SteveTheShadow
06-11-2008, 12:36
Having freed myself from the shackles of iTunes for organising the music
for my Squeezebox, I have found a nice little CD ripper for OS X that rips to FLAC and various other formats.
It is a Universal Binary, so will work on Intel Macs and is very simple to use.
either a command line or a GUI version can be downloaded from http://tmkk.hp.infoseek.co.jp/xld/index_e.html
The software is donation ware but does not pester you for donations after you download it.
It works extremely well and is faster than MAX at performing secure rips.
XLD uses the newest CDparanoia engine and checks with the accurate rip database to give a confidence rating
for each CD processed, and outputs a log file when the CD is done.
The preferences are easy to understand although there is one thing they could have made easier.
The option to edit the Metadata before ripping is there, but not immediately obvious, as it is located
in the File menu rather than being on a button in the main window. However once the CD tracks are displayed
in the main window the standard Apple 'get info' shortcut,"command I" will bring up the tag editor.
XLD uses the CDDB database to start you off with reasonably accurate tagging
so will be quicker than MAX for tag editing as MAX uses MusicBrainz, which
although a worthy effort is a bit limited in the amount of tagging data it holds
at the moment.
There are not as many options available as there are with MAX but for getting your music
into your Mac efficiently and without fuss, I think XLD is a good bit of kit.
Steve
for my Squeezebox, I have found a nice little CD ripper for OS X that rips to FLAC and various other formats.
It is a Universal Binary, so will work on Intel Macs and is very simple to use.
either a command line or a GUI version can be downloaded from http://tmkk.hp.infoseek.co.jp/xld/index_e.html
The software is donation ware but does not pester you for donations after you download it.
It works extremely well and is faster than MAX at performing secure rips.
XLD uses the newest CDparanoia engine and checks with the accurate rip database to give a confidence rating
for each CD processed, and outputs a log file when the CD is done.
The preferences are easy to understand although there is one thing they could have made easier.
The option to edit the Metadata before ripping is there, but not immediately obvious, as it is located
in the File menu rather than being on a button in the main window. However once the CD tracks are displayed
in the main window the standard Apple 'get info' shortcut,"command I" will bring up the tag editor.
XLD uses the CDDB database to start you off with reasonably accurate tagging
so will be quicker than MAX for tag editing as MAX uses MusicBrainz, which
although a worthy effort is a bit limited in the amount of tagging data it holds
at the moment.
There are not as many options available as there are with MAX but for getting your music
into your Mac efficiently and without fuss, I think XLD is a good bit of kit.
Steve