Audio CD Burning / Ripping

[SG123]

A couple of months ago, as my 7 yr old PC was getting a bit sluggish, and rather than fork out more cash on maintenance thought I'd treat myself to a Mac. As the main use for my computing is music and mixes, I thought I'd made the right choice. Have I?

I'm encountering a few problems and I desperately need help, so please contribute if you can.

1) With over 1 TB of music I decided to buy an external Hard Drive to store my music, any music I download now goes straight onto the Mac. My Itunes will not let me update/rename any of my files on the external (via get info) but will for any of the new songs on my mac. Odd..

2) never mind, because I can simply burn a CD from Itunes then re-rip the CD back to my Mac? Is there software that will do this and let me rename tracks/album title etc that isn't Itunes?

3) Each week from a receive from a friend a dvd data disc full of all the weeks new release albums. None of these are tagged (they simply say Tk1 Tk2 etc) Yesterday I dragged which albums I wanted on to my Mac inserted a blank disc and clicked the burn icon on the top right hand corner. After burning a few I realised I these weren't audio discs but data discs. I tried to find how to change this but am at a loss.

So how can I do something as simple as burn an audio disc without having to import everything I want into Itunes?

Well I went online and downloaded a programme called 'Burn'. Very simple but I just needed it to be effective. However this keeps saying 'not enough space' everytime I hit burn - even when there's only 1hr 10mins on the display. Very frustrating.

So simply can anyone suggest any programmes (free if possible) that can do all these simple things on my Mac.

As an ex PC user who swore by Nero, Media Monkey and Easy CD Extractor I'm wondering whether I should have stepped in to the unknown?

PLEASE HELP!!

[chas_m]

As the main use for my computing is music and mixes, I thought I'd made the right choice. Have I?

Yes, but its not magic. You have to actually learn the programs you are using. Like with everything.

1) With over 1 TB of music I decided to buy an external Hard Drive to store my music, any music I download now goes straight onto the Mac. My Itunes will not let me update/rename any of my files on the external (via get info) but will for any of the new songs on my mac. Odd.

Not odd. It's a permissions issue with the external drive.

a) if its formatted NTFS, Macs can't write to that. So that's the answer to that mystery -- reformat it for Mac.

b) if its already formatted for Mac, select the drive in Finder (single click), get info on it (command-i) and check the box at the bottom that says "ignore ownership on this drive."

2) never mind, because I can simply burn a CD from Itunes then re-rip the CD back to my Mac? Is there software that will do this and let me rename tracks/album title etc that isn't Itunes?

Issue solved above, so this question is moot.

3) Each week from a receive from a friend a dvd data disc full of all the weeks new release albums. None of these are tagged (they simply say Tk1 Tk2 etc) Yesterday I dragged which albums I wanted on to my Mac inserted a blank disc and clicked the burn icon on the top right hand corner. After burning a few I realised I these weren't audio discs but data discs. I tried to find how to change this but am at a loss.

Again, LEARN ITUNES. Check the help file in iTunes for a step-by-step on how to burn music CDs. Finder burning is for data.

So how can I do something as simple as burn an audio disc without having to import everything I want into Itunes?

Other programs can do this as well, such as Toast. I'm not familiar with Burn so I don't know if it does Audio CDs. You'll need to *learn the program that you are using* to determine if it can meet your needs. Taking a quick look at Burn's homepage, it seems like it can do Audio CDs, but perhaps in converting the files to AIFF (which it needs to do to make an Audio CD) you're running out of disk space, or the files you've chosen become too big for the disc's capacity?

Macs need lots of "temp" room for operations like this. If you've got less than 10GB available (at a minimum) you're probably going to run into this problem a lot.

So simply can anyone suggest any programmes (free if possible) that can do all these simple things on my Mac.

iTunes.

As an ex PC user who swore by Nero, Media Monkey and Easy CD Extractor I'm wondering whether I should have stepped in to the unknown?

