Mac CD Ripping: iTunes or XLD?

[mwheelerk]

Thank you.

What are the benefits of ripping a CD into two different formats? Is it so one can use different players?

 

Some people might keep a lossless (AIFF, ALAC-Apple Lossless) and a lossy (mp3, AAC) library one (lossless) for their home listening where space on a hard drive isn't generally an issue and the other (lossy) to transfer to an iPod/iPhone/iPad for mobile listening where hard drive space can be a concern. However if you are using iTunes and synching your mobile device that isn't really necessary because you have the option of having iTunes automatically converting the files on the fly to AAC. I do this all the time. My main library is AIFF. If I synch my iPhone without conversion I might be able to get 200 or 300 songs on the 16GB space but using the auto convert to AAC I might get 2000 or more. For my use and in my opinion there is no reason for me then to maintain two different type of file libraries.

[Moosbrugger]

I just re-ripped a few hundred CDs using XLD. With the exception of a few damaged discs that wouldn't rip (although some of those would rip in iTunes), I didn't get any error message. I notice, however, that iTunes rips much faster than XLD. Is iTunes really riskier than using XLD? I could save a lot of time....

[Booster MPS]

I just re-ripped a few hundred CDs using XLD. With the exception of a few damaged discs that wouldn't rip (although some of those would rip in iTunes), I didn't get any error message. I notice, however, that iTunes rips much faster than XLD. Is iTunes really riskier than using XLD? I could save a lot of time....

 

It is "riskier" in that you do not receive the confirmation on the quality of the rip/error reporting that XLD will provide automatically. That said, if both iTunes and XLD operate perfectly and do their job, there is absolutely no difference in the rips that the programs provide. They are the same. I use iTunes to rip and in my experience it might fail on a rip 2 to 3% of the time where I can hear the drive going back over sectors and taking a long time to complete. XLD is a great tool to rip those more difficult CD's.

 

In short, iTunes is "good enough" but XLD checks the box on completeness. In my experience XLD rips take much longer to complete.

[Audio_ELF]

I just re-ripped a few hundred CDs using XLD. With the exception of a few damaged discs that wouldn't rip (although some of those would rip in iTunes), I didn't get any error message. I notice, however, that iTunes rips much faster than XLD. Is iTunes really riskier than using XLD? I could save a lot of time....

I'm not going to answer your question; just pose a question back to you...

 

If you listen to the iTunes rip, and the XLD rip... are YOU as happy with iTunes rip as you are with the XLD rip?

 

If the answer is yes ... then save yourself the time and enjoy listening.

 

Eloise

[Guest fmaxwell]

In my experience XLD rips take much longer to complete.

 

I just ripped the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab copy of Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat" using XLD with AccurateRip. The total ripping time for the entire album was under four minutes. Four minutes isn't "much longer" than anything -- even than instantaneous. If you're taking much longer than that, spend the $20 for a decent, modern drive. The one I was using was a SAMSUNG Model SH-S222L DVD±R drive that I mounted in my Mac Pro.

 

If you listen to the iTunes rip, and the XLD rip... are YOU as happy with iTunes rip as you are with the XLD rip?

 

If the answer is yes ... then save yourself the time and enjoy listening.

 

A better question to ask yourself is whether you have time to clinically listen to each ripped track for audible flaws immediately after ripping.

 

If the answer is no ... then spend the extra few seconds to rip with XLD and get the confidence that comes from using a secure ripper that verifies results against the AccurateRip database.

 

Who wants to hear a flaw, maybe miles from home, have to track down the original CD, play that CD to listen for the flaw, and then, if it's not there, re-rip using the ripper you should have used in the first place?

 

-- Fred

 

Music is art. Audio is supposed to be science.

[tranz]

ITunes sucks at quality ripping. A few years back I did some tests and it actually lost bits. Perhaps it has improved somewhat, but it is more for convenience than accuracy. Use any program with AccurateRip is my recommendation. (E.g EAC, XLD, etc.)

 

With the amount of space on iPhone/Pads etc., there is little reason to rip two quality level libraries. Unless you do not hear or care about the difference I would rip uncompressed. You can always compress later, but not vice versa.

 

Cheers

[Freann]

I use this method which involves two programs:

 

Step 1: Save the CD as CUE/BIN via Toast.

