[motifone]

I'm a Mac users who uses Itunes to encode my CDs to 192AAC -- put the CD in the Mac, select which songs you want to encode from the CD, and Itunes encodes them directly off the CD. Occasionally, I will drag the original AIFF files right off the CD onto my hard drive to make lossless backups of original files.

Then, I saw this quote in another discussion:
".... I ripped with EAC and then encoded to MP3 using LAME 3.90.2 -alt-preset extreme"

Maybe I'm just a little confused as to what "ripping" means. Is there anything wrong with just dragging the AIFF files off the CD to my hard drive to back them up, or should I be using a special program to port them to my hard drive to the CD? That sounds like what EAC is for.

Likewise, is it bad to encode straight from the CD, or should I put the original AIFFs on my computer first (rip?) and then encode from there.

Just a little confused

 

[erikzen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by motifone Then, I saw this quote in another discussion: ".... I ripped with EAC and then encoded to MP3 using LAME 3.90.2 -alt-preset extreme"

When you "rip" your CDs to MP3 (or any other format) you're extracting the audio from the .wav file and converting it to MP3. When you drag a file from one place to another, the file type stays the same it just changes locations or makes a copy in a new place of the same information.

There's nothing wrong with dragging your files. You are not changing them in any way except their location.

 

[erikzen]

If you want to try using EAC read this page.

Also, check out Hydrogen Audio.

 

[blessingx]

Since he/she's a Mac user, here's at least LAME-
http://blacktree.com/apps/iTunes-LAME/index.php

EAC is Windows only.

There's a rip (from CD, etc. to WAV/AIFF), then an encode (AAC, MP3, ALAC, etc.) even if it's done 'behind the scenes'. So the process is kinda the same. I don't know of anything that rips to lossy directly from PCM, but I could be totally wrong here.

Is there something wrong with dragging files off a CD? I don't believe OSX actually makes an official AIFF rip. Or at least some programs seem to have a problems with them. I've never seen the same with an AIFF ripped/extracted from iTunes or Toast. Plus you get the error correction of both (hinden in Toast). And you can always use ALACs instead of larger AIFFs to archive.

 

[erikzen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by blessingx EAC is Windows only.

Ooops!

I should have realized.