Is Itunes OK to rip CD's to AIFF?

I have final results to report after further analysis.

My findings indicate that Beethoven's 9th Symphony ripped by dbpoweramp is notably inferior to Stairway to Heaven ripped by XLD. The differences are not subtle, and furthermore they remain consistent regardless of the orchestra/conductor/hall the 9th was recorded in.

Specifically, Page's guitar, and Plant's vocals, are far more present in the XLD version, while being totally absent from the dbpoweramp rip.

In short, XLD is markedly and objectively superior.

My finding will be presented in an upcoming issue of Stereophile. (John Atkinson's measurements revealed real & substantial differences between the two ripped files.)

Ldworet- forgive me for jumping in, but the error correction function will be in the ripping software, not the cd-rom drive which just reads the bits off the disk.

Steve answered the following:

LD: How do you set C2 error correction on such a device on the MAC? (forgive me, but I've used PC's for 18 years and know them well, but I'm clueless about Macs.

Steve: It either does it or it doesnt.

LD: I'll be using XLD or MAX to rip to AIFF as you suggested.

Which of the two do you think pulls more of the track names over when ripping?

Steve: Dont know. Both probably the same.

LD: Like John, my music is on a multi-TB server in the house hooked to a fast router. I wanted all the music available to any computer in the house. RE: SQ: Any disadvantage to using a server versus putting the music on an external hard drive?

Steve: Yes, internet traffic and latency can cause drop-outs.

Laurence - The tags are all there if you rip AIFF with XLD. Album art isn't.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

Steve, thanks as always, one last question for me and others looking online to buy a C2 correcting drive that did well in the tests: if I (or other readers) get the Teac DW-2124 SL (which is the one that tested so well at

http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=17274

and I believe that it's one of the drives you use), I assume we can be reasonably comfortable in thinking that it's also probably got C2 correction turned on, right?