Revisitting ripping audio CD on MacOS X

In Windows, my process in ripping CD is from EAC to WAV image + .cue to CDex to Lame MP3. On my Mac, I’ve been using Max to rip my CDs to WAV image + .cue, then XLD to encode to Lame MP3.

Max CD ripper is okay, but the musicbrainz tagging is close to useless. It never recognize any of my CDs. Now, XLD can rip CDs! Even better, people are saying it’s secure, similar to the gold standard EAC. That means I can use just 1 program, XLD, to rip and encode CDs to MP3. I do notice that ripping speed is a bit slower vs Max. Another excellent thing about XLD is you can set the number of threads, useful if you have dual/quad-core processors. Setting it to 2 means XLD will encode 2 tracks at the same time, utilizing 2 cores, saving quite a bit of time. XLD seems to get frequent updates lately, which is good. Plus, it can patch itself now, no need to uninstall/re-install manually. Great program, and XLD is free!

 

Max, CD ripper for Mac

Max is a CD ripper program for MacOS X. Couple nice things:
– cdparanoia gives you more accurate rip. Probably not as extensive as EAC though.
– ability to rip from CUE sheet + .wav image file.
– uses Lame MP3

The ugly:
– MP3 ripped tracks have a 1 to 2 seconds silence in the beginning. I compared them with tracks ripped with CDex on Windows, and no such silence. 😦
– Minimal control over drive configuration compared to EAC
– Minimal control over MP3 encoder setting. Cannot specify the various presets, although the Transparent setting is presumably equal to -preset fast standard.
– One ripped track had the last second of the previous track in the beginning. WTF??

Not perfect. I’ll stick with xld for my CUE+wav into MP3 solution, or use my windows PC and enjoy the magnificent EAC and CDex.