XLD Mac

Cheers Garyi!

Now thats a proper ripper.

-patrick

The developer has been very helpful. XLD will indeed create folders for artist and album. This is handy.

Garyi,

Its been a while since I fooled with it, but I remember it would at least allow you to make the folder manually. Im glad you found out how to output into dynamic folders. This is a key feature for me when using Foobar to convert mass amounts of FLACs to V0 for my iPhone.

-patrick

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
I am just in talks with the developer about getting XLD to create Artist/Album folders for the files as this is the last hurdle.

At the minute they are all fired into one folder which is a shame.

Hi garyi,

I've successfully ripped to /<artist>/<album>/<track> with XLD by specifying the output format of the filename as "%a/%T/%n %t", under the General tab in preferences. Is this what you are looking for?

I've had the "firing into one folder" problem when transcoding e.g. FLAC to ALAC and, alas, it's still there in the latest Snow Leopard release (20090924 - 109.9).

-Mark

Hi Mark, yes the developer sent me that layout to get my folders.

I guess this is the thing when coming from mac, one assumes it will be set for the most logical thing, and int his case it was not. but its working now and I am happy to play.

I have however turned off paranoia mode as it just takes too long.

Hi garyi,

Good to see you got the solution direct -- when the developer is able to work on XLD, he can be very responsive.

I've been through many hoops with drives, etc. I do use paranoia and find the internal drive on my iMac to be slow. I bought an external CD-burner when ripping the bulk of my CDs and the performance improvement was significant. Certainly useful if you're about to sit down and go through 500+ CDs.

The funny thing for me was, once I'd settled with my burning setup and finished the up-front bulk-rip of CDs, all the concern of 'accurate ripping' faded into the background (thankfully!). I imagine this is one of the worry-areas Naim wanted to solve with their burning solution in the HDX, certainly for those less technically-oriented. After all, it can get a little nerdy ;-)

-Mark

One big issue is with compilations they are not being grouped so the folders are building rapidly.

Good catch. I'd forgotten about that. I used Max in those cases as it handles compilations far better. It kinds of breaks the "album/artist" filesystem layout, but I ended up with "Various Artists" for compilations and albums within that. Largely depends on how you want to organise at the filesystem level vs. the playback application level (which can get dependent on accurate tagging).

Garyi,

you can easily set the album artist to "Various", and the artist to the actual artist.

or

Set the Album artist to "Various" and output the track name as %artist% - %title%. The latter is what i would do.

-p

I've gone over to XLD now - finding it does give better results than iTunes - only problems so far as i'm re ripping my CD's (so i can finally start to clear them from the lounge) is a new Pixie Lott CD thats not on the database and Minimum Maximum (Kraftwerk) who's copy protection defeats it.

James

James,

quote:

Originally posted by james n:
... a new Pixie Lott CD thats not on the database ...

If you have iTunes open at the same time as XLD, and iTunes can get info from Gracenote, then XLD should detect this and bring the album info over from iTunes i.e. you can use iTunes as proxy to Gracenote for XLD. I find neither FreeDB nor Gracenote necessarily have the correct info in the tags for all albums, so this comparison is sometimes useful.

quote:

Originally posted by james n:
... and Minimum Maximum (Kraftwerk) who's copy protection defeats it ...

Do you know if this album is multi-session i.e. has some PC/Mac "extras" on it? XLD does not handle the burning of the final track with a multi-session disk. Max is better here. I've also found that a disk might rip with my internal iMac disk, but not with my external disk at times when using XLD. This is not an issue with XLD, but is dependent on the characteristics of the drive.

What error/behaviour do you see with the Kraftwerk album?

-Mark

Mark - how do i do the proxy thing with iTunes ?

With MM - it gets to about 5% on the 1st track and then just stops ripping - disc still spinning but nothing happening. iTunes rips it no problem.

James

quote:

Originally posted by james n:
How do i do the proxy thing with iTunes ?

Make sure iTunes and XLD are running before you load your CD. In XLD, I deselected the auto-CD load option in preferences. When inserting your CD, iTunes should query Gracenote and show the CD info. Next, in XLD, select File -> Open Audio CD, then "Refresh List", if the CD title is not displaying, otherwise select the CD title. The CD should display in XLD with the tag info from iTunes.

Hope this helps.

-Mark

Ah Ok - i'll give that a go - i saw iTunes picking up the correct data but didnt know XLD could use this.

rgds

James