I’ve never lived a day on this earth without Bose speakers somewhere. I probably never will. I’m very comfortable them. They are not good hifi but that isn’t the same as being not good. Given a horribly shaped room and terrible placement options, I find nothing else works in those scenarios. While other products hit the “exceptional” mark of good setup they often also hit the “dismal” mark when conditions are way too challenging. I know that if I stick a Bose speaker in a corner in an L-shaped room made of glass with a suspended floor it will still manage “acceptable”. To me, that’s worth the money at times.
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I think what I’m going to do is rip (think that’s the word!) all my cd’s onto my Mac and then possibly put them all onto a USB stick.
Does anyone have any suggestions for any good free software I should use on my Mac to do this?
Most computers allow you to rip to a destination, either the hard drive or USB do they not? I used to own a Windows laptop, not a Mac though.
XLD for macOS
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DBPoweramp is excellent, or was when I ripped all mine over 10 years ago. Use its optional auto tool called something like Accuraterip to check the rip against a database to confirm no errors. The default (level 5 IIRC) setting is fine and quick, but if any difficulity ripping the odd CD, failure or not confirmed as accurate by Accuraterip, the most intense often manages it, just quite a bit slower. If any tracks still rip but fail against Accuraterip check, have a listen as it could be perfectly OK on hearing.
IMPORTANT: check the metadata immediately after ripping, or after ripping only a small number at a time. With most library/playing software this is vital for playing software to properly index, display when browsing or find with searches: main thing is names of tracks and albums, artist name, and any cruteria you may ever want to search under. In my case I simolified genre so that, for example, there’s just rock not many different varieties, as that is all I would want to view under. Ripping often has oddities, like tge same piece of music on different CD releases might be assigned differently between, say, symphony and orchestral, and standardising is sensible if you might use that in searches. It doesn’t take long if you keep up with it, but if, like I was, you are unaware of the need and rip many 100s of CDs only to discover errors late, even not finding recordings when searching even when you know they are there, it becomes a major job to fix. IIRC you can do this at the end of ripping with dBPoweramp otherwise there is specialist software - others can advise best around now.
@ninanina, if you want more input to ripping it would probably be better starting a new thread on the subject, as this one may have a relatively limited readership.
You can add ‘better’ ripping packages to your Mac, but it already has built in ripping software incorporated into Apple Music, so it’s perfectly capable of making lossless rips of your CDs. The metadata lookup service it has is still the best I’ve used for finding the correct metadata and artwork, and it seems to be better than other software I’ve used when ripping copy protected CDs. If you like to keep things simple, give it a try before you start loading other ripping apps to your Mac and you may find that it’s all you need.
Perfect thanks Chris
Would you rip them to FLAC files? Is that the best
Apple don’t use FLAC, they have their own lossless version called ALAC (aka Apple Lossless) which works well, or you can choose WAV.
As long as you choose a lossless format I wouldn’t worry about it, as you can always convert between formats later if you change your mind.
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I don’t know if it is a consideration for you but I previously ripped small playlists using WAV to USB memory sticks. The idea being I could then plug into the car and play. I was never successful playing WAV in the car but once I changed over to FLAC, I have always been able to play the music in the car.
My car is the opposite, unusually it plays WAV but not FLAC. It doesn’t really matter that much, just convert to a format that suits you when the need arises. It used to be common practice to keep a lossy (MP3 or AAC) copy of your lossless rips for car/portable use, although that’s not always necessary these days.
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