Art Vandelay

Hi coolsax, if you're willing to spend the money, dbpoweramp is a good choice. Otherwise, EAC is the go. I can't really comment on players, since I'm not aware of any major differences between them (although others purport that there are), but if you're using an iPod Touch then wouldn't you be using iTunes as your main player anyway?

You may have heard of the upcoming 'UltraViolet' system that various motion picture studios and consumer tech consumers are purportedly delivering to the market some time this year. If you haven't... http://www.pcworld.com/article/216051/ultraviolet_could_mean_youll_really_own_that_movie.html I'm not clear on the finer details myself, but supposedly this system allows consumers an enduring right to access digital movie and television content that they've purchased either by disc, download or streaming. The official website claims that this new way of collecting entertainment solves a number of issues... e.g. you buy a Blu-Ray disc that later becomes scratched... you don't need to buy another copy because you already 'own' the movie and can simply download or stream another copy legitimately. While the UV site speaks mainly of movies and TV shows... what about music? I'd certainly like to be able to buy a CD and then have the same kind of access that UV pledges to provide for video-based content.

I've just started using XLD, having moved on from the simpler Rip beta app. I'm interested to know what the optimum set-up for XLD is (i.e. what are the right boxes to tick?) I'll be ripping to ALAC but beyond that I'm not sure whether I've configured everything as it should be for optimal DAE. Any advice/guides/opinions?

Thanks for the detailed reply. I'll look into the reviews site you posted. I'm currently using a HL-DT-ST DVDRW, but its performance has been strange as of late, causing me concern that DAE accuracy/performance might be affected. I've read some cautionary advice about externals: as you mentioned, some USB chipsets interfering with C2 info, as well as advice to steer clear of the USB-only powered externals, some of which reportedly overload the USB port. I'll look into getting an enclosure maybe.

As far as I've heard... no, there is no benefit to ripping at a higher bit depth than the source (16 bit for standard CDs'). Although you might want a second opinion on that because I'm only repeating, in essense, what I've heard said generally.

Are there are any known issues (other than speed) with external CD drives that would affect read performance/accuracy in DAE? I'm looking in particular at getting a Samsung SE-S084C (or similar). Does anyone know whether this drive supports C2, acu-stream, and over-reading?

It turns out that 'Lost Buffers: 2' is also reported with AIFF files. And the stream bit-rate doesn't remain constant at 1411/s.

Whenever I play an ALAC file from my music collection - any ALAC file - with VLC, under 'Statistics' I always see 'Lost Buffers: 2'. I'm confused by what this means. Does it mean that the file is corrupted and therefore not truly lossless?

I have approx. 56gb of audio encoded to ALAC and was considering the possibility of converting all of it to AIFF. Problem: space considerations. My internal HD is pretty cluttered, and a sizeable chunk would go to the AIFF converts. Does anyone know a way that I could work out how much space my audio collection would take up once I convert 56gb of ALAC to AIFF? Perhaps I could work it out if I knew (approx.) how much compression ALAC uses?