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Rip CD to Mac - basic question

I have started to rip some of my CDs to disk using a mac. I notice a lot of people using software to do this. When I look at a CD in the finder it appears as a set of aiff files for each song, for which I have been doing a drag and drop onto my hard drive, just like copying any other file. I would rather not use iTunes.

My question is: is this a bit for bit perfect copy? If so, why use other software? If not, why not? Computer files are always bit perfect when copied. There must be some software intervention on the part of the OS anyway, as a CD doesn't contain aiff files.

Any help would be appreciated. I don't want to copy a lot of CDs like this and then find I have to do it call over again.
malcolm02
gfroman's avatar
gfroman
142 posts
 
Not sure why you do not want to use Itunes?
I copy all my CD's to my MacPRO via Itunes using Apple Lossless AIFF.
It is bit perfect - no compression.
rlwainwright
1,904 posts
 
AIFF is not lossless, you need to ALAC for that. But I would not box myself in with Apple-specific stuff. You can use dbPowerAmp for file conversion and Foobar2000 (FREE!) for playback...

-RW-
doggiehowser
672 posts
 
I prefer to use XLD. It does ripping to AIFF as well but it provides a log/report of the rip so you know if there are errors. (similar to EAC on PC
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
iTunes ripping is not optimum and makes many mistakes, including no Accurate-Rip check, no C2 error correction and offset errors. These all impact SQ.

The best way to rip to AIFF or ALAC on the Mac is using XLD. Here are some other tips as well as the XLD free download link:

http://www.empiricalaudio.com/computer-audio/

do a comparison of an iTunes ripped file and the same XLD ripped file.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
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