Download and "ripping" questions with a Mac.

Drubin, in the many discussions about this I've read, it seems that many positive comments about AIFF or Lossless are made by those who have moved on to music servers or hard drive based systems. Negative reactions to those codecs are made more often by those still spinning silver discs. I've not listened to enough highly resolved hard drive based systems to have an opinion about the use of Lossless or AIFF in that context. I'm still one of the Luddites still using physical media in a cd player as my primary music source. My perceptions about the superiority of WAV is solely in the context of my system. Obviously, there are a lot of people with excellent systems who don't hear things the way I do. Why? I don't know. Again, commentary in various forums just seems to imply that those with hard drive sources are happier with codecs other than WAV.

Photon46 -- can you clarify your comment "depending on whether you are using a hard drive source or a cd source?" Did AIFF and ALAC sound inferior to WAV off the hard disk and also when you burned CDs from those files?

Another ripping program for the Mac is XLD. Here is a link that will help you find a download:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=XLD

In my limited experience XLD does a better job than does Max in exporting to iTunes and in importing artist, album, track metadata. I have not yet had the time to test differences between the two programs, or the different file formats, because my DAC is being updated.

If you use Max here is a link to a script that can be used to import data for tags:
http://forums.sbooth.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1930

There has been a great deal of verbage spilled over this topic in the past and no consensus ever seems to be reached as to whether AIFF, WAV, & Lossless are sonically equivalent. I think there is a difference, depending on whether you are using a hard drive source or a cd source. Plus, I think different players/dacs must sound different with each codec as well. I can state with absolute certainty that AIFF and Lossless sound inferior to WAV through my Marantz Sa11S1 and they sounded inferior through my Assemblage 2.7 dac & various transports as well. I burned any number of excellent sounding discs with internal & external burners & high quality Mitsui & Taiyo Yuden media. In every case, I found AIFF & Lossless to sound less resolved and duller.

Sammie, thats the problem, I didn`t have it in cdparanoia checked, I`ll try it later today and see how it works thanks Greg

Hi Greg,

Yep, I forgot to mention that sometimes, though infrequently, MAX will screw up or not recognize tag info. Even if it recognizes, it sometimes does not carry over to Itunes for some reason. So, you're forced to fill that in later. It's a pain in the a#$ for sure, but I think worth it. If it is happening on every album, in preferences, make sure you have "use Itunes compatibility mode" checked under Itunes tab, and make sure the ripper is cdparanoia, not the "basic ripper" under ripper tab.

Once Macworld reveals the new Apple desktops, I will be springing for one...hopefully an updated Mac Mini. Then, I'd like to try to use EAC with windows on the new Mac, and compare the EAC rips to Max rips.

I did a fair amount of testing between Max and iTunes before I started ripping my collection. Could not hear a difference -- do you guys really think there is one? Why?

Sammie, I tried the Max, it does seem to sound better, but I can`t get it to install track names or artist and no album art, I use the AIFF , in itunes I can get track names and album art, but I can with Max?

Greg

Max is easy to use, but the user interface is not as clean as Itunes. #1. Download Max from sbooth.org and install. #2 Run Max and go to preferences. #3 Select Applelosseless or AIFF, which is Apple's version of WAV. Also, make sure error correction stuff is set properly...it is pretty straightforward. Also, there is an Itunes tab...check those settings. #4 Place CD in slot, Max will recognize it and open an encode window. Itunes will recognize it too. Just minimize Itunes. #5 Make sure all tracks are "check marked" and hit encode.

Good luck.

Hi all, is there a sonic difference between hi rez file formats. AIFF vs Apple Lossless vs WAV.
Thanks

Sammie, I have heard this before and I use the itunes ripper, how do you setup and use MAX, can I still use the itune interface to play my music?, thanks for any help.

Greg

I think you'll need to re-rip the CD's converted into ACC as they have lost information in the encoding algorithm: they are now "lossy" as opposed to "lossless."

If you have to rip within the Apple Leopard OS, I would recommend you compare rips from Itunes with rips from MAX. IMHO Max rips sound better.

And, FYI, probably the best ripping software is EAC, which only works with MS Windows...

Thank You Reubent and drumsgreg.

For the CD's that have already been ripped in ACC 128kbps, can i convert those into AIFF format within Itunes or do i have to rip those again with the new settings in my "preference"?

This might help:
*Go to iTunes
*Click on the iTunes from the top manu bar (top left corner)
*Scroll down to Preferences.... and click
*It will take you to the main Preferences menu - please click here for the picture of the menu
*Now click on General icon (top left). You will see the option for Import Setting.
Click on that.
When it opens up, it will look like this click here for the screen shot.
*choose the format in import using and check the window for error correction.

That is it. I hope it helps

Mariusz

Greg is correct. Additionally, it is very important that you turn on error correction on the preference tab. Error correction and AIFF will get you high quality rips of your existing CDs.

I think you are forever limited when you download from iTunes or iTunes+. Even if you could convert to a higher resolution format, you would be "converting" an already flawed track.

Enjoy,

TIC

you need to go into itunes and click on the preference tab and you will see the setup for rippping there, I use AIFF for my stuff and its sound great, on my touch with the Wadia i170.

Greg