Thank goodness for EAC in Parallels (narrative guide to ripping CDs securely on Mac)

Tinkering
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I used to be a Windows person. Almost all my ripping was done in EAC in Windows, which for those who haven’t used it, is the absolute best/safest way. There’s a bunch of configuration you have to do, which is just a little painful, but there are perfectly good guides to follow and if you have installed any software, it is a bit like setting up a Ropieee - once you do it, it’s done and it just works.

But then, like many people who succeed in life and get older (I’m not that old, but whatever), I switched to Mac. We can argue about why, but it’s just simpler as my work life has involved less Excel and more email, word, PPT, and as google docs has taken over the world. Be that as it may, I found myself keeping around an old windows machine just to do ripping. It was super annoying - it kept getting out of date, yada yada.

Ok, so here’s my set-up, which is really simple:

I installed Parallels desktop for Mac ($100/year subscription, down to $50 if you know a student in college) and Windows 11, which was an absolute piece of cake. Parallels took care of it all in ten minutes. I just needed to get my Windows 11 license key (I took the one from the machine I was no longer using, but you can buy a new one from MSFT or from many sources on the web for less) and put it in. Parallels offers a 14 day trial, so you can get everything going before you buy.

From there, installed EAC on my windows virtual machine, configured according the guide and if you want there’s a good YouTube guide as well. Everything worked better than I thought it would. When you plug the USB CDR drive into your mac/dock, a window pops up to ask whether you want it to be accessible to your Mac or your Windows machine.

One gotcha- turns out EAC can’t convert FLACs and save to the fancy paths that start with \ so you have to save to a path that starts “C:/” instead when you configure. Those directories are then visible in your Mac finder under Network as long as your Windows machine isn’t paused.

So now you rip all your CDs to a directory on your “C:/” drive, then copy them to wherever you keep your files. I generally rip a pile of CDs and copy the whole directory at once. Like I’ll rip into “C:/FLACs/2023/01/[artist]/[album]” and then move whenever I’m done with 10 or so. Works for me.

Anyways, I was anticipating this would suck. An hour’s work, I learned a bunch of stuff, and now it’s easy.

And for those who don’t know EAC, it’s the standard in making sure you got a FLAC that has exactly what was on the CD - bit perfect, guaranteed because you’re matching bit-for-bit (or at least checksums) vs. others who have ripped the same CD successfully.

You might also wonder why I’m using an external big CDR. They’re better at error catching & correction, and more long-lasting. That $25 Lite-On I use is particularly good, and I seem to burn through one every ~1000-2000 rips I do, so I have an extra one on hand in a box in the basement just in case. People argue endlessly about which CD drive is the best or most accurate. if you’re using EAC, it doesn’t matter - it’ll tell you if it got it right and you can keep trying. But this one comes highly recommended.

Hope this is helpful, happy to answer any questions. I will say that if you didn’t know anything about Windows this might have more of a learning curve than I’m suggesting. But If you’ve ever used it I bet you’ll be fine. Bottom line - there’s a fully functioning trial, and it’s easy to see if it’ll work for you.

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What not just get dbpoweramp it works on Mac and is just as good, the price you paid for the VM software would pay for it and have change for some more CDs… I have used both and switched to dbpoweramp this year as it’s just better for metadata.

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So basic reason is that I get enough scratched / faulty discs that I can’t fix with dbpoweramp. dbpoweramp is great if your disk matches the AccurateRip database, but I encounter maybe 2-4% that I just can’t get right with dbpoweramp’s “second try slower”. Of those, EAC manages to get ~75%. My workflow would technically be faster if I used dbpoweramp and then only went to EAC when I needed to, but I’ve tried that and found it to personally be more of a PITA.

EDIT: if I didn’t have so many discs from charity shops / thrift stores or which I buy off a friend/garage sale/craig’s list, and/or if I were less neurotic about “I’m going to do this right because I’m only ever going to do it once”, then I’d definitely prefer dbpoweramp.

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Only had one track not rip so far and EAC wouldn’t either. It was the metadata that got me as it just would not get them for some disks and got fed up manually tagging afterwards so it’s the easier option for me. Also I found it way to buggy on Windows 11.

