Rather than use the internal CD/DVD drive that comes in the MacBook, I purchased an external LaCie peripheral drive to rip and burn music. I use Max ripper software for Mac and rip as an uncompressed AIFF file. I also use the strongest error correction setting in the software to minimize the possibility for errors in the read. In my experience, lossless files (including ALAC files) have a noticeable degradation in sound quality when burned to a disk so I don't use compression for music I want to listen to critically. Hope this helps.
How Do I Rip a CD with Best results on a MacPro
I'm using XLD, but I have to download the CD in the computer and XLD burns from the computer. I would like to know if there are any improvements I can do to the computer for optimum results. As it stands now, the copied CD is not as good as the original.