Fast ripping of CDs (and storage)

Tim,

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I build, tinker and experiment with computers […] But you cannot do that with MAC's

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no, you can do that too with Macs, but why, what for? Macs are built to create and – yes – consume content in an easy and pleasing way. Are you aware that also in science, research and development Macs are more often used than other computers?

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Apple and their 'must have' products IMO have changed human behaviour more than any other modern company and I'm just not comfortable with that

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I fully understand what you try to say, and believe me, I share most of your feelings and expressions. But don’t forget: this is valid for Apple’s consumer products, but not for the reliable and valuable media production workhorses Apple successfully is producing since the late 1980’s.

Nobody is being forced to purchase Apple products. Is Apple to blame for people liking and buying their products?

Werner.

Best agree to disagree I think Werner ;)

I'm happy being 'a PC' as you are happy being an Applehead. It won't matter whatever argument is put forward in support of Apple, as I will never like the company and I'm a stubborn old cuss who will often bite my nose off to spite my own face :mental:

Tim,

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Best agree to disagree I think Werner ;)

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agree. Piece, brotha!

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I'm a stubborn old cuss

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Guess I’m older than you. I first got in touch with electronic data processing in 1979 (was 23 years old at that time). When did you start?

Werner.

Werner

I think I'm with you on this, and it seems I'm even older.

I work somewhere where they have lots of Macs and PCs. Many of the Macs will also run Windows XP. In an environment where there's really quite good technical support many of the problems which home users face are dealt with by the tecchies, but even so even they are not generally willing to "upgrade" to the latest version of Windows. Further, since they have so many machines, if something goes wrong, they either bin the machine, or re-initialise it with images stored on a server.

Home users are generally unable to adopt this approach to support, and I have found that maintaining Windows PCs in a home environment is akin to shooting your left foot off on Monday, with a likelihood that you'll shoot the right one off by Wednesday.

There are some good programs for PCs, and many gamers will perhaps prefer them, but they may know how to tame the beasts - the computers, that is.

I have worked with Macs, PCs and even Unix and Linux systems for many years, and I was sceptical of the claims of some of my colleagues who supported Macs in the early parts of this century. I'd had a Mac laptop before, which I liked at the time (it still goes, I think), but I was well aware of the problems which the Mac OS 8 and 9 systems were capable of delivering.

When I switched back to Macs for personal use a couple of years back, many of the problems which I regularly experienced with PCs just disappeared - apart from residual issues with other machines we still have. Sure, there are some problems with Macs, but mostly they just work, and the software is OK.

It's rather like having a car and being able to drive it and go places, rather than having to service it extensively every time one wants to go out. Some people enjoy fixing cars [I've got an old one which needs attention right now] while others just want them to go. Most people who use computers now should be in the latter mode.

Hopefully a simple one this. I thought I'd try to find out more about tagging, and how to do it better. Now I've managed to get quite a number of CDs accessible, but actually managing them is turning out to be a bit of a pain.

I'm currently using iTunes + Squeezebox server, with Squeezepad to control the music. The limitations of tagging, as I have it now, are starting to become obvious. A lot of music doesn't appear under the "right" place(s). This must have been dealt with elsewhere - but I'll come back to this.

I thought I'd try MusicBrainz, since it was suggested earlier. I've downloaded it to my iMac (Snow Leopard). Doesn't work with CDs though, as when I put in a CD iTunes intercepts the CD before MusicBrainz Picard can get its hands on it. Even closing down iTunes does not allow MusicBrainz to get to work. The CD icon in MusicBrainz does not go bold - to allow me to click on it.

I'm hoping that I may discover rather better and useful tagging than that from the Gracenote db, but I may not.

Any suggestions?

Also, what may seem a stupid question - "are the tags stored in with the music file, or in other auxiliary files?" I don't know how tags are stored. If they're in the file, then does it make a difference which OS (Windows, Mac, Linux etc) is used, or is this only application dependent? If the latter, are there standards for different library systems, so that tags will work if the music files are moved across systems?

Dave,

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Originally Posted by dave2010

Any suggestions?

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although this certainly may be a major pain in the rear, I prefer manual tagging. I’m very picky regarding the way titles are spelled and written, and because I’m a typographer I hate so see the very common wrong usage of ' (minute sign) and ’ (apostrophe). Since no online music title database corresponds to my requirements, I choose the manual route instead.

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Originally Posted by dave2010

are the tags stored in with the music file, or in other auxiliary files?

