In my experience, XLD did a better job of tagging my music. I still see this as I rip CDs. Apple Music is started and it retrieves the metadata. With XLD I get much more complete and accurate metadata.
Just try it, and you can make an informed decision yourself.
I’m only implying that .AIFF and .ALAC are better choices because of the vertical integration to Core Audio API’s … Sound-quality is a subjective experience, beholding to playback system architecture and cognitive biases…
Can you quantify this? Why would “better” be the context from which to analyze the resulting product of the rip? Isn’t this a subjectively-relative and contextual interpretation? …There is no reason that Apple Music cannot rip a CD bit-perfectly…
This is a moot point, and not relevant in the Apple ecosystem…
If storage space is not a concern, then .AIFF is your best choice… You can always convert AIFF to AAC or lossless to ALAC.
Better in terms of automatic metadata retrieval. Apple Music will rip bit-perfact just fine.
The format of choice has nothing to do with the core API. It’s about where you can use it without converting the files. If you only use Audirvana, FLAC is as convenient as ALAC.
Is not all of the meta-data imbued in the bit-perfect rip?
I understand there my be more info that can be acquired elsewhere via internet that may have been compiled by somebody and this could be exploited by another application, however, the contextual relevance would be the salient question as to the value of this extra information…
No, the metadata and musical information are 2 separate things. You can edit metadata without affecting the musical content.
Yes, I understand this…
However, the Apple Music CD rip will capture the essential metadata regarding the album, artist, date, and if available, the album cover artwork… What else is needed…? All other information can be organized within Audirvana, Yes? …I personally don’t bother much with metadata beyond what is provided by the ripped CD in Apple Music.
“I personally don’t bother much with metadata beyond what is provided by the ripped CD in Apple Music”
~ This is my point. I’ve used both XLD and dBpoweramp and they use 3rd party databases to capture metadata (tags). That data is not consistent and standardized. The end result for me has been messy (see my reference to tracks with the Artist tag including .feat (a featured artist)). I’m thinking that retreating to Apple Music as my ripper might result in less data (tags) but be more consistent. Then, with all my obscure disks, I can hand enter based on the “established” Apple standard.
BTW: My strategy may or may not be the solution.
In the context of the Apple Audio ecosystem, there is no reason to use FLAC files and there no salient advantage in using FLAC files versus AIFF or ALAC for playback in Audirvana…
His primary playback app is Audirvana, not Apple Music. Why try to accommodate a single app?
???
@Bambooken would use Apple Music for ripping the CD’s and playback the files from Music if needed…
Please name a competitive peer application to Audirvana that does not support AIFF or ALAC files… Please name a contemporary DAC that does not support AIFF or ALAC.
Doesn’t matter, I wouldn’t spend that much time producing an output in vendor specific format. Not even if that’s Apple and it’s probably non going anywhere any time soon.
???
AIFF is not vendor specific, any more than WAV files… ALAC is a free open-source lossless compression scheme, no different than FLAC as an open-source encoding scheme…
From the Wikipedia article:
…After initially keeping it proprietary from its inception in 2004, in late 2011 Apple made the codec available open source and royalty-free. Traditionally, Apple has referred to the codec as Apple Lossless , though more recently it has begun to use the abbreviated term ALAC when referring to the codec.
Why would anybody rip CDs in AIFF when you have lossless options that take roughly half the space? Emphasis on “lossless”.
To eliminate the decode processing demand on the CPU and reduce the potential for data-corruption across the platform architecture from error-correction interrupt noise, etc…
Give me a break… Even then, you can decompress some/all FLACs to AIFF when needed. You can do this without any loss. Still it makes more sense to use FLAC for archival. Not to mention that it‘s the most popular audiophile format for playback.
In the context of ripping CD’s to AIFF and the Apple Audio ecosystem and Audirvana file playback capability… your statement is moot…
Not in my world… You can convert AIFF and ALAC to FLAC if needed…
Ubiquity does not imply contextual practicality or pragmatism… Ubiquity is a contextually-subjective cognitive bias, that needs quantification…
Well it does, it’s ubiquitous for a reason. You get the same performance with added benefit of practicality.
In the world of contemporary high-resolution players and DAC’s, AIFF and ALAC support is just as ubiquitous… your position is moot… Again, ubiquity does not imply contextual practicality here… Of course if somebody is purchasing files, more likely than not they may be in the format of FLAC… but this is not a given… remember, we are talking about ripping CD’s…
So he needs an advice which format to pick for his CD rips. He can only choose one. It’s not a theoretical discussion anymore. Which one you recommend?