Unless you were born with the knowledge of how to use Nero et al, you had to learn them before you could effectively use them. It's no different for the Mac except that on the Mac it's a lot more intuitive for most people. In your case, you're going to need to un-learn the Windows mentality and get into the programs (check the help file, do some experiments) in order to learn them.

[dauber]

I agree with most of what chas_m says, but I'd like to add something:

Don't use iTunes to rip CDs. EVER. The error correction in iTunes is almost nonexistent. Can't count the number of times I've ripped a CD for iPod use only to listen and find recordings just full of clicks (including CDs that were never listened to -- just unwrapped and popped right into the drive).

There's a program called Max (and it's free) that has really stringent error correction. Or if you have access to a PC, use Exact Audio Copy (also free), which IMHO is the best ripper ever. (Too bad I can't use it in VirtualBox; that's the only thing keeping me from parting with my PC.)

[Kevriano]

I agree with most of what chas_m says, but I'd like to add something:

Don't use iTunes to rip CDs. EVER. The error correction in iTunes is almost nonexistent. Can't count the number of times I've ripped a CD for iPod use only to listen and find recordings just full of clicks (including CDs that were never listened to -- just unwrapped and popped right into the drive).

There's a program called Max (and it's free) that has really stringent error correction. Or if you have access to a PC, use Exact Audio Copy (also free), which IMHO is the best ripper ever. (Too bad I can't use it in VirtualBox; that's the only thing keeping me from parting with my PC.)

+1 for MAX. Utterly brilliant ripper.
XLD is pretty good too, but a little more complex to use.

[SG123]

Many thanks for the help. I re-formatted my external so it is now compatible with my Mac, and now can edit all songs in my I Tunes library. And 'Max' is fantastic, just what I wanted. Problems all solved, hooray.

Incidentally, Chas, a friend of mine set me up with my first PC years ago and talked me through how to use Nero et al. Since getting my Mac I've been on my own. I know enough about Itunes to get by. I just had a couple of problems that thankfully have now been solved. That's what these forums are for, right?

[chas_m]

Oh yes, of course -- but even as fast as questions get answered around here, we can't walk you through everything.

Check out Switch101, Mac101, the iLife tutorials and MyFirstMac to learn more about your system and its capabilities. You'll learn a lot, and also pick up some of the terminology that will help you articulate questions you still have to get better, more accurate answers from forums like this one.

Cheers!

[SG123]

Thanks for those sites Chas, I've bookmarked them all. There's some great tips there for Mac newbies.

Here's another question, I could start a new thread but I'll give it a go here first.

When uploading files on my Mac I'm compressing the files. However PC users then trying to download them cannot extract the files. Here's a comment I received on my blog

Anonymous said...
You forgot to add an extension on the uploads, I tried to open them with WinRAR normally but it just doesn't want to

17 March 2010 07:36


Anonymous said...
You should stick to the PC

17 March 2010 07:38


Any idea what I'm doing wrong. Or indeed what I can do right?

SG

[chas_m]

I'm assuming you're compressing these files by right-clicking on a selected file or folder of files and choosing "Compress (file name)" from the contextual menu, right?

If so, this creates a bog-standard ZIP file that any PC on earth should be able to unzip. The only way I could see a PC user having trouble (apart from user incompetence, which is a huge problem on the Windows side of things), is if the files themselves lacked the proper extensions -- you know, .jpg or .doc or whatever type of file you're working with there. If a file you're trying to send doesn't have a visible extension, either add the appropriate one by renaming, or "Get Info" on the file (command-i) and uncheck the "hide extension" box.

[SG123]

Thanks,

I tried that but the 'Hide Extension' box was unchecked.

After receiving that comment I switched on my old PC to download the file and sure enough the icon didn't look like it usually does (this is what it normally looks like)

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it was more like an empty icon that couldn't be extracted. I've encountered these empty icons on my PC before but rarely.