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Except for WAV files all other tags and cover art graphics are stored in the music file; the WAV format does not support tagging. Tags and cover art graphics travel without problems across various platforms and devices.

Werner.

Why not correct the tags that iTunes pulls in before you start ripping ?
I hate iTunes and its interface with a vengeance, but it is possible to correct things first.
Don't forget to set iTunes to rip securely ;)

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Originally Posted by Werner Berghofer

Dave,

Except for WAV files all other tags and cover art graphics are stored in the music file; the WAV format does not support tagging. Tags and cover art graphics travel without problems across various platforms and devices.

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Werner

Seems crazy to me to have potentially large volumes of data embedded in music or video files. It'd make more sense to have tag-links which could be linked to external databases. For example, I'd like to see CD notes, which some companies (e.g Chandos) provide, but it might not make sense to have these in metadata fields. Of course it does make a difference where and how the metadata is used. In the context of a CD, if the CD notes are put in the metadata associated with an album, then this should only be a relatively small amount of extra data. If the notes are associated with every track, then there would be significant duplication. Metadata might also be used for streaming services, in which case it would need to be sent fairly frequently to be useful, but preferably kept brief enough so as not to interfere with the music or video.

Re WAV files, I thought they could be tagged, though aren't perhaps normally. I remember a few years ago a work colleague, saying he'd ripped some CDs to MP3 - perhaps for a party, but then found later that the WAV files which he managed to associate later also picked up the tags. He was surprised that this happened, but once he noticed it, found it useful. Maybe I misremembered his story, but I think that is what happened.

This forum also has a discussion about WAV tags - this posting, and the later ones - http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showpost...89&postcount=9

Re different formats, do the tags get recoded when moving (say) from mp3 to aac, or have the different formats been converging to similar standards, so that the metadata can simply be copied (with the format fields modified if there are any) when doing a format conversion?

Album artwork added automatically by iTunes is stored in a cache file and not embedded into the file. To embed the artwork, delete the automatically downloaded one and add your own artwork manually.

Dave,

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Originally Posted by dave2010

Seems crazy to me to have potentially large volumes of data embedded in music or video files.

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compared to the average overall size of a lossless audio file, the additional size of tags and cover art with dimensions of 1000 × 1000 pixels is peanuts :-)

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It'd make more sense to have tag-links which could be linked to external databases.

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Of course it would, but on the other hand I fear this would tremendously complicate the process of moving audio files between different computers and audio devices.

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Re WAV files, I thought they could be tagged

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Well yes, WAV files can be tagged, but the metadata is not embedded in the audio file itself, but stored in various supplemental library files which reside locally on the computer. Therefore metadata usually is lost if copying the WAV file to another computer or device. Please check Computer Audiophile’s thread WAV file tagging and artwork in iTunes for detailled information.

Werner.

Simon,

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Originally Posted by sburrell

Album artwork added automatically by iTunes is stored in a cache file and not embedded into the file.

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this is quite true, thank you for pointing this out. Since I usually prefer to add the tags myself, I forgot to mention that I also disabled the iTunes option for automatic download of cover art files. These images are always added manually by myself, becaue I prefer larger dimensions than the usual 300 × 300 pixels added by iTunes.

Werner.

Werner

Thanks for a very helpful reply

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Originally Posted by Werner Berghofer

compared to the average overall size of a lossless audio file, the additional size of tags and cover art with dimensions of 1000 × 1000 pixels is peanuts :-)

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Probably, and for a one off it is OK, where the metadata is filtered out by the server. I thought that sometimes the metadata is used for streaming purposes, and that might not be so good if this gets mixed in with the communications stream. There are many posts on these boards extolling the virtues of more precise timing in the communications, and the benefits of shaving away a few pico-seconds of jitter. :)

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Of course it would, but on the other hand I fear this would tremendously complicate the process of moving audio files between different computers and audio devices.

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It would not be unreasonable to have some data stored externally. For example:

tag: CD-Notes = "http://www.recordcompany.com/Sibelius/RC5044.pdf"
would be a short tag indicating that the record company notes in pdf form are available at the specificed URL.

tags: Composer-Note-1 = "http://www.wikipedia.com/Beethoven"
Composer-Note-2 = "http://www.wikipedia.com/Brahms"

etc.

I don't know enough about tags - I assume that they can't be parameterised - which "might" be even more flexible, eg.

tags: Composer-Note ("Beethoven") = "http://www.wikipedia.com/Beethoven"
Composer-Note ("Brahms") = "http://www.wikipedia.com/Brahms"
Personal-note("Proms") = "http://www.myblog.com/Proms2011"

Some pattern matching systems can work with that kind of data.