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Parallels on M1/M2 is fantastic. I do all of my Windows stuff in the ARM version of Windows running in Parallels VMs on M1 Macs. That includes hours on Teams every day in which I’m doing audio and video - just fantastic.

Both @Simon_Arnold3 and I have FiiO M11s. I don’t want to install funky Mac drives to get the M11 to connect in a way that allows for file copying. Windows supports it natively. I use a Windows VM in Parallels and use connect the M11 up to that. Not too different than what you’re describing with EAC.

Parallels on X86 never worked all that great - neither did VMWare. They were functional but performance was mediocre and they drove the CPU so high that fans would kick in. On M1/M2, they just hum along. Amazing stuff.

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I just use my QNAP app on my M11 to copy my backup music files to the M11 no need to hook it up and it’s pretty quick. Obviously you need a Nas to start with. I backup my music files nightly from Rock core to NAS as I am always buying new stuff.

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I use Synology. I’ve tried doing what you describe with their Android app but it’s a lousy experience. As far as I can tell, you can’t easily download a folder onto an SD card. It’s easier to just cable it up, mount the NAS folder on either the Mac or directly in Windows, and copy over.

These is infrequent for me, though. I ripped to FLAC twenty years ago and don’t touch my local library much. I also haven’t bothered to copy much music onto the M11 since everything in my personal library is available in Roon and ARC. Nice to have the option, though.

On @Johnny_Ooooops’ original topic…EAC was, for me, by far the best at getting accurate rips. dbPowerAmp is much better now than it used to be but EAC is the boss.

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Using my Dell Optiplex (MOCK) right now with it’s CD drive. Chuck the disc in, let it rip, add the files to MP3Tag, search the CD using the ID number, save the META data and tag the files. Doesn’t take long, and I know people prefer dbpoweramp.

CDrip
CDrip1280×701 156 KB

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Qnaps one is dead easy to use and it copies folder or files, just queue them up and it downloads them in the background. It does put them in a folder named after your server which is annoying but it doesn’t affect how it sees them all. I want a back up as I know how fickle ARC can be and been burned with it on my iPhone for all my downloads being corrupted. Once bitten and all that.

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You gave me the incentive to figure this out. It does work. Queues it up the same as you describe with Qnap. Nice to have this option

I spend time in record stores - I’m starting to wonder if I should start looking at CDs again. My wife wants me to sell the boxes and boxes I already have - she’s not going to be impressed if I start coming home with more.

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I did that for a while until they broke the ripping and never gone back as it’s too much hassle and I don’t trust the rips had a few bad ones that I have had to redo with EAC.

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cdparanoia is the apple of my eye :wink:

https://xiph.org/paranoia/

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I am still a massive EAC fan boy, but moved to Macs with work. I used to run it using Wine on an old Linux box after I moved to Macs. That Linux box became a Roon core so I now use XLD with cdparanoia. It has accuraterip and multiple passes to deal with scratches etc. seems good so far after a year or so.

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It’s what Rock uses, and my old Vortexbox setup.

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I have used EAC, dBpoweramp and CUERipper on Windows since the early 2000s but I have found that XLD on Mac beats them all for the highest likelihood for an accurate rip. I still run every CD through dBpoweramp and CUERipper on my Windows box to contribute to the AccurateRip and CTDB databases, but for problematic CDs, I can’t even begin to count how many of them have ripped perfectly with XLD while they failed on the Windows apps. Occasionally CUETools and dBpoweramp will succeed where XLD failed, but it’s definitely less frequently than the other way around.

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I suspect that XLD is another piece of software using libparanoia under the hood. :+1:

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People around here are seriously smart and experienced with this stuff. I always learn about new stuff from these conversations!

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Does XLD have a gui & work on recent Mac silicon/Ventura? I have an M2, thought xld was only working on Intel Macs.

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It has a GUI.

From the XLD web:

2021/1/1
XLD now runs natively on Apple Silicon
Note that external plugins should be updated to use with the ARM64 version.
Updated app icon to fit in with Big Sur style icons (thanks to Finn Davies)
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This is great, but that enclosure price, tho

However, it is good to hear running Parallels on M2 works so well. I wasn’t sure it was much of an option anymore