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XLD is a must for accurate Mac rips

I posted this on another site and thought I'd share the experience here also.
The other night I was listening to Roger Water's Amused To Death through itunes and thought I noticed less of the "Q" sound effect. I popped in the cd to do a side by side comparison and sure enough the spatial effect was greatly diminished through the Mac Mini. All of the music seemed to be there but lacked that spatial openess the Q sound provides.
A few weeks ago I installed XLD on the Mini so this morning I decided to rerip the cd with XLD to check the accuracy of the itunes rip. The difference is not subtle. I used track 12, Three Wishes, from Amused To Death as the test track. On this track a woman's spoken voice is located about 3 feet out from and two feet in front of the left speaker. With itunes standard AIFF, the voice was nearly centered between the speakers. After reripping the track with XLD, the voice took it's proper location outside the speaker plane.
This tells me if you want bit perfect or closer to bit perfect rips, music must be ripped through XLD and not simply itunes. The good news is perfect copies are possible. The bad news is I'll have to rerip the 500 or so cds using XLD in order to get it.
If you aren't familiar with this cd or Q sound, what it does is throw sounds all over the room for effect. When things are set up correctly, you can actually hear sounds directly behind you. It's a gimmick, but it serves this particular music well.
My music is ripped to a Mac Mini which feeds a Monarchy Super Dip via the toslink out, which inturn feeds a PS Audio DLIII via coax. CDP is a Resolution Audio CD-50 which has a high quality variable out to allow level matching.
Any thoughts?
timrhu

Showing 3 responses by timrhu

timrhu OP
2,779 posts
 
Bugman03, here's where I downloaded XLD.
John, this is the only track I've done a critical comparison with so far. Probably wouldn't have done it except I noticed something seemed wrong. It wasn't anything in the tone, timbre or any other sonic character I could discern with the standard AIFF rip. Only the spatial characteristic provided by Q sound seemed wrong. Once I ripped it with XLD I did another comparison with the cd and this time could hear no difference at all.
Now as to ease of use, keep in mind I'm not the most computer literate person and normally struggle with new apps. There is nothing intuitive about using XLD for me. The one thing that made it easier for me was to go into preferences and check the button for "begin rip when cd is inserted." I think that's what it's called.
As I would only put a cd in the Mini if was to be ripped I have no problem with this. You also have to point where to put the ripped music each time which threw me for a while.
timrhu OP
2,779 posts
 
itunes was set to rip to AIFF with error correction on. XLD is also ripping to AIFF. As far as I can recall the only setting I changed was to have cds ripped upon insertion. Set to rip and eject when complete.
While cds are ripping there is a progress display. It takes quite a bit longer to rip with XLD as itunes. Probably at least three times longer.
I have done a comparison with another selection. The song is Famous Blue Raincoat by Tori Amos. I get so much more from her version than I do from Jennifer Warnes, but that's another topic for discussion. As for the comparison, the results were the same as Roger Waters. Standard itunes sounds very good but not quite up to the original cd. With the XLD rip I can not distinguish it from the original. A boring description but what else needs to be said? To my ears, and I was intently listening, all of the richness of the original is there in the ripped file.
timrhu OP
2,779 posts
 
Meaning you have to manually direct the tracks to your library?

John
Not each track individually. Here's a quick play by play: pop the cd in and a window pops up from xld showing cd is being read, next a window show "pregap" detection, finally the xld window asking where to put the ripped files. I direct the file into the folder where all other albums are located and start the rip. Maybe 30 seconds, not a big deal.
As for playback, I only used it once. The itunes interface is much better IMO.
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