Best CD Ripper for Mac?

just wondering what people use for ripping cds on their macs besides itunes.

thanks in advance.

Itunes is pretty much it for me ... if you want a higher quality encoder you can always install the Lame Encoder for iTunes ....



There may be some incompatabilities with using the Lame Encoder with iTunes 7.1 and later, I'm not so sure about whether this is across the board or if it's even a known bug ....

Can you rip as waves with i-tunes?

Yeah, go to iTunes ~> Preferences ~> Advanced ~> Importing, and set it to
"Import Using":


When you are in the iTunes Library, right-click on any song and from the Contextual Menu select whichever option is showing:


As my Import Encoder is set to mp3, this option is showing for me

When you're done, just set the pref back to what you would like to use generally when you import stuff into iTunes.


.

I can't imagine anyone would have bothered looking for a CD ripping program let alone using one when iTunes does everything perfectly...

Leukeh said:

I can't imagine anyone would have bothered looking for a CD ripping program let alone using one when iTunes does everything perfectly...

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There are a LOT of people out there that HATE iTunes for some reason. I am not one of them by the way and have been using it since the very first iTunes for Windows came out and slightly after that when I got my first Power Mac and 10.2.

That is the only reason I can think of why someone would look for something else as for everything I do, iTunes does it and does it well for me at least and I am quite a picky person.

Really? I know people who use Windows and hate iTunes... but no Mac users. Not personally at least. Macs are kinda rare in Australia =P

It's common. not only her, many people,

iTunes rips are horrible, use a program with LAME 3.97 embedded.
I use NMP3 Ripper.
iTunes rips at 128 kb/s, whereas LAME 3.97 can rip at around 320kb/s VBR.

MindGame2K6 said:

iTunes rips are horrible, use a program with LAME 3.97 embedded.
I use NMP3 Ripper.
iTunes rips at 128 kb/s, whereas LAME 3.97 can rip at around 320kb/s VBR.

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Lame is a great encoder but you say iTunes stock only rips at 128k. Here is STOCK iTunes, MP3 at 320K and AAC at 320k. This is stock. Nothing else installed. Just showing for to prove it goes much higher than 128k.

Yeah, itunes will rip at 320kpbs as dtravis said...the way to get the best possible mp3 quality is to go to Preferences-->Advanced-->Importing-->Import Using: MP3 Encoder...Setting: CUSTOM. Choose the highest possible sample rate (48.000 kHz). Do not select Smart Encoding Adjustments, and do not select Filter Frequencies below 10Hz.

I believe that is the best way if using itunes, although LAME IS generally considered to be a much better encoder.

Why would you use 48 Khz to rip CDs? CDs use 44.1, so ripping them at 48 won't improve the audio quality, it will just take up more disk space.

I understand that a lot of people hate iTunes, I hated it at first but that was because of the way it displays your tracks, but then I figured out how to display things differently. I do still hate the fact that it creates copies of audio files in the iTunes folder. Programs like Media Monkey manage to keep track of your 'library' without doing that. Also while it works fine on Macs it runs terribly on Windows.

Again check this pic. Uncheck "Copy Files to ITunes Music Folder when adding to Library" and it will not create a copy of your audio files.

liquidcow said:

Why would you use 48 Khz to rip CDs? CDs use 44.1, so ripping them at 48 won't improve the audio quality, it will just take up more disk space.

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Because I was talking about ripping as mp3, not .wav. If you are going to rip as an mp3 file, which is already a lossy format, encoding at the highest sample rate will result in higher quality. If you are ripping as .wav, then yes, ripping at a higher sample rate than the original CD is pointless and will only take up more disc space. In that case you should use .wav encoder and keep the settings automatic. It will then rip at the same rate as the source.

I sometimes rip in Apple Lossless Audio format. Works perfectly (and even on the iPod). Much better than doing all that configuration for FLAC....

question i use i tunes. When i burn a mp3 cd i am putting multiple albums on one cd but...how can i just skip to the next album without having to go through all of the tracks? is there a way i can have them seperated instead of just a total of like 70 tracks?

i hate iTunes
i realy do .....
is there realy no other software thene itunes

help needed

and i don't need iTunes replys

Thanx in advance

Why do people hate iTunes, especially PC users, for ripping CDs? I'll tell you:

No error correction.

If you want 100% accuracy in your CD rips and corrections made if there's a sudden jolt or a speck of dust on the CD and you want it to re-read so you don't have a click-filled sound file, you gotta use Exact Audio Copy for Windows (some people have managed to get it working on Mac under emulation, but I never could). The Mac equivalent would be a program called Max. It has some error correction, but I don't think quite the level of EAC.

Mind you, most of the time if I'm importing into my iPod I DO use iTunes to rip, but if I'm doing a lossless rip I'll definitely use Max because if I'm doing lossless, I want it to be as close to perfect as possible.

You mean like the Error Correction built into iTunes? Did you check the Import menu settings? It's there.

Okay, that must be a new thing....

What kind of error protection is it, and how accurate is it?? Anything like...

Why should I use EAC, instead of AudioGrabber, WinDAC, etc.?

EAC features some special read modes, known as “Secure Modes”. Using these secure modes, every sector read will be doublechecked and reread or corrected if necessary. On many drives the extraction is not error free, thus these routines will make sure the track is read correctly.

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