Transport for ripping to Mac Mini

We've had no problems with Apple's own external DVD/CD drive. Someone on here did pan it a while back, though. All mechanical devices like this have a limited life, but as you use it only once per CD (total), it gets a lot less use than the drive in a regular CD player.

Aha - thank you. I hadn't spotted the USB SuperDrive and had begun to think that Apple no longer supplied them. That seems to be an obvious choice if only for matching easthetics. Typically for apple it seems to retail at more than double the price of an 'equivalent' Samsung model.

Robert

Hi Robert,

I recently had "the pleasure" ripping 496 CD-ROMs using 2 Apple SuperDrives and one "old-school" and "full-size" USB/FireWire CD/DVD device. Approximately 10% of the CDs failed when importing via the very, very tiny SuperDrive. All of the worked fine using that old Lacie drive.

Therefore – my suggestion: look for something "robust"... 

Rumors are that some of these ooooooooooold CD-ROM (ONLY!!!) devices are the very, very best for importing :-)

Cheers,

Lorenz

@winkyincanada

That was a looooong weekend which I used to re-rip all my CD-ROMs (ALAC) – guess my error rate is a bit "high" because some of the CDs are quite old (20 years plus) and some might even have one or the other scatch – still the "old school" drive proofed to be much more fault tolerant.

Cheers,

Lorenz

Rearrange for well known phrase or saying "Pole Barge Touch It With I Wouldn't". I always use Apple kit unless there is a good reason not to. I would go for a Samsung SE-506BB External BD Writer ... 100% Mac compatible and reads and writes just about anything (only SACDs leave it perplexed and that is because Sony were stupid with SACD copyright). 

I have a Mac Mini, one just before they removed the superdrive. The drive was noisy but didn't fail to rip any CD's. I took it back and they swapped the whole MacMini since then I have ripped my 2500+ CD's. only 6 failed to rip five of which are CD ROMS and the 6th wouldn't play in a CD player.

Not bad going in my opinion and it has ripped 5 CD's this week.

Honeyquince, if you're not bothered about aesthetics, I suggest that you go for the Samsung as your paying a premium for Apple. 

My comment was purely about the external Apple drive, the internal slot loaded ones have never let me down. The Samsung i recommended is a high quality drive, not a cheap as chips one. 

The Mini supports USB 3.0, as does my Macbook Pro, so I'll be looking for a usb 3.0 compatible drive.

(I think . . . not entirely sure whether the bus speed is the limiting factor when ripping!)

I'm no expert but... I would think it is not an issue. USB 2.0 looks just fine. At around 35MB/sec it can transfer a 700MB+ CD in around 20-30 seconds. The CD can't be read that fast, so the USB speed isn't a constraint.

My slot loader on my MBP failed after 3 years but our external (Apple) one is going just fine. We now have three machines without CD/DVD drives in our house (MBP, Mini and MBAir) so it gets swapped around a little bit.

Winky I'm delighted yours works so well ... perhaps I've just been unlucky. 

The slot loader on my old (now 7 yrs old) MBP still works fine, although it did not get a ton of use in those 7 yrs.

Winky, thanks.  Your math wins out; the bus speed is far from the rate-limiting step when ripping audio cd's to lossless.

> The slot loader on my old (now 7 yrs old) MBP still works fine

+1 after XLD ripping 3,000 CDs 

I think quite a few people wrote to Apple about the external SuperDrive, it wouldn't surprised me if they had fixed the problems without making a song and dance about it. It is just those Samsung ones are just so reliable (unlike their hard disks, but that is another story). Sorry, we use lots of this kit at work so I get to form an opinion on that bit of kit never lets us down, but that does. I like things that just work - less headaches for my colleagues and me. 

Absolutely not ... You can rip on any Mac and copy them to any other computer you like. Unless one of the computers is broken (unlikely) then they will be 100% the same. 

So you could rip them with XLD and make the target a USB stick and then insert this on your Mac Mini and drop the files on iTunes and it'll just work. Or you could file share the iTunes directory on the Mac Mini over the network and get XLD to rip straight to iTunes on your Mac Mini ... Point I'm making is you'll end up with perfect ripped files doing it almost any way that suits. 

Rip to AiFF unless yiu are tight on space in which case choose ALAC.

dayam I didn't know a mini had a CD component.  I want a mini to keep my classical separate from my rock, jazz and soul.  Off to the store.

have done some research, with the mini supporting the new thunderbolt cable why don't they offer that on it with Blu-ray capability?  Maybe later, I have a few Bluray's I'd like to load on my HD.

Samsung drive is superb and does Blu Ray, DVD, CD and works really will with a Mac Mini. You don't need to Thunderbolt an optical drive, it is more for displays, hdd and ssd ... would be a great interface for the forthcoming Naim reference DAC.  

Yes it is very low ...