HDCD on Mac? Or dbPowerAmp on Mac?

[miguelito]

I have a bunch of HDCD-encoded CDs that I've ripped on mac with XLD. I also have an old PC where I can transcode the HDCD AIFF files from 16/44.1 to 24/44.1 using the HDCD DSP in dbPowerAmp.

 

Questions:

1- Any way to do this natively on the mac?

2- If '1' is a no is there a simple way to run dbPowerAmp on the mac (thinking wine rather than Parallels or VMWare - not willing to go through the pain of installing Windows on my mac).

 

Thx!

 

Miguiel

[miguelito]

Noone has tried this?

[Audio_ELF]

WineHQ - dBPowerAmp Music Converter

[Quaveda]

WineHQ - dBPowerAmp Music Converter

 

I'm also about to rip CDs to FLAC for the first time. I was planning to use XLD on my iMac, but have been told that dbpoweramp has many more desirable features, like the ability to simultaneously put FLAC files into a folder and add files to iTunes library.

 

I also have an older Win7 PC that I could use, but then I'd have to transfer files from Win7 to iMac.

 

I've never tried installing open source sw on my Mac. Its not completely clear to me how to do it. (perhaps I can find a youtube video that explains it). Do I understand this correctly: with Wine running on the iMac, can you download, install, run dbpoweramp (or other windows apps) on the Mac, and save the resulting ripped files to a folder and also send versions into iTunes, just like dbpoweramp can do on a Win7 machine? only it would all happen on the iMac ? if so, that sounds great.

 

Aside from this approach, are XLD and Max currently the best tools for Mac?

[miguelito]

I'm also about to rip CDs to FLAC for the first time. I was planning to use XLD on my iMac, but have been told that dbpoweramp has many more desirable features, like the ability to simultaneously put FLAC files into a folder and add files to iTunes library.

 

I also have an older Win7 PC that I could use, but then I'd have to transfer files from Win7 to iMac.

 

I've never tried installing open source sw on my Mac. Its not completely clear to me how to do it. (perhaps I can find a youtube video that explains it). Do I understand this correctly: with Wine running on the iMac, can you download, install, run dbpoweramp (or other windows apps) on the Mac, and save the resulting ripped files to a folder and also send versions into iTunes, just like dbpoweramp can do on a Win7 machine? only it would all happen on the iMac ? if so, that sounds great.

 

Aside from this approach, are XLD and Max currently the best tools for Mac?

 

From what I've read, there are issues with having dbPowerAmp see your CD drive through Wine (or Crossover). It's possible that they are resolved if you use Parallels or similar, but dealing with a full Windoze install for that? I say no thank you very much.

 

My recommendation would be to use XLD to rip. The rips are bit-perfect. dbPowerAmp for example will recognize the HDCD encoding and transcode to a 24bit/44.1KHz file for you. So far I've done this copying the file to an old PC I have and copying the transcoded file to the mac (all in AIFF format by the way, but works the same with FLAC). My original question is whether I could use Wine/Crossover on the mac to run dbPowerAmp to do this transcoding - the answer looks to be yes although I have not tried it yet myself.

 

As for adding files to iTunes after ripping, there could not be a simpler method: just drop the directory into the music window. If you drop the top directory where you're ripping to, files that have already been added will NOT get messed up - so you don't have to just drop the ones you just added but can drop the whole thing. It works just fine. As for metadata, I would recommend you are careful about it as you rip and check before you start ripping. There's no way around it.

 

Miguel

[miguelito]

I'm also about to rip CDs to FLAC for the first time. I was planning to use XLD on my iMac, but have been told that dbpoweramp has many more desirable features, like the ability to simultaneously put FLAC files into a folder and add files to iTunes library.

 

I also have an older Win7 PC that I could use, but then I'd have to transfer files from Win7 to iMac.

 

I've never tried installing open source sw on my Mac. Its not completely clear to me how to do it. (perhaps I can find a youtube video that explains it). Do I understand this correctly: with Wine running on the iMac, can you download, install, run dbpoweramp (or other windows apps) on the Mac, and save the resulting ripped files to a folder and also send versions into iTunes, just like dbpoweramp can do on a Win7 machine? only it would all happen on the iMac ? if so, that sounds great.

 

Aside from this approach, are XLD and Max currently the best tools for Mac?

 

I've tried dbPowerAmp with Crossover on a mac pro 2010. I've confirmed that:

 

1- It works well to transcode HDCD encoded files ripped with XLD i.e. 16/44.1 to 24/44.1 (AIFF in and out in this case)

 

2- dbPowerAmp DOES NOT see the CD-ROM - hence you cannot use it to rip with this method - but you might be able to make it work with Parallels / Fusion. But why would you?

 

Miguel

[pooger]

As for metadata, I would recommend you are careful about it as you rip and check before you start ripping. There's no way around it.

 

Miguel

 

Well, there is--sort of. I rip first with XLD, not bothering with what the metadata looks like. The I use kid3 to edit it, because it's much faster than working with the editor in XLD. I'm pretty specific about getting the metadata right, and this has been an absolute time saver, plus, if I decide to change genre after a few more listens, it's easy to go in and do this.

[miguelito]

Well, there is--sort of. I rip first with XLD, not bothering with what the metadata looks like. The I use kid3 to edit it, because it's much faster than working with the editor in XLD. I'm pretty specific about getting the metadata right, and this has been an absolute time saver, plus, if I decide to change genre after a few more listens, it's easy to go in and do this.

 

Understood. I generally try to get tags to a decent level in XLD (it is an ok tool for this). Since I do AIFF, I edit the tags in iTunes. Since you want FLAC, you have to use some other tool.

 

BTW... Why not use ALAC?