Doesn't actually seem too complicated to me.

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Well yes, WAV files can be tagged, but the metadata is not embedded in the audio file itself, but stored in various supplemental library files which reside locally on the computer. Therefore metadata usually is lost if copying the WAV file to another computer or device. Please check Computer Audiophile’s thread WAV file tagging and artwork in iTunes for detailled information.

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Thanks for the clarification re WAV files and external data.

I don't really see the point in having a composer note link to a wiki page for the composer. I can access the wiki pages for a given album, artist or composer with a few clicks. You're not browsing whilst playing back music are you? :eek:

The tags that are probably most incorrect from database lookups are genre and composer info, but I don't really use either for browsing.

For correcting tag case and other minor tag errors there are a number of helpful scripts at dougs applescripts.

Again, I recommend XLD for ripping. Have you looked it up Dave? I've mentioned it a number of times now. I don't have too many problems with tagging. Nothing that a title case script can't fix.

As per Werner, I also add album art manually. This is usually sourced from album art exchange. Plenty of high quality art there. Do it as you go and it takes about 30 secs.

You could download something like Alfred and use search templates. For example, activate Alfred, type wiki, space, type Beethoven, enter, will open up the wiki page for Beethoven. All without touching the browser.

I do the same to get artwork: aae, bob dylan, opens up the album art exchange page for bob Dylan.

Personally, I use launchbar but I'm just looking at switching to Alfred which is free, or you can use it with an addon which costs £12.

Werner, do you use any utilities like this?

Note: there are actually some scripts at dougs applescripts that will search wiki, and others, based on the artist now playing, or selected.

Lee,

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Originally Posted by webby

Personally, I use launchbar […] Werner, do you use any utilities like this?

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I used to be a launchbar user, but that was back in the days of Mac OS 9. Nowadays I think launchbar isn’t needed anymore, because Spotlight offers very similar features – it even cloned the launchbar keyboard shortcut cmd+spacebar.

There a tons of useful and smart utilities available for Mac OS X, but I’m an old fashioned guy with roots back in Assembler programming, so I’m used to do many things manually. I use Macs just because they are beautiful and the ladies think I must be rich ;-)

Werner.

Dave,

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Originally Posted by dave2010

I thought that sometimes the metadata is used for streaming purposes, and that might not be so good if this gets mixed in with the communications stream.

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I’m pretty sure the metadata section is clearly separated from the audio section in the audio file, and this separation also will be honoured by the file transper protocol used for streaming.

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There are many posts on these boards extolling the virtues of more precise timing in the communications, and the benefits of shaving away a few pico-seconds of jitter.

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I know, but there are also many posts dealing with equipment burn-in and folks claiming to hear differences between 44.1 KHz/16 bit and 192 KHz/24 bit audio files. One must not believe everything which can be found on the Internet ;-)

Werner.

Lee

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Originally Posted by webby

The tags that are probably most incorrect from database lookups are genre and composer info, but I don't really use either for browsing.

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So how do you get to your music? Do you do it via folders?

I'm already at the point where navigating to the right files is becoming a problem, particularly via the iPad Squeezepad interface. Maybe iPeng would be easier - though I suspect there's not much in it.

It might actually be easier to do the navigation via folders and using aliases - not sure though. I'd probably need a real machine (e.g Mac mini, or Macbook Air) to do that.

Still - live music tonight - must go - Prom 33, Sibelius, Grieg, Nielsen.

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Originally Posted by dave2010

Lee

So how do you get to your music? Do you do it via folders?

I'm already at the point where navigating to the right files is becoming a problem, particularly via the iPad Squeezepad interface. Maybe iPeng would be easier - though I suspect there's not much in it.

It might actually be easier to do the navigation via folders and using aliases - not sure though. I'd probably need a real machine (e.g Mac mini, or Macbook Air) to do that.

Still - live music tonight - must go - Prom 33, Sibelius, Grieg, Nielsen.

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I use iTunes if I'm at my mac, or the apple remote app on the iPad. This accesses my itunes library and displays album art and playlists etc. Other remote apps are available.

People can slate iTunes for whatever reason and yes, I feel it's a little bloated now (I'd prefer it if it was just a music player) but I like the user interface and the visual aspect of the album art.

So yeah, I let iTunes handle my music files and the playback of them. I can't be bothered, and haven't got the time, to faff about with a folder structure and separate playback software.

