Recommendation for external cd-ripping device

[triffid]

I will be travelling to London my iPad and retinaMacB. While there I want to copy several music cd s (at as good a bit-rate as possible) for subsequent playing on my hifi system. I also have an external hard drive (WD 'My passport for Mac) which I could take along.

I am decidedly not an aficionado of techy matters, but I presume that I will need to buy an external cd/dvd copier and some way to move the music from it to the external hard drive - and later, back in Thailand I can move the music from the hard drive to my base MacBook.

I will much appreciate recommendations (or comments) for a specific such device, cables, to enable good quality copying and optimum synching with Mac hardware.

[nullx8]

put in the CD, open iTUnes, mark CD content, control-click select convert AAC (or mpeg depends on your settings)

wait

after that done click 'Sync" with your ipad connected .. and all is done

edit: well before converting, make sure the names and artwork has been downloaded from the cddb, so you wont need to edit the names manually.

Edited November 16, 2013 by nullx8

[triffid]

put in the CD, open iTUnes, mark CD content, control-click select convert AAC (or mpeg depends on your settings)

wait

after that done click 'Sync" with your ipad connected .. and all is done

edit: well before converting, make sure the names and artwork has been downloaded from the cddb, so you wont need to edit the names manually.

i don't yet have a device to "put in the cd". The retinaMacBook doesn't have a slot.

[DogNo1]

Buy an external Mac-compatible CD/DVD drive. Plug it into your Macbook's USB.

[sniffdog]

Apple does have their own External Drive (think it's called Super Drive). It sells for about 2590 baht. I am sure you can burn either direct or by making a dmg.

Everything you need in an optical drive.

Whether youre at the office or on the road, you can play and burn both CDs and DVDs with the Apple USB SuperDrive. Its perfect when you want to watch a DVD, install software, create backup discs and more.

Take it anywhere.

Only slightly bigger than a CD case, the Apple USB SuperDrive slips easily into your travel bag when you hit the road, and takes up little space on your desk or tray table when youre working.

The essence of simplicity.

Youll never have to worry about lost cables with the Apple USB SuperDrive. It connects to your MacBook Pro with Retina display, MacBook Air, iMac or Mac mini with a single USB cable thats built into the SuperDrive. Theres no separate power adaptor, and it works whether your Mac is plugged in or running on battery power.

Edited November 16, 2013 by sniffdog

[triffid]

Apple does have their own External Drive (think it's called Super Drive). It sells for about 2590 baht. I am sure you can burn either direct or by making a dmg.

Everything you need in an optical drive.

Whether youre at the office or on the road, you can play and burn both CDs and DVDs with the Apple USB SuperDrive. Its perfect when you want to watch a DVD, install software, create backup discs and more.

Take it anywhere.

Only slightly bigger than a CD case, the Apple USB SuperDrive slips easily into your travel bag when you hit the road, and takes up little space on your desk or tray table when youre working.

The essence of simplicity.

Youll never have to worry about lost cables with the Apple USB SuperDrive. It connects to your MacBook Pro with Retina display, MacBook Air, iMac or Mac mini with a single USB cable thats built into the SuperDrive. Theres no separate power adaptor, and it works whether your Mac is plugged in or running on battery power.

Thanks for the referral.

It seems right. Just need to check if I can connect it to my external drive so that the cd s can be loaded/stored directly there for later transfer as necessary to my MacBook.

[coops]

Use XLD to rip the CD, and rip it to FLAC format.

This gives you LOSSLESS compression, as opposed to mp3 , aac etc where you permanently lose info. You can then re- encode the Flac to mp3 later for portable use, keep the flac for home use/ play and always be able to reconvert back to CD format and burn to disk if you want to.

XLD will also lookup the CD metadata for you, and it's free.

[triffid]

Use XLD to rip the CD, and rip it to FLAC format.

This gives you LOSSLESS compression, as opposed to mp3 , aac etc where you permanently lose info. You can then re- encode the Flac to mp3 later for portable use, keep the flac for home use/ play and always be able to reconvert back to CD format and burn to disk if you want to.

XLD will also lookup the CD metadata for you, and it's free.

Again, this sounds very useful, but I need a bit of 'spoon-feeding' I'm afraid.

1) I think I can choose 'Apple LOSSLESS encoder' on the iTunes menu. Will this give me the same result as by your XLD/FLAC route?

2) I want to put the music on my external drive. Is the only way to do it is first to get it on my MacB?

3) What is CD metadata?

4) I'm told there's a service/app whatever which will check my music and replace it with higher quality digital download - do you know of this?

[SoloFlyer]

^ Apple wont handle FLAC, which is a pain. APPLE lossless supposedly does actually lose some quality. Supposedly not noticeable, but still there.

You should be able to rip straight to external drive, but might take longer.

Metadata is pretty vital these days - all the info about the music - artist year album etc. Good taggers can organise all your music with this info.

Might be google music your talking about - but its not available here.

[coops]

XLD can also rip to Apple lossless as well as flac - both are as their names imply LOSSLESS, which means there is no data loss... but Apple lossless ripper can possibly have errors in it, as it doesn't use 'accurate rip' online databases to check your ripped data file to ensure it was completed 100% error free.

PLUS... itunes/ Apple album artwork will not work outside of itunes and apple devices, because apparently instead of putting the metadata in the file tags where they're meant to go ( and where everyone else puts it) Apple made a willfully retarded decision to put it in a separate database.

I choose FLAC as it is very, very widely supported, free, open source - apple doesn't support it, but Sonos and any decent hifi kit does. For ipods, iphones and ipads you won't be looking tomcarry around flac anyway - so use the converted mp3 files, which can be done in a huge batch overnight once you've ripped everything to Flac, or apple lossless.

XLD uses LAME to convert to mp3, meant to be one of the best encoders out there... and uses all the cores on your laptop - so on my dual core laptop, it converts two flac tracks at a time.

The XLD user interface is a bit unusual - set the prefernces first for what output you want ( ie flac or mp3 , and where, etc) and the. select the CD, or folder when you convert the flac to mp3.

Do ONE CD first and practice convert to mp3 - take the time now to set it up so the track names make sense adn fodler names etc....now, before you rip 100's of cd's and realise the naming is funky....!

Have a read here

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=XLD_Configuration

[recom273]

the service you talk about, is when you store it on icloud, isnt it ? I think you have to buy a digital DL or something. It would be mp3 to a max of CBR 320 i would imagine.

ALAC will give you a lossless result, as would FLAC, but it wont give you a log+cue file, this is the detail of how the original CD was created, the duration of the gaps in between the tracks.

From your original post, it sounds like you are going to archive CD's from the UK.

FLAC would be your best format, you will have pretty much a mirror image of the retail CD, ( you can always transcode that FLAC to ALAC if you feel like it another day, they are both lossless ). Rip them to your HD (ETS: Mobile/external HD) and put the HD away in safe storage.

If one day in the future, you want to recreate that exact CD you ripped a decade ago, you can do so with the log+cue file. ( you will need to do it on a windows machine, tho' ).You might think the gap duration is irrelevant or the importantance of a 100% accurate FLAC rip now, but if you had access to what.cd forums you would see how some people are so particular about this.

FLAC seems to have better error reporting methods, and ways of checking via the accurip database, as the previous poster mentioned. FLAC / LAME has been developed by enthusiasts over decades, you could say its 'industry standard'

If you need to transcode to mp3, you can do easily from FLAC ( as easily with ALAC too ) .. Use max or XLD.

Edited November 20, 2013 by recom273