[grawk]

It works with parallels, but I haven't tried eac with it.

 

[xenithon]

Ok, thanks. I think for now I am going to cool off with the speculation

Mac Mini with ancilaries should arrive this weekend and I will cross the various bridges when I get to them. I have a feeling that Max, ripping with the paranoid setting, encoding to ALAC, will be fine....and hopefully there will be no reason to stay with anything Windows (I want to go all-native Mac).

I also read yesterday that EAC's offset capability which Max does not have, does not affect SQ? If so, even better!

 

[hempcamp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by xenithon /img/forum/go_quote.gif I also read yesterday that EAC's offset capability which Max does not have, does not affect SQ? If so, even better!

This is high end audio, invariably someone will claim that it does!

I'm of the firm belief that iTunes with error correction turned on is by far all you need unless you actually hear something wrong with the rip. Then you can turn to the toolbox of other software for help.

(That is, if you actually listen to all the music you rip. If you are simply going to rip for the sake of ripping which seems to be the fashion these days, you may want to use something like Max all along to make sure you don't discover a problem later after you've ripped a whole bunch of stuff.)

Enjoy your mini! Let us know if you have any problems.

--Chris

 

[Jaska]

Quote:

Originally Posted by xenithon /img/forum/go_quote.gif I also read yesterday that EAC's offset capability which Max does not have, does not affect SQ? If so, even better!

What it does affect, unfortunately, is the level of convenience involved with verifying that any rip was accurate. For this reason alone, Max in its current form could never think of being "AccurateRip compatible."

Couple that with the fact that almost all stock Apple optical drives are of the lowest possible quality (in my experience and judgment), and it means that if you want to use Windows and EAC or a better ripping program to rip CDs on an Intel Mac, you basically have to buy an external drive enclosure and get a top-notch optical drive.

For the record, I have been using Macs for many years and prefer them to PCs, but think that they have some serious shortcomings when it comes to optical drive performance.

 

[Wodgy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaska /img/forum/go_quote.gif Couple that with the fact that almost all stock Apple optical drives are of the lowest possible quality (in my experience and judgment), and it means that if you want to use Windows and EAC or a better ripping program to rip CDs on an Intel Mac, you basically have to buy an external drive enclosure and get a top-notch optical drive.

This is nonsense. My Macbook has the lowest sample offset (+102 samples) of any non-Plextor drive I've ever owned.

 

[fkclo]

Just want to say that I am excited to see so many Mac users in the head-fi community !

I, of course, am one. Migrated to iMac (the Lamp) back in 1999 and survive 4 Mac desktops and 2 PowerBooks - and still happy

Nothing yet that I found beat the iTunes usability and interface.

F. Lo

 

[reemixx]

Apple Mac all the way, for sure.

I'm building my home audio setup around my 24" iMac at the moment. Have all my ALAC tracks on there, going through the Lexicon Omega (currently) to my AD700's. I use iTunes as well, to rip and to listen. It just organises everything very nicely and cover flow is great.

My MacBook has the AAC's for syncing with my iPod Touch. It's nice keeping the portable and home setups completely separate.

It's definitely good to hear more and more people building their setups around a Mac. They're simply awesome for audio recording and listening.

My only gripe at the moment is with virtual surround sound through headphones on a Mac. There seems to be a bunch of plugins for different apps on PC (Dolby Headphone etc) but nothing for Mac. I might have to resort to picking up an Xmod to watch movies in surround sound with headphones, but I'm iffy about it because of the sound quality. Anyone have any alternatives, hardware or software?

 

[xenithon]

Quote:

What it does affect, unfortunately, is the level of convenience involved with verifying that any rip was accurate. For this reason alone, Max in its current form could never think of being "AccurateRip compatible."

Hmmm....although it cannot use "AccurateRip", doesn't Max used in paranoid mode check and recheck that the rip was done properly?

 

[Jaska]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wodgy /img/forum/go_quote.gif This is nonsense. My Macbook has the lowest sample offset (+102 samples) of any non-Plextor drive I've ever owned.

