Quote Originally Posted by dave2010 View Post
Most tools, such as iTunes etc., will try to match CD tracks against a CD database - often the Gracenote one.

This clearly saves a lot of time, and in many cases will also cause the artwork to be located - not sure how - but it does, and can appear in a user interface, such as for SqueezePad.

Some rippers are not so good at this - for example when I ripped a CD using Max for MacOS the other day, it couldn't find the data for one CD, so I had to partially enter it manually, and all the tracks were given numbers - relative to the name I provided.

I don't know how easy it is to modify such metadata afterwards, but in the first instance it helps to get as much accurate data as possible. The time taken to enter/correct such data can easily approach or exceed the ripping time. If only a few CDs aren't recognised this might not be a problem, but it could be if this happens relatively often.

I noticed a few years ago that some tools use different databases, and give different results. Are there any preferred tools/databases?
Answer:

Quote Originally Posted by webby View Post
I rip everything to alac using XLD. It's pretty easy to use. I only use that over iTunes own converter cos iTunes doesn't produce a log report or reference the accurate rip database.

Tags are handled by freedb or musicbrainz in xld and for my purposes are perfectly adequate. XLD also offers replay gain. I don't use it but some do.
XLD converts to all kinds of formats and I believe can rip to 2 formats at once.
So you could rip to alac for the home and aac for the iPod for instance.

I add artwork manually using album art exchange.