Enjoy the concert!

There's a good run down on using XLD here: http://www.digitalvertigo.co.uk/foru...howtopic=26740

Lee

I actually downloaded and ran xLD yesterday. I really wanted to find a way of splitting a music file into manageable chunks. I need to figure out whether I can make up suitable cue sheets, or whether i need another (yet another!) editing tool.

Lee,

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Originally Posted by webby

There's a good run down on using XLD here

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XLD is claimed to be superior with problematic CDs, but the files it produces are identical to the iTunes rips. Computer Audiophile → Benefits of ripping with XLD versus iTunes.

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In large part, the benefit from using XLD’s ripping software (as compared to iTunes) could be labeled 'peace of mind'.

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Normally I also use XLD, but when I get annoyed by its slow ripping speed I switch to iTunes. Even with correction of CD read errors enabled, the ripping process in iTunes is much faster. The CDs I rip usually are trouble-free, since this is the first I do after the Amazon package has arrived in my home. With XLD I also noticed that the masking of certain characters which may be problematic in Mac OS X filenames (for example the colon, the forward slash or the apostrophe) does not work reliably all the time. In this respect, no version of iTunes has been causing troubles yet; these characters are replaced by an underscore in the filename.

Like you I’m happy with the iTunes user interface and wouldn’t bother switching to another audio playback software.

Werner.

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Originally Posted by dave2010

Lee

I actually downloaded and ran xLD yesterday. I really wanted to find a way of splitting a music file into manageable chunks. I need to figure out whether I can make up suitable cue sheets, or whether i need another (yet another!) editing tool.

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Oh I see, for long concert pieces and such?

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Originally Posted by Werner Berghofer

XLD is claimed to be superior with problematic CDs, but the files it produces are identical to the iTunes rips. Computer Audiophile → Benefits of ripping with XLD versus iTunes.

Like you I’m happy with the iTunes user interface and wouldn’t bother switching to another audio playback software.

Werner.

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Well that was a couple of years ago, and the developer is often releasing updates. The latest version has a XLD Ripper option. In truth, I mainly use it for the accurate rip peace of mind, and the log reports, which iTunes doesn't produce.

I may run a rip speed test to check iTunes vs XLD actually.

Lee,

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Originally Posted by webby

Well that was a couple of years ago

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better make that a couple of days ago :-) Last Saturday evening I cancelled XLD ripping a perfectly clean and scratchless audio CD and used iTunes instead to rip the disc. This was the most recent version of XLD, labelled 20110703 (135.1), on my 17" MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 with 4 GB of RAM, and there were also the filename troubles I mentioned in my earlier post.

Werner.

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Originally Posted by Werner Berghofer

Lee,



better make that a couple of days ago :-) Last Saturday evening I cancelled XLD ripping a perfectly clean and scratchless audio CD and used iTunes instead to rip the disc. This was the most recent version of XLD, labelled 20110703 (135.1), on my 17" MacBook Pro 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 with 4 GB of RAM, and there were also the filename troubles I mentioned in my earlier post.

Werner.

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Hmmm, I meant link. That was written in 2009.

Re your comments: interesting. As I say, I will test.

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Originally Posted by webby

Oh I see, for long concert pieces and such?

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Mmmm. Maybe. How about files around 1.5 Gbytes, perhaps containing 9 or more hours of flac encoded music!

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Originally Posted by dave2010

Mmmm. Maybe. How about files around 1.5 Gbytes, perhaps containing 9 or more hours of flac encoded music!

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Can't you burn it to a DVDr? 4.7Gb single sided, plenty of room.. Cheap to :eyebrows:

Nero should do it :)

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Originally Posted by dave2010

Mmmm. Maybe. How about files around 1.5 Gbytes, perhaps containing 9 or more hours of flac encoded music!

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What do you want to do with it?

You've got FLAC files that you want to convert to ALAC? Is that it?

Mark

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Can't you burn it to a DVDr? 4.7Gb single sided, plenty of room.. Cheap to

Nero should do it

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No - sorrry, that's not what I want to do.

Lee - as above - not what I want to do.

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Originally Posted by webby

What do you want to do with it?

You've got FLAC files that you want to convert to ALAC? Is that it?

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The files are large, so I want to split them into convenient units. I want an editor or splitter which will cope with large FLAC (or ALAC - since I can convert to that format if needed) files.

