I changed over to Mac about 2 years ago as well Aaron min m1 at first now mii m2. What amazing processing speeds. I don't do video much, but for anyone that does I can't imagine the time savings.I was missing CDWAV for a bit, but my buddy told me to try fission during my changeover. To me I like it better now, it can do some things CD wav cant, like normalize each track if you want to and also change output formats. I think it was 30 bucks.
EW, I can't imagine wanting that, but if it doesn't leave an audible jump in volume between tracks, I guess it would be useful?
While I'm here I'll say I dig my M1 Mini (cheapest one, 8GB RAM, 256 GB drive) and I use a CRAP TON of drives via thunderbolt hub (OWC thunderbolt hub), USB-C hub (1 > 3 USB-A 3.2), and two Star Tech USB 3.0 hubs (1>4 and 1>7, industrial type. I power the 4 port with a 12V adaptor left over from all my external hard drives, and the 7 port, I leave unpowered and only use it for Desktop type USB drives, which have their own 12V wall warts)
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-thunderbolt-hub Thunderbolt Hub from OWC (they have sales often if you get on mailing list and sell B-Stock units etc.)
https://www.startech.com/en-us/usb-hubs/hb30c4ab USB-C > USB 3.2 I got cheap off ebay
https://www.startech.com/en-us/usb-hubs/st7300usbme 7 port industrial hub cheap enough off ebay compared to original list
Audacity 2.4.2 still works on Ventura and doesn't "phone home"
XLD is very handy for FLAC encode on multiple files in multiple folders at once. It's also got a great feature where you can open a folder as a disc, look up song titles from gracenote/CDDB, and tag the files.
xACT is the classic, and I use it for almost everything it can do for me. Tagging, renaming, SHNTOOL readouts, FFP creation/verification... I'm using it less for encoding lately (audacity export direct to FLAC!) but xACT is slick for going to apple lossless or MP3 direct from flac, with tags.
Utilities:
NeoFinder
https://www.cdfinder.de/I use this to maintain an index my USB drives, so I can search my entire collection, and find out which drive to plug in to get the file I want. It's also great for comparing folder sizes across various backups, so I can see if a collection is the largest or latest. There's a mobile version too but it is not as useful to me as the desktop one. CD finder is their PC product, I think. That's the name of their website. The developer has been very friendly responding to my bug reports and issues.
It indexes up to ten drives for free, more than that, please purchase a license. (I bought one)
Grand Perspective
https://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net/view a file tree of your drive with larger blocks representing larger files. Find what is taking up space. On a 256 mac mini this is essential to me!
And then there's my hard drive stack...
Fastest external: OWC Envoy Express ~ Thunderbolt Bus-Powered Portable NVMe M.2 Enclosure, with a cheap NVME stick
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3ENVXP00/Next fastest: SATA SSD > USB-C
then: SATA SSD > USB-3.2
then: SATA > USB 3.1
and finally mechanical hard drives
I tried NVME via USB, but found it less than perfectly reliable. NVME draws a lot of juice. Wiggle the connector on an EXFAT drive and risk losing all contents. No thanks.