a damaged disc, sometimes spending 2 hours on one disc, which
is not overly healthy for a CD drive. A
Secure Extraction Log is used to save details (to a text file) of all actions taken on a disc (which tracks had errors, where the errors were), noting that
Log Filename is left as the default value. The log file is saved to the Music Folder as a text file.
Configuring AccurateRip
AccurateRip consists of an online database of other users ripping results, by comparing your CD rip (a small CRC of the track data) to theirs it can be known with almost certainty that the rip was free from errors. Before AccurateRip can be used it must find your
drives read offset. To do so insert a popular CD, if the CD can be used AccurateRip will offer to find the offset:

Normally only 1 CD is needed, but if your CD drive does not appear in AccurateRip's main database of CD drives then 3 matching results from 3 different discs will be required, it can take many CDs to find this offset, keep feeding discs (no need to rip them, insert click configure, and repeat). When finding the offset for your drive, it is not required to actually rip the CD.
Once the offset is found it will be reported:

When AccurateRip is operating it will report a message next to a track such as 'Accurate (12)': this reports your rip matched 12 other peoples rips (the confidence number), anything above a confidence of 1 can be relied upon.
On a damaged track the report might be 'Inaccurate (2)', where your rip disagrees with two other peoples Rips. If all the tracks dis-agree with AccurateRip then it is likely your CD is a different pressing to the one in AccurateRip's database.
Meta Data
Finally an important part of CD Ripping, often overlooked is Metadata, quality track details and album art are important in the '
rip one - rip right' philosophy, CD Ripper uses 5 online metadata providers, with PerfectMeta
active automated metadata retrieval results are as good as possible for an automated system, occasional manual intervention might be required:
If the track names are wrong, or require correction, press ALT + M (or click
Metadata Icon on the tool bar) to activate the PerfectMeta review page, clicking on a different provider
(buttons at the top) uses all the data from that provider, or clicking on a single item shown will use that item.
Missing album art can be added quickly by clicking
on the art image.
By default CD Ripper will embed album art inside each ripped audio file (audio format permitting) and also write a Folder.jpg file to the location of the album.