I've just been looking again at Audacity, and tried using the 1.3 Beta and ffmpeg tool (Mac OS version), but it didn't look hopeful. Either it wasn't working, or was going to take most of the day just to load up.

A few things occur to me.

One, which might work if I can find the right tools. Are there general file splitting tools which can split any file? I'm sure there are.
Then obviously the end (and perhaps also the beginning) of a file created that way may not be in "good" FLAC or ALAC format, but despite that it may then be possible to edit the files using some editors. Depends how robust or picky such editor tools are about beginning and ends of data files.

Another option, since I'm using a Mac, is simply to go back to WAV, and then edit from there. The files might be very large, but I think the Mac file system should cope. It might be a bit slow, but I've seen xACT convert some of these files to WAV as an intermediate process, and that didn't take too long. Some/many Windows systems would not do this, because of constraints on file sizes.

I'm not sure how good Audacity is for large files. Although my experience of Audacity is that in many ways it is excellent, it normally generates a massive number of modest (typically 1 Mbyte) temporary/project files, and this can slow some operations down very considerably. It works very well for audio files less than one hour or so.

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Originally Posted by dave2010

The files are large, so I want to split them into convenient units. I want an editor or splitter which will cope with large FLAC (or ALAC - since I can convert to that format if needed) files.

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Sorry Dave, I'm a little confused cos I don't have all the info.

Are you saying you have FLAC files that are, say, 50 mins long, and that you want to add 'chapters' for want of a better word, to break them into smaller parts?

Is this to aid navigation, or playback, so that you can skip to a particular section?

If so, you can actually do this in iTunes, but it is a little convoluted, but if you were only doing it a few times or so it wouldn't be too bad.

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Originally Posted by webby

Sorry Dave, I'm a little confused cos I don't have all the info.

Are you saying you have FLAC files that are, say, 50 mins long, and that you want to add 'chapters' for want of a better word, to break them into smaller parts?

Is this to aid navigation, or playback, so that you can skip to a particular section?

If so, you can actually do this in iTunes, but it is a little convoluted, but if you were only doing it a few times or so it wouldn't be too bad.

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Lee

Sorry - very long delay between your post and this reply! Work and other things have been distracting me.

Actually the FLAC files could be several hours long, which is part of the problem. I have some which are a few hours long, and I've tried (and failed) to generate files which would have been perhaps 10 hours long. The reason is that I have tried to record unattended, when I might have been out for at least five hours. I didn't particularly want to do this, but it seemed the only way to (try to) get the material, not having software which could be configured and scheduled to turn on/off at the appropriate times.

It's not immediately high priority, though it would be good to know how to split long FLAC or ALAC files - preferably without having to spend a lot on software. I always try free software first!

It wouldn't be necessary to do this too often, though I'd hope it wouldn't take more than (say) 15 mins per large file, or maybe it could be done as a batch process so that I wouldn't have to monitor it.

Dave, may I ask how the recording is done in the first place? Is it an Internet radio recording? If so what software do you use to record?

Latest problem is with ripping with iTunes on a Mac. Twice in the last few days I've had CDs which wouldn't rip well at all - the sounds produced are truly abominable.

I suspected my CD drive, but actually it does seem a bit random. The two CDs which have failed to rip properly are both from magazines. One is of Bruckner 3rd Symphony, from the BBC Music Magazine, while the other is of Mahler's 1st Symphony, from the Classic FM Magazine (which is very good, btw, and a bargain at under £5 - Horenstein and the LSO). These CDs play in CD players, but won't rip on the Apple. I thought this fault was going to go hard, but when I put in a couple of EMI CDs bought in a charity shop, they went in without a murmur - and the results are good.

Maybe the freebie magazine CDs really aren't made on such good plastics.

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Originally Posted by dave2010

Latest problem is with ripping with iTunes on a Mac. Twice in the last few days I've had CDs which wouldn't rip well at all - the sounds produced are truly abominable.

I suspected my CD drive, but actually it does seem a bit random. The two CDs which have failed to rip properly are both from magazines. One is of Bruckner 3rd Symphony, from the BBC Music Magazine, while the other is of Mahler's 1st Symphony, from the Classic FM Magazine (which is very good, btw, and a bargain at under £5 - Horenstein and the LSO). These CDs play in CD players, but won't rip on the Apple. I thought this fault was going to go hard, but when I put in a couple of EMI CDs bought in a charity shop, they went in without a murmur - and the results are good.

Maybe the freebie magazine CDs really aren't made on such good plastics.

