machead
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2004
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Quote:
Unfortunately, that's not necessarily the case...
CD playback includes many mechanisms to compensate for media errors that are present on almost all CDs. Some of the correction is implemented in the CD drive firmware, some in the audio ripping software, and some just falls through the cracks. For a useful introduction to the topic, you may find this link helpful. Dedicated CD players generally do the best job, because they only have to work at 1X speed!
There is no direct Mac equivalent of EAC, unfortunately. On all but the worst discs, however, you can get equivalent results by using iTunes to rip to Apple Lossless format, with error correction turned on. The files stored on your hard disk are about half the size of the "raw" AIFF files. When played back through iTunes, your USB audio out (or optical out, if you're lucky enough to own a G5) will contain a bit-perfect copy of the audio stream on the original disc, to feed to your favorite external DAC.
Originally Posted by Scrith I think with a program like EAC (or its equivalent on the Mac, whatever that is), the actual device probably doesn't matter (that is, assuming any CD-ROM can actually read a regular CD error free...I would think they all can do this!). |
Unfortunately, that's not necessarily the case...
CD playback includes many mechanisms to compensate for media errors that are present on almost all CDs. Some of the correction is implemented in the CD drive firmware, some in the audio ripping software, and some just falls through the cracks. For a useful introduction to the topic, you may find this link helpful. Dedicated CD players generally do the best job, because they only have to work at 1X speed!
There is no direct Mac equivalent of EAC, unfortunately. On all but the worst discs, however, you can get equivalent results by using iTunes to rip to Apple Lossless format, with error correction turned on. The files stored on your hard disk are about half the size of the "raw" AIFF files. When played back through iTunes, your USB audio out (or optical out, if you're lucky enough to own a G5) will contain a bit-perfect copy of the audio stream on the original disc, to feed to your favorite external DAC.