Fast ripping of CDs (and storage)

[Werner Berghofer]

Lee,

There's a good run down on using XLD here

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.

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

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.

[webby]

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.

Oh I see, for long concert pieces and such?

[webby]

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.

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.

[Werner Berghofer]

Lee,

Well that was a couple of years ago

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.

[webby]

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.

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

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

[dave2010]

Oh I see, for long concert pieces and such?

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

[Reid Malenfant]

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

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

Nero should do it

[webby]

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

What do you want to do with it?

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

[dave2010]

Mark

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

Nero should do it

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

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

What do you want to do with it?

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

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.

[webby]

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.

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.