Get me started the right way

Posted by: Timmo on 05 June 2014

I have just decided to go with the times and retire my CD player (still keeping the record deck for now though) and convert my CD collection to files on a disc drive. I have got myself a Mac mini - which I know nothing about - and a Cambridge Audio DAC. I think that this is my basic hardware sorted, but I have no idea about software. All advice greatly appreciated.

- what program is best for ripping my CD collection? Does it make any difference?

- what file format works best? First thought was FLAC, but does ALAC go better with the Mac mini?

- I plan to rip the CDs with my PC. From there they have to find their way to portable USB connected hard drives and then to the Mac mini. What's the best way to transfer from my PC to a Mac formatted USB drive?

The plan is to play the music from the USB drive, through the Mac mini to the Cambridge DAC and then into my Hi-Fi. All I am really interested in is playing albums one at a time, but shuffling and building play lists would be something that I might get into in time.

 

If you have read this far, thank you. I know that I can probably find answers if I spend hours sifting through the site, but I'm too lazy.

All help appreciated.

 

Tim

Posted on: 08 June 2014 by Big Bill
Originally Posted by garyi:

A mac will happily read a windows formatted drive but cannot write to it directly.

 

Over SMB it would be fine both ways.

 

Personally I would avoid fat32 if you don't need it, it has restrictions.

If memory serves me well I think that FAT32 is limited in its max size 2 to the power 32 mult 512 would give the size when 512 byte sectors are used, this equals: 2,199,023,255,552 or 2 TB.  But you can specify larger sector sizes. It's max file size is limited to 1 or 2 TB I seem to remember but I am not sure about the actual figure.  NTFS always seemed much more robust to me as well but I can't quantify that.

 

I have a mobile card backup device for my camera that is FAT16 only (which is even worse) and I would only format any volume to FAT if I had to.  For example my card backup device will not recognise the disk if you format it NTFS so I have to use FAT.

Posted on: 11 June 2014 by David02

well, this is getting a useful thread after all...