eac vs itunes ripping

Sounds like belt-and-suspenders to me. Apple Lossless is exactly that--lossless. I think John Atkinson at Stereophile confirmed that a while back (and I bet he used EAC to do it).

Have you compared the file size and the bit rate of the same track that was directly ripped by iTunes into Apple Lossless and the one that was ripped by EAC into WAV and than imported into iTunes and converted into Apple Lossless?

I found that the EAC ones almost always have a slightly higher bit rate and larger size. I don't know what caused the difference but the EAC ripped tracks sound smoother and fuller.

There is no EAC or EAC-equivalent for Mac. . . right?
thanks,
bob

Holderlin, EAC is a windows only program. The only way we Mac users can use EAC is use VirtualPC software. I have found that I can rip files in Itunes from discs that have flaws which cause audible dropouts, skips, etc. and the Itunes error correction creates files which play flawlessly.

For Bob and all Mac users:

For the equivelent of EAC on Macintosh check out Max. It has a "full paranoia" setting plus it lets you select how many times you want the software to reread the problem bytes before it skips (plus a never skip checkbox) and will keep a log (if you so desire).

I have been using it for about four months and believe it is the best Ripping software available (at least for Macs). I have watched CDs being ripped and it zips through most but if you have it set for "Full Paranoia" and "never skip" as I do, it will slow down (sometimes to a crawl) when it finds a bad soundByte. ;)

Max is also a converter. It can translate between some 20+ formats.

Best of all: it's free!