iTunes or Foobar 2000/EAC

Apple lossless is not the same as FLAC, but as iTunes is free to download, why not give it a try?

I did the download, simply as an experiment after finding EAC, and Media Monkey impossible to set up to work well. It is not intuitive, and I am no expert at that sort of thing.

After early experiments I found no downside to iTunes, and have happily used it for nearly two years without any niggle at all. I simply wonder sometimes what I could possibly wish for that would be better - either to use [very intuitive] or as a a replay source of high quality.

For the computer real experts, no doubt with much fiddling about, something even better might be had, but for myself, I have lost all curiosity about improvements since running iTunes. I now have 26 day's worth of music transferred, and have found that ease of searching has led me to far more musical listening and of the complete range of music and performances I have, rather than simply playing CDs that are easy to find, and ignoring those that seem to hide! It has been like almost getting a whole new collection of recorded music, as everything is equally easy to search for!

ATB from George

Depends on what you want to use these rips for. If you're wanting to put them on an Ipod or listen on computer, then use Itunes. If you want FLAC files to feed using UPNP to a Hifi Streamer, then EAC and Foobar is the way to go, although for a PC upnp server, I prefer Asset. If you might want FLAC files in the future, then I would still go with EAC and Foobar to listen. I did this for many months before I bought my UnitiQute.

iTunes makes first class rips of CDs to ALAC, AIFF or WAV or a Mac.

I compared with XLD and rips are rips.

I also use iTunes as a player and am very happy with it.

I've tried some others, but always revert to iTunes. 

A few things on it irritate me, but mostly I'm happy. 

The Sonus player is better than iTunes in my opinion from a user interface perspective. 

I use one of these to feed a Naim DAC in my main system and am delighted with it; it only does CD quality. The Sonus picks-up my iTunes library stored on the Apple PowerMac in my office. The ultimate quality from the Naim DAC is by just feeding it music from a USB stick. 

All of the software packages used by the guys or the forum are pretty good so whichever you go for you should be fine. There is a lot of hype about one being better than the other, but if you use uncompressed or lossless files then you should be fine. The sound similar to me and I don't think one is better than another. 

iTunes does not support FLAC though and its MP3 for the iPod are not as good as those created with other packages, but for the IPod I prefer AAC or ALAC (if you have the space). It also gets confused when the sampling rate changes (not sure if Apple has fixed this yet). 

All the best, Guy

I´m using AIFF

But iTunes with win 7 is not bit prefect,isn´t it?The Foobar advantage is that is bit perfect,when you install the drivers.Or am I wrong?

Dear Nuno,

I don't know about bit perfect. For all that I have read, I am none-the-wiser about it.

I simply use my ears, and if the result is enjoyable then the "bit-perfect" debate fades into insignificance for me.

After all if bit perfect leads to perfectly repeatable similar results in replay, then this is a new consideration! In the days of LPs no two pressings, let alone two different cartridges, tone-arms, or TTs sounded the same, so somehow the digital method seems to be subject to debates about perfect discipline that never occured in the analogue days ...

In those days usung the ears was all that was considered necessary. I am sure it still is.

ATB from George