How do you define "nonsense" here? Did I say that a relatively low read offset makes a drive good or bad? Clearly, the audio CD ripping performance level of a drive is not determined by offset alone. However, when an audio CD ripping application cannot correct for read offsets, there is no way for the program to take advantage of the benefits of AccurateRip.

 

[Jaska]

Quote:

Originally Posted by xenithon /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hmmm....although it cannot use "AccurateRip", doesn't Max used in paranoid mode check and recheck that the rip was done properly?

Max does basically the best it can with the tools currently available. If you've ever ripped CDs with foobar2000 in paranoia mode, you probably are used to being able to display a detailed log of the rip afterwards. A "successful" rip does not necessarily mean a "perfect" rip. The differences may not always be audible, but all I can say is that Max does not currently support true secure ripping in the same sense that other Windows applications do. Max does not allow an option to display a detailed log of CD ripping operations, so there's not much information to go on, other than a "completed" rip, to verify the accuracy of the rip.

Maybe this will shed further light on what I'm trying to get at... If I attempt to rip a scratched disc on my PC with my Plextor PX-230A and PlexTools Professional LE or EAC, and cannot get a perfect rip (which is very rare), and then I load the same disc in my Mac with a substantially worse-performing drive (LITE-ON SHW-160P6S) and use Max with the paranoia ripper and the most secure settings, I can pretty much expect for Max to eventually complete the rip with no complaints. In this case, I know that the rip is not going to be perfect, but upon listening, it may indeed be free from skips and pops, etc. If that's all you're after, and you really don't care about perfect rips from a technical standpoint, then Max should meet your needs just fine. I personally don't have the time to verify every single CD rip with an extended and careful listening test as I have many hundreds of CDs, and I find it worth it to use a Windows PC as I've described even though I'm a primarily a Mac user. I would be disappointed if I sat down for an evening of listening and discovered some flaws in my rips and realized that I hadn't got things quite perfect the first time around.

 

[xenithon]

Points duly taken. In essence then, would you say that ripping with Max would be the same as ripping with iTunes with error correction on (that is, neither being able to verifiably say the rips were perfect)?

If EAC is still the way to go it leads back to the one question I had - is there an encoder I could use with EAC to rip straight to ALAC, rather than rip to FLAC and convert with Max to ALAC?

 

[grawk]

dbpoweramp will rip using eac and encode to alac. Not sure how problematic that is at this point tho, as I don't follow windows bugs.

 

[Jaska]

Ripping with good settings in Max will provide better results than iTunes, either with or without error correction enabled (in iTunes).

There are lots of ways to go about getting perfect rips and encoding to Apple Lossless. Since I use a PPC Mac, I just use my PC to rip my audio CDs and encode them to FLAC, taking care of the tagging and all that. Then I transfer the files over my local network to my Mac, and transcode the FLACs to Apple Lossless with Max, and then again with iTunes (unnecessary step for most people, but a safety net for me since I also rely on AirPort Express).

When I eventually replace my Power Mac G4, I will of course have an Intel Mac. I will then remove the Plextor PX-230A from my PC and install it in a FireWire enclosure and use it with my new Mac, which will have both OS X and Windows installed on it. I will continue to use Windows to rip my audio CDs, and then use Max for transcoding to Apple Lossless. That's really not very inconvenient, I don't think, and not expensive either, as the Plextor only cost €30 and the enclosure will be cheap.

 

[xenithon]

Yes....I could just use EAC as is, ripping CD's and encoding in FLAC. It has been working fine for a while now. I plan to use Max for the conversion of the existing FLACs to ALAC anyway so at the end of the day, that extra step may be worth it, especially if I do not want to have to rerip the entire collection if something goes afoot later on

 

[krmathis]

I personally would not bother with running EAC on MS Windows under Boot Camp on a Mac. Max will make you more than happy.

Advice from one who have used Max for 2-3 years, and so far had no audible glitch in any of his files ripped from CD.