[fisherKing]

just noticed that max has been updated (versiontracker).

anyone using this?
a friend told me about cdparanoia some time ago...

worth converting cds into mp3 or aac for itunes?
ie is this a better conversion than itunes own?

just fishing for info (and am about to google it all).


comments?

[fisherKing]

hmmmm...
no one?

[G-Force]

I'm really interested in this application to. You might want to have a look at this thread on hydrogenaudio with some comments from the developer.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...=39676&hl=

There are some concerns with Cdparanoia caching audio and the rip not being as secure as you might think. Still it should be better than itunes and it won't allow errors to occur in the rip. Hopefully in time, I'll be able to dump EAC on my PC and use Max instead.

[Busemann]

Originally Posted by G-Force

Still it should be better than itunes and it won't allow errors to occur in the rip. Hopefully in time, I'll be able to dump EAC on my PC and use Max instead.

Hopefully Apple will update the ripping engine in iTunes before too long. Error correction is already in place, so some logging features shouldn't be impossible to implement

[G-Force]

Originally Posted by Busemann

Hopefully Apple will update the ripping engine in iTunes before too long. Error correction is already in place, so some logging features shouldn't be impossible to implement

I hope so. It's just that iTunes is such a consumer-oriented player that they may hesitate to implement these more advanced features.

[fisherKing]

i ripped a cd using max; it sounds pretty good, but it's also a higher bitrate than i use in itunes
(190 vs th 160 i use by default in itunes).

however...max quit on me on the second cd i tried.

think for now i'm sticking with itunes...

[SpaceMonkey]

Max's MP3 encoding will be of higher quality than iTunes', because it uses the latest version of the LAME MP3 encoder. Its AAC encoding will not be of higher quality than iTunes', because they both use the same Quicktime encoder.

There is also some evidence that the "paranoia" error correction mechanism (which is also built-in to cdda2wav) doesn't function when used in an optical drive that has an onboard cache, which, AFAIK, is pretty much every modern drive in existence today.

I just rip to Apple Lossless in iTunes and then convert that to MP3 using the iTunes-LAME plugin (after updating the LAME version it uses).

It also kind of bugs me that Max doesn't let you use the command-line switches for LAME. It just seems to have that slider, which isn't very informative.

[Busemann]

Originally Posted by SpaceMonkey

It also kind of bugs me that Max doesn't let you use the command-line switches for LAME. It just seems to have that slider, which isn't very informative.

Better just use the three presets. The 'transparent' setting seems to route to the -V2 --vbr-new switch btw, which is the de facto standard for high quality mp3's.