When I tried using Max, the preferences and interface were much more confusing than Pillage. As long as you have iTunes, Terminal, and cdparanoia, Pillage seems to run pretty smooth.

Xact does let you rip a CD, but only with WAV, with does not support tags. AIFF supports tags. I prefer to have full AIFF rips, and then I batch compress select tracks to Apple Lossless for my iPod (not using Pillage).

Pillage seems better than a 1 star program, but I am still going to try it out more before I rate it (or pay for it).

But why not Apple Lossless?

To OSSIE: CDParanoia only offers WAV or AIF. You can not tag WAV files directly, therefore the choice I made for the rips is AIF. After you rip the tracks, you could then right click them all in iTunes, and convert them to Apple Lossless if you want.

Pillage is just designed to give CDParanoia a GUI. I can not control than CDParanoia does not support other formats. I did not write CDParanoia. A nice man named Monty did that.

While I appreciate your opinion, I think a 1 star rating is kind of unfair for what the program does.

Regarding the Shareware fee: As the application is released uncrippled by any sort of shareware nagging, if you don't feel like paying me for the time and effort that I put into creating Pillage (which was truly close to eight weeks of AppleScript hell), you do not have to. Monty, the gentlemen who wrote the original CDParanoia program, has not complained about my shareware request. I did ask him before I went public with Pillage.

To CDBOY: I was going to try to integrate the tag writing within Pillage, to exclude iTunes from the process, but it didn't make sense. Why not use the program I was going to have the ripped files in anyway? I know having Pillage bounce between Terminal and iTunes seems a bit much at first, but you get used to it quickly. I've ripped over 12,000 songs now with Pillage (on two laptops, and one G4 tower), and it works great for me.

General comment: Max might be a fine application, but it seemed a bit complicated when I tried it out. Granted, Pillage isn't exactly the easiest program in the world, but aside from the checklist, it isn't too bad. Another note: xAct only rips to WAV the last I checked, which you can not write a tag in, like AIFF iTunes files (I am a tagging freak). As I planned on keeping the ripped files as AIFF files, CDParanoia turned out to be the best option, and using it directly via Terminal worked the best for my personal experience.

Everyone else: Feel free to post your feedback on Pillage. Note: I am aware of one little bug with the "ui_splitter" error popping up on some users. I am looking into a solution. Thanks to all who have downloaded Pillage, thank you for the feedback, and thanks to those who threw money at me. :)

I appreciate your comments. But, rethinking, I still think one star for the one trick it does. I just don't see why you put yourself through it. You say Max was somewhat complicated. As complicated as writing all the sript, as going through the, your own word, "hell?" Some developers think the value of learning by going through their hell is how they're paid (exchanges with Max and xACT developers lead me to believe that indeed is their case).

Again: Why not use Apple Lossless?

In my experience with Max, it never wrote the tags properly (AIFF, and iTunes AIFF, are two different animals), so Max did not work for me. That might have been fixed since the last time I tried Max, but as I wanted something different, I went forth and wrote it myself. Personally, I am happy that I did.

CDParanoia has a simple philosophy. It just rips. THe author proudly states that he did not clutter the program with bells and whistles. I like that.

Pillage simply adds one or two bells, and a whistle, that I personally wanted. It does not offer additional compression settings outside of AIF. If you want additional features, you can use another program. If Pillage does not do what you want (which, I am guessing, is Apple Lossless), you can feel free to use another application. Pillage is only for tagging the files ripped from CDParanoia. Nothing more.

Pillage is just a custom GUI controller for CDParanoia. CDParanoia does not offer any settings outside of WAV or AIF.

No! I am simply (or so I thought) asking *you* why don't you use AppleLossless in your DJing? I admit to knowing nothing of the art but if you're using AIFF/iTunes you could just as easily use ALAC and got them by Max (for ALAC it is fine) and not have bothered yourself and save a bunch of drive space in the process.

ScratchLive only just introduced Apple Lossless support.

I also edit in Pro Tools, and I prefer to use AIFF there.

I appreciate the info.