Phile Audio App Reviews

Ripped all my collection (1000+ CDs) into FLAC (storage and weekend listening), m4a variable rate with max quality (ipod) and mac lossless (music server). Must say that, in my opinion, sound is quite better than what you get from Itunes ripper (for both ma4 and lossless). It works extremely fast and does use all cores of the computer. Would only suggest to add the ability to change the tags after ripping and the possibility to direct different formats to different drives. Keep the good job!

This is the only app that has not been compatible with my 2009 MacBook Pro. I get the following error message: "Invalid Temp File Path: The temp file path MUST be on a HFS+ formatted disc, and the directory must be writable. This must be corrected before saving your preferences." OK, perhaps Apple formatted my disc wrong out-of-the-box, but I dont understand why it is the only app that doesnt work on my MBP. Ive never had problems with apps or software before. I emailed customer service three days ago and they have yet to respond to this problem. Boo!

Used this app for some time after its initial release. In and of itself - it was a phenominal experience. Recent issues and a complete lack of any sort of customer service (reported issues have gone unanswered for weeks) has forced a negative review. Other than that - the app is a great product if you have no oustanding problems.

First, I should point out that I had that same issue that twangshack had, with it complaining about the temporary path. I have no idea why; I assume its a bug that will hopefully be addressed in future versions (hint, hint). Anyway, I was able to thwart this issue by just selecting my desktop as the temporary folder (the permenant location is an NTFS external hard drive; I have Tuxera installed so I can write to NTFS). Now, for the program, itself. I have to say that this is, hands down, the best audio ripper I have found so far for OS X, bar none. I had almost all of my music in ALAC (Apple Lossless ripped by iTunes), and I thought that was just fine. How wrong I was! After re-ripping my stuff in FLAC with this application, my music sounds so much better! Thank you for this fantastic application.

Thanks to the tip from Matthew of using my desktop as the temp folder. I set this thing up in less than 5 minutes to rip to my music folder and have it loaded to iTunes. I was able to find the album cover on the web and easily drag and drop it into the app after it couldnt find it. Too bad it uses Bing for searching. Google would have found the album cover which you can use as an alternate instead of the default. It ripped very quickly. It seems to get faster after each song. SImple, fast and seamless. Nice job!

The product is one of the best on the Mac OS platform. I love being able to rip and encode multiple formats simultaneously. The setting for Fraunhofer encoder needs to be updated for the newer version of the software.

I bought Phile Audio to save time with its ability to simultaneously encode in multiple formats. The app, however, has a significant limitation that makes it relatively useless for me. Phile Audio can only import a CD to one iTunes library at a time, and to that library only in one format at a time. Phile Audio stores any other formats in a user-designated folder on the "Audio files path" you have selected in Phile Audio preferences. If you want to import more than one format to a library, or more than one format to multiple libraries, that involves separate operations, and its just as quick and easy (and less expensive) to do that in iTunes directly. I also found that the AIFF tracks stored by Phile Audio outside an iTunes library didnt contain all of the track information from the CD. When those tracks subsequently are imported into iTunes, you have to add the missing information manually. That may also be true of other formats, but when I found that the AIFF format was broken I didnt bother with any further testing. All-in-all, I found that Phile Audio didnt do anything I couldnt do better in iTunes, or save me any time, and having to add available track information manually was a non-starter.

Was looking to rip a bunch of my CDs for iPod. I also wanted to rip lossless and then convert to .MP3 at a high quality. I figured Id make a back-up of my CD library at the same time. After having a boring time with XLD (just too slow loading the CDs). I came across Phile Audio in the app store. Really making my life easy right now as I can rip straight to .FLAC and .MP3 at the same time. Nice feautre is the ripping and encoding are seperate processes - so you can feed CDs as fast as you can (with mulitple players as I understand it). My two cents is that when ripping Compilation CDs - you have to change the preferences under the file naming convention. So heres my strings to make your life easier :) For Regular CDs (Default that it ships with) / indicate folder structure: %X/%A/%B/%Z - %T.%X = Format/Artist/Album/ #-Name.EXT Good for Compilations %X/%B/%Z - %T.%X = Format / Album / #-Name.EXT or better for compilations ! %X/%B/%Z - %T - %A .%X = Format / Album / # - Track - Artist.EXT has without a date saved $8 dollars worth of my time !!

