XLD behaving strangely
Posted by: ChrisSU on 02 June 2015
I've just tried to rip a CD on an iMac using XLD for the first time. I find the lack of any user interface except the taskbar rather strange. My immediate issue, though, is that without changing the default settings, ripping a CD looks as though it's going to take all night - it's started decoding the first 4 tracks, and that alone is going to take more than 2 hours on one CD I tried.
XLD started ripping to .aiff by default, and I was thinking of using this anyway, so I left it at that. Does anyone have any idea why it might be taking so long?
Chris, I've moved this to the Streaming Audio room where you may get more response on this.
Chris something is wrong. Not sure what though.
Is your XLD up to date? I assume it's a fresh install, from a bona fide source.
There is a Settings menu -- I'm sure that you've had a look through that.
Maybe it's in some mega-error-correcting mode and your drive is throwing off some errors? That's all I can think of! It's generally well-behaved for me, and my tool of choice for converting lossless to lossy files to play in the car.
Chris - here are some screenshots that i posted a while back of my settings - maybe worth a try as it sounds like XLD is not running right.
https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...xld---advice-welcome
Chris, I've moved this to the Streaming Audio room where you may get more response on this.
Thanks Richard, I'm not actually intending to stream from this, just play it locally - but that's just me being pedantic!
Chris something is wrong. Not sure what though.
Is your XLD up to date? I assume it's a fresh install, from a bona fide source.
There is a Settings menu -- I'm sure that you've had a look through that.
Maybe it's in some mega-error-correcting mode and your drive is throwing off some errors? That's all I can think of! It's generally well-behaved for me, and my tool of choice for converting lossless to lossy files to play in the car.
Bart, I downloaded XLD from a site called SourceForge today - as far as I can tell, it's legit. Above the progress bar for each track, it says '0.1 x realtime'. I can do some trial and error to see if I can get it to improve on this, but thought I'd just see if anyone knew where to look. This is all just an experiment at the moment. I already have these CDs ripped (rather quicker than this!) on my Unitiserve, so I might be better off looking for a way to create copies of these rips for local Mac and iPod use. That's if I can get my head around the metadata issue!
Chris
Chris - here are some screenshots that i posted a while back of my settings - maybe worth a try as it sounds like XLD is not running right.
https://forums.naimaudio.com/to...xld---advice-welcome
Thanks James, I'll have a read and see if I can spot any solutions there.
Chris - one other thing - is it doing it on all the CDs you've tried ripping ?
The only issues i've had with very slow ripping are CDs with copy protection. Often the first or first couple of tracks will rip and then it slows to a crawl. Hope you get it sorted as XLD is an excellent ripper.
James
James, yes, I've tries several CDs and it's done it with all of them. I've finally got one CD converted to .aiff, and into iTunes. BUT....
XLD found some possible CDDB matches and asked me to choose one, which I did. Despite the vague information, guessed correctly. Then I found the CD in iTunes, but it was still a list of anonymous tracks and it asked me if I wanted it to access Gracenote. Add to this the fact that there are perhaps 30 or 40 setting in XLD preferences that are phrased in jargon that means nothing to me, and I can see a huge amount of faffing around with no guarantee of success looming, so I have to question the benefit of carrying on with this. If I can get my Unitiserve WAV rips copied to the Mac with functioning metadata, perhaps that's the way forwards?
Wat,
I haven''t changed the default settings - so yes, drive speed is set to 'automatic', and 'test rip' is off. I'm using the drive on an iMac. No idea why it's taking so long, or why it selects CDDB info but in iTunes there are just anonymous files. Not sure what else I can try here other than going back to iTunes, or on to dbPoweramp....?
Very strange Chris - i found XLD to be pretty much plug and play with only a couple of tick boxes to set my preferences when first installing quite a few years back now so i'm a bit stumped by your findings.
I've no experience of DBPA on the Mac but others seem to like it - well worth a try if you are not getting on with XLD
James
Is your XLD up to date? I assume it's a fresh install, from a bona fide source.
Any suggestions for a bona fide source? There seem to be hundrets of sites offering XLD downloads 
.
Thanks for the input, guys. Further trial and error is ongoing...........
I only ever download from macupdate, mainly because it has none of those bullshit 'download' links which aren't.
It sounds like the OP has perhaps turned on error checking, or Check Sum, none of which are needed and just slow everything down for the paranoid.
It sounds like the OP has perhaps turned on error checking, or Check Sum, none of which are needed and just slow everything down for the paranoid.
Gary,
I haven't altered any of the default settings on XLD. In the preference windows, there is no mention of error checking or Check Sum configurations (unless it's phrased in jargon that I don't understand - there's plenty of that!) I have managed to convert a couple of albums I'd previously ripped on my Unitiserve, and it did this quite quickly, although iTunes is still unable to see any metadata in these, so I'm still getting nowhere fast!