Fast ripping of CDs (and storage)

[bobbasrah]

Dave, totally off the wall but I remember something about splitting Flac files, vaguely in Bonk or something similar.... Sorry, hazy response but will root around as something is sounding familiar...
So far as Mac issues, sorry mate no help from here...

[dave2010]

Maybe this post elsewhere will have some effect - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3472347 or not, as the case may be!

Prompted by someone else who's also noticed problems using iTunes on some CDs, I can now report that almost every other player - eg. VLC, Songbird, Cog and even Apple's own Quicktime can play these difficult CDs without making a complete scrambled mess of them.

For ripping, Songbird manages rather well, but it only supports Ogg and Flac I think.

Am I imagining it, or does Cog do a better job than most for playback?

As I've been reporting, iTunes 10.5 does seem to be the major culprit re the poor sound from some CDs. Apple need to get this fixed PDQ, before someone sues them for damage to their hearing!

[dave2010]

I noticed reports that iTunes 10.5.1 is now available. I also read that this does not fix the ripping/playing problem with some CDs. I can confirm that this is indeed the case. It would still not play/rip CD2 of my set of Alfven symphonies with Neeme Järvi (Brilliant 8974). If anyone has managed to not update to iTunes 10.5, I'd suggest that they restrain themselves, as iTunes 10.5 and 10.5.1 still seem to have some quite significant problems - at least regarding some discs.

Stick with what you've got already if it works for you, and don't attempt the "upgrade" to 10.5.n yet.

If you've already got 10.5, then you might not notice any significant differences in "upgrading" to 10.5.1, though it depends what matters to you. If you have problems with playing the problems are likely to carry through to the latest version.

I did also have some problems trying to install 10.5.1, though I overcame these by going and fetching a new .dmg installation package - as if I'd installed iTunes for the first time, from the Apple web site. It does seem that Apple have screwed up somewhat with iTunes 10.5.

From now on I intend to keep copies of installation files so that I can revert back to earlier versions if I need to. Unfortunately I'm not sure that I have access to 10.4 or earlier .dmg files right now, though it's not a total disaster, because even allowing for the problems, the program does do more than 90% of the rips apparently OK.

[bennyboyph]

dbpoweramp in secure mode with c2 pointers.

[WAD62]

dbpoweramp in secure mode with c2 pointers.

+1

[Smoker]

my own personal view regarding this is down to money, I dont believe mac's are worth the money in my situation. both macs and pc's are often badly designed in terms of heat management, basically put i'd never waste money on a ready built mac or a ready built pc. I built my own and much better it is too!

the greater the load the greater the heat and these puppies both macs and pc's are guilty. better design in the casing and components would be a better foundation for any computer that is used for serious applications.

I dont pass judgement on other peoples preferences based on what they can afford but just wanted to point a few things out. yes itunes on the pc is crap and on the mac it runs as it should. I put it down to bad programming! if i reboot my computer and select my snow leopard drive my quad core pc boots and runs itunes just fine and any other application with the smoothness of any high end mac. ive spread my set up across both os's with any design/music related apps done in snow leopard with gaming/ripping etc using windows 7. same pc, just built to spec to carry a heavy load.

I use macdrive to have access to any osx drive while in windows 7, both systems are great in my opinion.

[webby]

Dave, re your last post: I don't believe that it is as easy as that to revert back to older versions of iTunes. Be very careful what you do. Google it and you'll find many reasons not to bother.