Huge ripoff. Counter-intuitive and not Mac friendly. Stay away.

First try XLD ripper or MAX both are free and are much better than this one. I recommend XLD. After the rip is done you know the condition of your CD and if you have any bad sectors (ie. tracks). XLD also handles special charictors (/;:) in a very nice way. This is not a bad program (if it was $2.00) but there a several out there that are significantly better and free or ask for a donation. Try MAX or XLD. Dont wast your money.

Ive used it for a few month, but Im not gonna use it again. For me, it was the final decision for EAC alternative on OS X. It doesnt have OS X friendly UI though, simultaneous encoding is a huge merit. I use to rip both FLAC and MP3 simultaneously, with fast and simple work flow....and theres no error messages ever! But, Ive found some MP3s are not ripped properly (FLACs are OK so far)....definitely untrustworthy. This pricey app has beautiful icon, but thats all. XLD looks ugly, but far better.

The app doesnt caudle you, and yes, you need to set up your own tagging options and file paths, but I enjoy that control, and this app is the perfect replacement for Max, which is now aging into obscurity and glitchiness with no updates as Mac OS marches onward. I needed to jump ship for a modern product, and this gives me all the power and functionality that I was accustomed to. Very grateful for this product, and sorry to hear that other users are looking for a simpler option -- iTunes comes with your computer, if you need "simple." Thats fine. But some people prefer control. Its just a matter of taste and priorities.

Note: I will have no problem changing this to a 5-star review, if the developers can add a few more features, most notably the lack of templates for file naming schemes. Otherwise, this is an excellent application that solves a major problem I have had in the past with the macOS: I simply require much more tweaking of the ripping and encoding process than iTunes allows.

New update requires the new mac system. I can not get the new mac os to work so I have to use the older os. This program requires the newer os and even though I have the older version of Phile audio installed and paid for becuase my computer can not run the new os it can not find and devices. This was a awesome program, now its just a waste of money. Thank God for Itunes which can do the same thing.

I am the digital music "expert" among my friends and I was getting a lot of questions about ripping CDs - what formats and so forth. My online searches did not return a lot of Mac applications that looked like they would do a good job ripping CDs. I did try Max, which is free and a very good application, but it is less user friendly than Phile and does not appear to be able to rip different formats to different folders, something I need to do since I rip simultaneously to FLAC, Apple Lossless and MP3. You do have to install an MP3 ripper into Phile as a manual process, but this was easy to do and I did not encounter any problems installing the LAME MP3 ripper. Good functional ripping program for a very reasonable price.

This is a poorly made app, there are free ones (Max or XLD) that do a lot better job than this. I was using dbPoweramp on PC, cant say how disssapointed i was with this. Cannot grab over art or write directly to my server. If the issues were fixed I would give mose stars but right now ver 1.1.2 is useless to me.

I bought this in hopes of finding a simple way to import my music into iTunes using something other than the Gracenote DB. While the program will fetch the info from elsewhere, the iTunes integration does not work at all. So I end up with files that must be manually added to iTunes, defeating the entire process. The program also does not autolmatically add cover art. It must be found or made on your own, then manually added to the file. It will not overwrite/add cover art to iTunes at all. Bottom line: I would not use this if you plan on using iTunes as your player until they figure out how to integrate properly.

I use Phile Audio for well over a year to rip my jazz CDs to Flac. It works fine; I have no freeDB issues (occasionally it may not find some CD but I think you can solve that easily). It is fairly fast. I wish there were more FLAC options but for my audiophile needs, it is a much preferred alternative to geeky tweaks that need you to adjust parameters or run scripts etc. I just wanted a decent PC-like ripping programme where you just pop in your CD...and this is my default. I hope improvements in functions are made regularly.

I had listened to an album that I imported later, and it cut out some miliseconds at the end of the last track. Annoying bug but great overall.

This app does everything I need in a simple CD ripper. I can easily change the artist, track, year, album artwork, etc. and it gets the tracks names and everything from iTunes. It’s simple and supports all of the file formats I need. A lot of nice little features make it easy to use, such as the fact that you can get the album artwork from your scanner in the app, or the fact that it automatically ejects the CD after it’s done. I’ve used this software for almost all of my CDs and I couldn’t be happier with it. I’m sure some more experienced audiophiles would want more control and options, but this app is perfect for me. I use it to rip FLAC files for my Fiio X3.