Help Needed - WAV Setting for Max on Mac and XLD Settings

I know nothing of Max and XLD, so can't help you directly. I would advise, however, that you rip to FLAC. It's just so much easier to use. So long as your server supports it, you can transcode to WAV on playback, for optimum sound quality with a Naim streamer.

Hi Danny,

The good part about Naim and wav is that if you rip cd's with a Naim server (UnitiServe or HDX), it will generate the metadata in a way the server is looking for it.

There are more variables in the way that metadata is handled with wav files than with flac.  If you want to rip cd's, there really is no reason to rip to wav today; rip to flac.  Any competent server can transcode the flac to wav and send the file as wav to the Naim streamer player, if that's what you want. 

I use XLD, but I did not see an option to rip to 2 different formats at once. 

In Preferences under "General" you can set the main music folder. And under "File Naming" you can configure the format of the filename, which also allows to create further subfolders based on several possible tags. I've configured the following:

%A/%T/%D-%n %t

This creates a folder within the main music folder with the artist's name, then a nested folder with the album name and within this the individual tracks with disc number, track number and title. The slashes ('/') are essential in order to create the folders and probably missing in your configuration.

I tried both max and xld, ripping to both wav and flac. I found xld to be far better sound quality than max, and wav to have better sound quality than flac. However, ive never managed to get album artwork on wav with xld. The metadata tagging is useless but then for me the audio quality is of utmost importance.

I ripped my entire CD collection to both AIFF and FLAC simultaneously. Hope the following information helps you 

1. Open preferences in XLD and go the General tab. 

2. Then go to Output format (first option at the top) and then locate and click on the multiple formats option

3. Once you have done stage 2 you'll see an 'option' section to the right, click on this. Once in here you should see one format already ticked and above that a drop down menu (probably labelled WAV), click on this, there you will see many other formats that you can choose from, such as as WAV, Apple Lossless, FLAC, PMC etc. Click on your desired options and then the 'add' button. Once you have clicked on the 'add' button you'll see a separate window open where you can choose your compression levels etc. Naturally, these are usually personal preferences so it is entirely up to you how you set these. Press okay and that's it. 

I bet you could rip to more than two formats simultaneously, but this is likely to take longer and will probably depend on how much RAM you have on your Mac.

All in all I found XLD excellent, apart from when it came to ripping CD's that were heavily marked or scratched. It had great difficulty reading them. Fortunately, there wasn't many so I resorted to ripping these CD's to AIFF in iTunes.

Have fun... 

Great info; thanks.

As to the badly scratched cd's, I wonder if iTunes is just more forgiving and is OK with letting more errors through??  Speculation on my part, but I have attributed the use of Accurate Rip in XLD as the reason it takes a bit longer to rip sometimes.  It's either slower per se, or more careful, or some of each.  iTunes has a reputation for less error rejection but where the facts begin and end are not clear to me. 

Bart, you probably already know this, but just for the record, iTunes has 'error correction' disabled by default. I don't fully understand what this does, but I have a suspicion that maybe it isn't as effective as the 'bit prefect' ripping used by other apps. Maybe someone can explain???

I suspect it is. I buy quite a lot of used CDs and have had iTunes rip through a reasonably scratched example at its usual speed (Error Correction enabled) of around 3-4 minutes. The resulting rip had audible clicks. XLD took around 20mins on the same disc with no issues on playback. This is why i always use XLD, and only resort to iTunes if i've had any copy protection issues (only 5 or so discs out of nearly 2000)

You're welcome

I think you may well be right re iTunes v XLD and error correction. I don't really know or understand the ins and outs but am always learning thanks to this great forum. 

ATB Gingerbeard

Indeed, Amazon market place is great for used CD's.

I recently purchased Louis Armstrong (Classics), Nat King Cole (Great Hits) and Sam Cook (Greatest Hits) from Sainsbury's at £2-3 each. Cracking value for some cracking music and all new discs - all now ripped as well 

With cds that are difficult to rip on XLD switch the ripping mode from accurate rip to burst mode. This seemed to work for me, and the rips sounded the same quality too.

Great tip, thanks.  I'll make a note of that for the future

jfritzen and Gingerbeard thank you or your advice, I have followed your instructions and its worked perfection:  FLAC and MP3 at the same times, added to my NAS and also added the Mp3 to iTunes.

I'll now be using XLD :-)

Thanks again

Danny 

You're welcome DW