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I'd almost bet cash that the format of the discs that do not rip properly is non standard.

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Originally Posted by Stratmangler

I'd almost bet cash that the format of the discs that do not rip properly is non standard.

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Chris

You may be right. I've now checked these discs on a different machine. They don't rip in iTunes on that either, so probably not a hardware issue at all.

Total pain though. I think there's a route using EAC on PCs - which might give acceptable results, but I hate having to turn a PC on, and then I've got to transfer the data back to Mac OS anyway. I tried EAC and got one track converted, but it was a slow business. The sound quality seemed OK.

I tried Foobar, but although the results were better than the Mac rips, the overall sound was still dreadful when I put the files back on to Mac OS X. Sounded like overload distortion on loud passages, and both of the CDs mentioned have quite a few of those.

I still wonder if something significant has changed in iTunes recently (Mac OS version).

I shall now investigate other ways of ripping on the Macs, to avoid having to have anything to do with PCs (though currently typing this on a PC laptop). Max and XLD maybe?

I've lost track of how often I've mentioned XLD. I'm not saying it'll work, but it deserves a chance.

Try Exact Audio Copy (EAC).

Very quick and accurate (and free) - it will even compare extracted errors with an online database to varify data transfers. Needless to say it puts in all track titles and artists etc..

Also try ripping to WAV files - using FLAC is all well and good but you actually save very little in terms of space and in any case harddrives of large capacity are so cheap now. Couple this with the fact that WAV's are what the industry uses and can be relatively easily track marked in software as they are completely uncompressed.

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Originally Posted by dave2010

Chris

You may be right. I've now checked these discs on a different machine. They don't rip in iTunes on that either, so probably not a hardware issue at all.

Total pain though. I think there's a route using EAC on PCs - which might give acceptable results, but I hate having to turn a PC on, and then I've got to transfer the data back to Mac OS anyway. I tried EAC and got one track converted, but it was a slow business. The sound quality seemed OK.

I tried Foobar, but although the results were better than the Mac rips, the overall sound was still dreadful when I put the files back on to Mac OS X. Sounded like overload distortion on loud passages, and both of the CDs mentioned have quite a few of those.

I still wonder if something significant has changed in iTunes recently (Mac OS version).

I shall now investigate other ways of ripping on the Macs, to avoid having to have anything to do with PCs (though currently typing this on a PC laptop). Max and XLD maybe?

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Have you tried exploring the discs?
I remember that the Prince freebie a couple of years had something like 99 tracks on it, most of 'em being silence, and a few at the beginning containing the actual music files.

http://cdn.thatgrapejuice.net/wp-con...7/prince20.jpg

I've encountered yet more discs which won't rip properly on Macs using iTunes, and it is repeatable across different machines. Someone else who has been "on the case" has detected that in some cases these are CDs which have pre-emphasis, though apparently in theory iTunes should be able to deal with these.

As yet this hasn't been singled out as the reason, or even the only reason, but it does seem that some CDs will almost certainly cause problems for iTunes rips.

One example is this CD set from Brilliant, which originates from BIS - http://www.selections.com/AH736/mart...chtext=Martinu (Amazon have this too, but this supplier sometimes has very low prices). From this set, the first two discs will not rip acceptably, but disc three, which has Symphonies 5 and 6 will. It'd be interesting to know if the original BIS set also has this problem.

Although issues might be due to the CD material, this seems unlikely. In this case it's probable that all the CDs are physically made using the same materials, so it's a coding issue. One possibility is that because of licensing issues Brilliant has deliberately put some form of spoiling code into the data, to prevent the disc from being copied, but it seems unlikely, as anyone who really wanted this would copy from the BIS discs. I'm not sure if I can check this, or find a copy of a BIS original disc to check, though I do have other BIS discs, and it might be that the problems are associated with them.

BIS discs often have a pretty amazing dynamic range, so that might have something to do with it - maybe they always use pre-emphasis and/or other techniques. For example, could they have used HDCD plus pre-emphasis? I don't know if that's actually possible - maybe HDCD does that anyway.

I don't know an easy way to check for pre-emphasis or special formats when a CD is put into a computer drive. I think possibly dBPoweramp might do this, but as it's a Windows program I'm not over keen to use that. Maybe there are Mac programs which can check formats?

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

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...

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Originally Posted by dave2010

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

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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!

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.

dbpoweramp in secure mode with c2 pointers.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bennyboyph

dbpoweramp in secure mode with c2 pointers.

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+1 :cool:

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.

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.