Step 2: Open CUE in XLD. Extract to aiff.

 

The CUE/BIN function duplicated the CD sector by sector. In fact a CUE/BIN can be sent as a master to a CD pressing plant. What is in the BIN file ends up on the disc.

 

The ripping part is still done in XLD, but since the source is a file on the HD, the ripping process in *really* fast.

 

Me and a friend did some tests between XLD and CUE/BIN + XLD. The latter was better.

[kumakuma]

Me and a friend did some tests between XLD and CUE/BIN + XLD. The latter was better.

 

Better in what way? Faster? Less errors?

[Freann]

Better in what way? Faster? Less errors?

 

The CUE/BIN process take a minute or two on my MacBook Pro 13". XLD is reporting speeds between 100-200%. In terms of speed is ridiculously fast. But that would be a mere curiosity if it didn’t sound better than XLD only. Give it a try.

[Guest fmaxwell]

With the amount of space on iPhone/Pads etc., there is little reason to rip two quality level libraries. Unless you do not hear or care about the difference I would rip uncompressed. You can always compress later, but not vice versa.

 

XLD gives the option of ripping to multiple formats at once. I set mine to make a FLAC copy for home use and a top-quality LAME MP3 VBR version for mobile use. Even with that level of compression, my MP3 version of my library is still around the 40GB size. So there is no way that I could put that uncompressed on a 64GB or 128GB device.

[mwheelerk]

If you use iTunes to synch to your mobile devices you do not need two sets of files. iTunes allows you the option to convert files to lossy compressed on the fly for your mobile device without altering the source file.

[kumakuma]

The CUE/BIN process take a minute or two on my MacBook Pro 13". XLD is reporting speeds between 100-200%. In terms of speed is ridiculously fast. But that would be a mere curiosity if it didn’t sound better than XLD only. Give it a try.

 

Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a try.

[jhwalker]

The CUE/BIN process take a minute or two on my MacBook Pro 13". XLD is reporting speeds between 100-200%. In terms of speed is ridiculously fast. But that would be a mere curiosity if it didn’t sound better than XLD only. Give it a try.

 

Thanks for this pointer. I tried it this evening and, while it takes longer (the metadata retrieval in Toast is practically nonfunctional, plus the fact that it takes a bit longer to go through the two steps), it does resolve an issue I've been having with XLD for some time - often, the last track on a CD is not ripped accurately (according to the AccurateRip database). When I use this "extract first" model, XLD reports a bit-perfect rip very time

[Guest fmaxwell]

If you use iTunes to synch to your mobile devices you do not need two sets of files. iTunes allows you the option to convert files to lossy compressed on the fly for your mobile device without altering the source file.

 

I prefer LAME for MP3 compression and I tune it for the highest quality VBR mode. By contrast, iTunes has very limited capabilities to tune the MP3 compression. And I trust the LAME codec much more than the mystery MP3 codec in iTunes.

 

One of my primary uses for the compressed files is to put them on a 64GB thumb drive that I use with the head unit in my car. To do that, I use rsync, fatsort, and a shell script I wrote that takes care of deleting "junk" files, sorting (skipping "The" prefixes), and remounting the drive (if desired) as R/W or R/O, the latter to prevent the creation of more junk files.

[jhwalker]

I prefer LAME for MP3 compression and I tune it for the highest quality VBR mode. By contrast, iTunes has very limited capabilities to tune the MP3 compression. And I trust the LAME codec much more than the mystery MP3 codec in iTunes.

 

One of my primary uses for the compressed files is to put them on a 64GB thumb drive that I use with the head unit in my car. To do that, I use rsync, fatsort, and a shell script I wrote that takes care of deleting "junk" files, sorting (skipping "The" prefixes), and remounting the drive (if desired) as R/W or R/O, the latter to prevent the creation of more junk files.

 

Just to be clear, iTunes automated method for creating lossy files "on the fly" when transferring to mobile devices uses Apple's AAC encoding, *not* MP3. You are given the choice of three bit rates: 128k, 192k, and 256k (i.e., iTunes Plus, the same rate they use for the iTunes music store).

 

I wish they would give you the choice of Apple Lossless at the highest rate that will play on your device (e.g., 24/48 or the like), but the 256k encoding is pretty convincing.