Good-quality CD ripper for Mac

[mahlerei]

When I still had a PC I used EAC to rip/archive CDs to a hard drive; now I'm after something similar for the Mac. I know I could use iTunes, but I'd rather not.

All suggestions/recommendations gratefully received.

[Bryn]

When I still had a PC I used EAC to rip/archive CDs to a hard drive; now I'm after something similar for the Mac. I know I could use iTunes, but I'd rather not.

All suggestions/recommendations gratefully received.

As you know, I am no mac user. However, i have heard good things about XLD from one who is. It's mainly known for its losslees audio file conversion properties but is also a ripper offering various extraction strategies, much as E.A.C. does for Windoze.

[mahlerei]

Bryn

Yes, I had heard about XLD, but reassured to hear that it's actually a good 'un. Will now give it a whirl. Thanks!

[Dave2002]

There is also Max - can't remember whether I found it better. XLD appears to have been updated more recently than Max - 2017 vs 2009.

[Stunsworth]

I use iTunes with error correction switched on, but use XLD for format conversions - FLAC to ALAC sort of thing.

[MrGongGong]

There is also Max - can't remember whether I found it better. XLD appears to have been updated more recently than Max - 2017 vs 2009.

MAX works fine for me (as does Max/MSP)
Handbrake is another possibility

OR import into an audio editor

[Richard Barrett]

MAX and XLD are both fine. You can also just double click on the CD icon and drag and drop the files wherever you want.

[Dave2002]

MAX works fine for me (as does Max/MSP)
Handbrake is another possibility

OR import into an audio editor

I'd not thought of using Handbrake. I suspect that drag and drop into Audacity will work too - it works wih DVD sound tracks. Whether it'll have the same/similar error correcting features of EAC I'm not sure. I actually still use iTunes sometimes, and there are options to enable the drive to be more pernickety and for track re-reading.

Where there might be significant differences between rippers is if the CDs to be ripped are not just regular ones, but ones with special coding, such as HDCD.
Some rippers don't know about such less usual formats, and may give terrible results on those, or simply just not decode the special codes.

[MrGongGong]

I'd not thought of using Handbrake. I suspect that drag and drop into Audacity will work too - it works wih DVD sound tracks. Whether it'll have the same/similar error correcting features of EAC I'm not sure. I actually still use iTunes sometimes, and there are options to enable the drive to be more pernickety and for track re-reading.

I would only use Audacity as a last resort, but it is a bit of a "Swiss Army Knife"

Surely with your penchant for tangental solutions you could code something in C++ ?

[Dave2002]

I would only use Audacity as a last resort, but it is a bit of a "Swiss Army Knife"

Surely with your penchant for tangental solutions you could code something in C++ ?

I wouldn't have suggested it but for your suggestion of Handbrake, which I would have thought almost equally suspect. Is it a good option?

Re different solutions - no to C++ but maybe a SKI graph reduction engine

[Stunsworth]

I'd not thought of using Handbrake

Neither had I. I only ever use Handbrake for transcoding video files or extracting a video file from a DVD.

[Dave2002]

Neither had I. I only ever use Handbrake for transcoding video files or extracting a video file from a DVD.

That's mostly what I use it for too. Somewhat surprisingly, on some HD videos - such as from one of my cameras - unless a very fast computer and graphics chip is used there may be stuttering of the video, but a very small reduction in image quality using Handbrake (lossy compression ...) gives an almost imperceptible loss of quality (i.e. I've never noticed any visible quality loss)- but seems to reduce the file size so that the jerkiness disappears completely.

Oddly this can be OS dependent. One of my clips worked fine straight out of the camera in Windows - probably was XP - running on an Apple iMac, but was jittery when running in OS X on the same machine. That was around 2009-2010.

Also Handbrake is useful for preparing some video clips for editing, as some editing tools won't always take the formats which the original movie files are stored in - and again the quality loss can be negligible. However, sometimes such pre processing does introduce a perceptible quality loss - depends on the particular data, the edit tools, and how important high quality results are.