Importing files to iMac

Spencer,

The statement I can make without fear of dispute is that I don't know what the Sony HAP-Z1ES does, but whatever it does, the sound satisfies me.

My principal SACD player is an Ayre C-5xeMP in another setup.  Neither the HAP-Z1ES nor the XA5400ES quite matches it, but the HAP does sound very similar to the Sony disc player.

db  

Here are a few other options to get best quality transfers.
At the advise of acousticsounds.com, I purchased a Mercury Pro optical drive from OWC and transfer Redbook CDs directly to the HAP-Z1ES in .wav format.
Acousticsounds.com also recommended JRivers software which allows you to up-convert Redbook CD to DSD which can then be transferred to the HAP-Z1Es. JRivers software has many other useful features as well.

Transferring any material in MP3 kind of defeats the advantage of having the HAP-Z1ES. Stay with a lossless format such as AIFF, FLAC, DSD etc.

I've managed to rip an SACD using FLAC with XLD and the tracks show up in an XLD window on my iMac, but I don't know how to make the HAP transfer app find the file.  It seems to look for files in iTunes.

db

I have XLD, JRiver, and Audirvana running on my iMac.  Yet iTunes seems to be the default app for music files.  Should I quit out of iTunes if I want to try ripping with FLAC?