XLD works well for me; it's replaced Max as my preferred CD Ripper and format converter for audio, although I would recommend either for someone who is searching for either of these operations on MacOS. They both are capable of bit-for-bit transcription from Compact Disk (CD) to Hard Disk (HD).
Why XLD? I had bought a box set of CDs, a Time-Life 10 disk set of "old school" Country music, with all the old favourites and some more difficult to find cuts ... some would be impossible to hunt down from CD at all.
I am not much of a Country Music fan, but it would not be correct to say I don't like Country Music at all; I can enjoy the old school Country music and some (but not all) of the New Country genre.
The list of examples would be long, but for example it is not much of a jump from Buck Owens to The Eagles, and I feel anyone who likes "good music" would enjoy both artists.
So, when ripping to HD from CD via iTunes (Apple Lossless 16/44.1) I could not get the first track of about half the disks to rip without errors (dropouts). I tried repeatedly but the errors were fairly consistent (ie the same areas of the track would fail) and seemingly impossible to overcome. Tracks 2~x ripped properly save for one disk which had a second bad rip at maybe track 10 or so (can't remember).
So, naturally this meant listening with some attention (not background "muzak" mode) to all tracks of every disk in the box set, which took many hours, of course, to identify which tracks exhibited errors.
Not that it's an onerous task, and I'm used to it, since moving to Intel processor Macs I find it a necessary extra step.
I never had issues of any kind with audio on PowerPC Macs, but that's another post. Plus, this was not the kind of issue typical of Intel CPU problems with Audio or Video, which is random rather than consistent.
I first tried my go-to app for many years, Max, but the results were less than stellar.
I had no intention of returning the box set, as it was an eBay purchase from a seller who was otherwise excellent and offered good value; the price was about 40% of MSRP for a new, sealed disk set.
My cost to re-ship it to the USA (I'm in Canada) plus the grief the seller would experience refunding my purchase price for no fault of hers, it wasn't worth the effort required and didn't seem fair to either of us. I decided to do what I could to get a good rip and if I failed, then I would just delete the bad tracks and enjoy the rest.
So, I then downloaded and tried XLD. And I was able to create solid, error-free rips on the tracks that needed a second attempt, even though it was clear XLD was having some issues with some tracks, taking perhaps 10 minutes to finish a rip of a 3 minute song. It was a strange error pattern I attribute to the physical disk pressing plant or perhaps the master.
So, with apologies for the long winded explanation, but I'm putting in a good word for XLD. The configuration is extensive but can be complex, and it suffers, as can be expected, from the "Open Source Bug" which is the Free Software developer's aversion, bordering on hostility, to writing documentation, but I'm willing to put up with that.
When I transcribe FLAC to ALAC it takes about 2 seconds per track, I can run 8 threads, so the average CD-sized set of FLAC files takes about 5 seconds, certainly no penalty compared to Max.
For playback I have used Fidelia for many years and recently switched to Audirvana Plus.
If you want a good sounding, inexpensive playback option Fidelia ($30) is quite good, the developers specialize in audio (mostly for musicians with home studios), the Sample Rate Conversion is excellent, and there is a handy iOS remote app. But there is an annoying lack of documentation, support is mediocre, and the software has a tendency towards bugginess that some users find frustrating.