[LFC_SL]

I am currently running a 15.4" HP business laptop - 1.66ghz core duo, 2GB ram

Obviously that and needing a smaller screen size for final year uni leads to, nay - necessitates an upgrade

Those new macbooks. Cannot stop looking enviously at them. Anyway,...
EAC
Lame
Foobar

My golden triangle of software. But as I understand it none of them are available on Mac! I am not about to buy a whole OS just to use 3 pieces of software, and XP that comes with the laptop is HP-specific I believe and is only a restore jobby. So what is out there?

Thanks

 

[grawk]

You can try crossover office to run windows programs.

lame is available for mac

There isn't an equivalent to foobar on mac, but itunes sounds better and works better on the mac than on windows. If you're looking for a skinnable playback software, I'm not sure what you can use.

Max does a great job for ripping and encoding on mac (sbooth.org). It doesn't do everything eac does, but cdparanoia mode is good enough for my money.

 

[LFC_SL]

Thanks for the concern but only a basic album art window is as *crazy* as my foobar gets rotfl

Its mainly for the whole asio + edirol ua-25 thing

Crossover seems to cost money. Do not underestimate how cheap I can be despite being prepared to spend a small fortune on a new notebook

I have no real problem with iTunes, though I do like the basic no-frills view by directory structure I have the library pane set to in foobar

I will still keep the HP but it is getting slower. And yes, I have reformatted it about 5 times in 2 years(!)

Thanks for the info on lame and a EAC alternative

 

[krmathis]

Let me see..
EAC => Max
LAME => LAME (the source code compiles perfectly fine on Mac OS X as well)
Foobar => iTunes. Lots of other players out there, but none come close to iTunes.

Or simply use Darwine, Bootcamp, VMware Fusion, ... to run your favorite MS Windows applications.

 

[grawk]

The asio crap windows users have to deal with isn't a problem on the mac.

 

[TheMarchingMule]

Nobody's mentioned Boot Camp yet?

 

[LFC_SL]

Do I not have to buy a standalone XP/Vista for bootcamp? I already have Office Mac ordered so have no real need to run windows... Lightroom is on mac. Yahoo Widgets and my Gmailgeiger is on mac. I do not game anymore owing to my flatmate having a 360 and I have no time anyway
Quote:

Originally Posted by krmathis /img/forum/go_quote.gif Let me see.. EAC => Max LAME => LAME (the source code compiles perfectly fine on Mac OS X as well) Foobar => iTunes. Lots of other players out there, but none come close to iTunes. Or simply use Darwine, Bootcamp, VMware Fusion, ... to run your favorite MS Windows applications.

Wow you are like a vault of knowledge

Will wikipedia later

 

[krmathis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheMarchingMule /img/forum/go_quote.gif Nobody's mentioned Boot Camp yet?

/me. I misspelled it though, typing Bootcamp...

 

[Jaska]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheMarchingMule /img/forum/go_quote.gif Nobody's mentioned Boot Camp yet?

But, but... an expensive new laptop plus another retail copy of Windows just to use the same programs as on the "old" laptop (which is probably nearly on par with the new MacBook in most respects). I'd personally keep the PC laptop and install openSUSE or another Linux distro, and try to set up fb2k and EAC in Wine. Either that or just dual boot Linux and Windows and save a ton of money.

 

[LFC_SL]

Not sure if I have the time for linux. I also use media player classic on my HP laptop and have ffdshow configured to upscale the DVDs onto my external monitor, but that is not for this forum

 

[krmathis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFC_SL /img/forum/go_quote.gif Wow you are like a vault of knowledge Will wikipedia later

The result of going more or less the same route some 4 years ago.
..and spending a lot of time online.

If you really need to run those MS Windows applications, but don't want to shell out for MS Windows or Crossover Mac, then I suggest you give Darwine a try. It provides Win32 API compatibility for free, no MS Windows needed.

Darwine builds for OS X

 

[Jaska]

Quote:

Originally Posted by krmathis /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you really need to run those MS Windows applications, but don't want to shell out for MS Windows or Crossover Mac, then I suggest you give Darwine a try.

Well said. I can't understand suffering the expense of buying an additional copy of Windows just to run it on a Mac. It pretty much defeats the whole purpose of switching to a Mac, at least for those who already own a separate PC or have frequent enough access to one for ripping CDs and so on.

 

[LFC_SL]

Well ironically if the laptop was better specced I would not be upgrading. And XP has done that "slow down accumulation" thing over the months since my last reformat...

Guess I want to see life on the other side having been windows all my life

And lame encoding jobs are taking longer than I would like them to

The high spec is overkill for most of what I need to do but I have my eyes on Football Manager 2009 out soon

Wonder if the Edirol runs on mac...

 

[krmathis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFC_SL /img/forum/go_quote.gif And lame encoding jobs are taking longer than I would like them to.

LAME runs quite fast on the portable Mac's, so that alone may be worth it for you.
Ok I have a MacBook Pro, but its quite similar specced as the current MacBook. 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB Ram, ...

Here are the result of a quick encode to LAME -V2 using Massive Attack's - "Angel":
Code:

[left]lame -V2 01.\ Angel.wav LAME 3.98 64bits (http://www.mp3dev.org/) Using polyphase lowpass filter, transition band: 18671 Hz - 19205 Hz Encoding 01. Angel.wav to 01. Angel.wav.mp3 Encoding as 44.1 kHz j-stereo MPEG-1 Layer III VBR(q=2) Frame | CPU time/estim | REAL time/estim | play/CPU | ETA 14569/14569 (100%)| 0:15/ 0:15| 0:16/ 0:16| 24.060x| 0:00 32 [ 89] %* 40 [ 0] 48 [ 0] 56 [ 6] * 64 [ 2] * 80 [ 5] * 96 [ 39] * 112 [ 490] %******** 128 [ 1532] *************************** 160 [ 3659] %%%%%%********************************************************* 192 [ 3898] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%**************************** 224 [ 2487] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%********************* 256 [ 1461] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%************ 320 [ 901] %%%%%%%%%******* ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- kbps LR MS % long switch short % 193.0 35.2 64.8 87.6 6.5 5.9 Writing LAME Tag...done ReplayGain: -5.3dB[/left]

24.060x realtime on encoding. Not too bad /me think...

 

[Wodgy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFC_SL /img/forum/go_quote.gif Thanks for the concern but only a basic album art window is as *crazy* as my foobar gets rotfl Its mainly for the whole asio + edirol ua-25 thing

There is no need for ASIO on the Mac. ASIO was created to deal with underlying problems with the Windows sound system. It is not necessary. iTunes on the Mac is bitperfect, but you're welcome to try Play or Cog or something else.

The UA-25 works with Macs.

Lame runs on Macs.

For EAC sessions you can boot into Boot Camp occasionally to do rips. You may find Max's cdparanoia is enough.