Storing music on a Mac.

[Target1]

What exactly is the best way to store music on a mac? If I rip albums to Lossless in Itunes, and then burn them in the future will this actually bee lossless? Further if I rip the full WAV files to burn in the future will this work? I've heard a lot about "jitter" when using a computer as a source, and I want to know if any of this creeps in when ripping or burning.

Thanks,

Mark

 

[Oliver :)]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Target1 What exactly is the best way to store music on a mac? If I rip albums to Lossless in Itunes, and then burn them in the future will this actually bee lossless? Further if I rip the full WAV files to burn in the future will this work? I've heard a lot about "jitter" when using a computer as a source, and I want to know if any of this creeps in when ripping or burning.

While I have not much clue about jitter, I would say the best way to store music on a mac is to buy the biggest HD you can afford

If you do a search on Head-Fi regarding Apple Lossless you will see that people have come to find that it is truly lossless. If you have money for HD space (for an Xserve RAID in the basement

) go AIFF/WAV. If you don't, or even remotely plan to put a decent amount of music on an iPod, go Apple Lossless. You can recreate a fine CD-Audio from all three formats, but WAV & AIFF are of course the more independent choice since they work sans iTunes.

My personal choice is to use AL, as I do not plan to move away from iTunes in the foreseeable future, and I do not feel like wasting all my money for HD space.

 

[drminky]

Jitter is not a problem when ripping and burning cds AFAIK. This is because the Digital Audio Extraction (DAE) method treats the music as if it were data, using a newer and more sophisticated protocol than a standard cd transport which uses a much less sophisticated method and just reads it as it comes (albeit with some basic error correction), hence jitter. This is why many newer high-end cdps are now using cdroms as transports - they use the DAE method to reduce jitter!

Make sure in iTunes you have the 'use error correction' option turned on in the importing preferences, though..

 

[3lusiv3]

The best way to store music on a Mac is with Apple Lossless if you are wanting to backup your CD's and be sure you lose no quality. If you want to save drive space try the highest bitrate option AAC. I can't hear the difference so I use AAC to save drive space.

 

[kugino]

ripping and saving in AL is not just about sound...it might be difficult to tell the difference between AL and high bitrate mp3 or AAC, depending on your equipment. but by saving in AL, you leave a lot of options open in the future if/when you want to convert to mp3 again, or burn another CD in near-CD quality, convert to AIFF or WAV, etc. saving in AL is economical in terms of HD space and versatile because of all the options available.

another option would be to save everything as AL, convert whatever you listen to on iTunes into mp3 or AAC, and then copy/backup all your AL tracks to DVDr as data. you can get 100 DVDr these days for around $40, and that's about 470 GB of storage! each DVDr should hold approximately 7-12 CDs, depending on the size of course.

 

[Oliver :)]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kugino ripping and saving in AL is not just about sound...it might be difficult to tell the difference between AL and high bitrate mp3 or AAC, depending on your equipment. but by saving in AL, you leave a lot of options open in the future

Ripping to AL also has the advantage of taking way less processing power due to the (presumably) simpler compression algorithm and therefore saving you oodles of time.

 

[gaboo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by drminky Jitter is not a problem when ripping and burning cds AFAIK. This is because the Digital Audio Extraction (DAE) method treats the music as if it were data, using a newer and more sophisticated protocol than a standard cd transport which uses a much less sophisticated method and just reads it as it comes (albeit with some basic error correction), hence jitter. This is why many newer high-end cdps are now using cdroms as transports - they use the DAE method to reduce jitter! Make sure in iTunes you have the 'use error correction' option turned on in the importing preferences, though..

DAE isn't error free. True, there's no jitter, but a dirty or scratced disk may give you wrong data (sometimes with no warning that it's wrong). Some drives are more resillient than others to crappy discs. A good place to look for such info is cdrinfo.com. E.g. their NEC-3500 review.