Community Newsletter: Q&A: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection
- 1/18/08 4:08 PM
Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection
by Lee Koo (ADMIN) - 1/18/08 4:08 PM
Question:
Hello everyone,
I am a longtime subscriber to several CNET newsletters but this is the first time I've submitted a question. I have a massive (1,000 plus) CD music collection and I have ripped many individual tracks from many of these CD's for my MP3 player. I have used Windows Media Player, iTunes, and other programs to rip the tracks, but I would like to start ripping ALL the tracks from my ENTIRE music collection. My question is, before I take on such a time-consuming project like this, I could use some advice on the BEST free or paid program to rip the CD's. What is the best format, bit rate, and/or other settings that will give me the best balance between sound quality and file size. I want the program to be able to do file naming, auto tagging, look-up, and download the album art, and do reports for collection management print outs. I look forward to reading all your answers and starting this digital music project. Thanks!
--Submitted by Dan M.
If you have any answers or recommendations for Dan, please click on the reply link and post away. Please be as detailed as possible in your answer.
Thank you!
CD Rip
by JimBrittTN - 1/11/08 4:44 PM In reply to: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Window's "Media Player" is as good as any CD ripper.
A Great Ripping Program
by lewisinde - 1/18/08 8:20 PM In reply to: CD Rip by JimBrittTNTry Audiograbber at this site:
http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/
I have been using it for several years. It is free and has many features including a normalizer and feedb, an internet database which will identify your cd and name the songs for you. You can select how to name the Mp3s and also at what bitrate that you want to rip at. There are many settings that you can choose.
Very Important tip: Be sure to download an mp3 encoder (mp3.dll) such as lame mp3 dll (google it to find it) and place it in the Audiograbber folder. Another good one is BladeEnc's mp3.dll on this page:
http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/download.html
You need an mp3 encoder for the program to work
lewisinde
Any Will Do
by moviegeek65 - 1/18/08 8:45 PM In reply to: A Great Ripping Program by lewisindeI use CDex or WMP 10.
WMP 10 uses the well regarded Fraunhofer MP3 codec while CDex uses LAME(open source).I encode at 192-256mbps and get great results,I wouldn't go any lower than 128mbps.
Normalizing feature
by BangX3 - 1/19/08 7:07 AM In reply to: Any Will Do by moviegeek65I'm curious to know if anyone else notices volume distortions to their music when turning on the volume normalizer. I always imagined that the normalizer would allow the natural range of volume within a song but simply elevate the softer, or lower the louder, songs to a similar base point. I guess it sort of sets a max & min spec level & all songs are force fit into that range?
MP3 Gain to Normalize
by goldy_gold - 1/19/08 9:43 AM In reply to: Normalizing feature by BangX3I had to do a major clean up of my music library and I started with MP3 Gain to normalize the volume of the entire library. It worked great and didn't take too long. Now when I don't have to adjust the volume when I'm listening to my mp3 player, or computer.
Audiograbber
by PatchDog - 1/19/08 5:24 AM In reply to: A Great Ripping Program by lewisindeI completely agree with Audiograbber as a great ripping program. It works nicely with a lot of options, it took me awhile to figure out the idea of using subdirectoryies to sort my music, but after that, it is a great program
Audiograbber is great
by jk55337 - 1/19/08 7:54 AM In reply to: Audiograbber by PatchDogI am ripping a big CD collection too (about 1,000 CDs) and audiograbber does the job extremely well. A nice feature is that it rips the tracks with VERY good tags- extremely helpful and something I had not had before.
FYI: use audiograbber on high quality VBR in stereo using the LAME encoder- you will not be disappointed!
audiograbber
by turdmaster1952 - 1/19/08 6:47 AM In reply to: A Great Ripping Program by lewisindetried to download this and open it on my imac running leopard. got an error message that the file was somehow corrupted by my trying to expand or open it. any ideas? does this in fact run on macs? thanks, vicki
Audioripper site
by justfedup - 1/20/08 11:01 AM In reply to: A Great Ripping Program by lewisindeRead your answer and thought I would try it out, but every link seems to not work for the download...any suggesrtions?
Audiograbber download
by cboykin - 1/21/08 11:14 AM In reply to: Audioripper site by justfedupGo to www.tucows.com and click on "Software", then search for Audiograbber and it will link you to the download site.
Audiograbber is THE greatest! It ROCKS!
by musicollector - 1/20/08 5:43 PM In reply to: A Great Ripping Program by lewisindeI have been using Audiograbber for years to not only rip my CDs but also using the Line-In function to my open reel tapes, LPs and cassettes. There is no other FREE program on the planet that matches it! Just make sure you place the 171 KB file, "lame_enc.dll", in its folder after installing, so that you will be able to choose your bit rate. It is amazing that this gem is free!! I can see many others are also enjoying and loving this great little (< 1 MB) program.
I agree, Audiograbber is good
by meh130 - 1/21/08 7:36 AM In reply to: A Great Ripping Program by lewisindeThe best thing about Audiograbber is you have control over what MP3 format you want. This can be important if you want to create MP3 CDs and play them using your DVD player. Older DVD players may not play later variable bit rate MP3s. Using Audiograbber and LAME allows you to create MP3s to a lowest common denominator which will play on just about anything.
Windows Media Player is pretty good too.
cd ripping
by gamer73 - 1/19/08 3:51 PM In reply to: CD Rip by JimBrittTNI use windows media player 11 with windows xp pro it does everything you asked for and if you have a fast computer you can rip a whole cd in about 1 min 20 sec I think thats what my pc takes the faster the rom and sata hard drives help also for the data rate to go faster.
WMP is ok, but album art not embedded
by Seacoaster - 1/27/08 9:16 AM In reply to: cd ripping by gamer73I ripped the entire collection (1,000+) w/ WMP11 and now i have to go back and embed the album art with every title, otherwise it will not be present on the mp3 device.(Sansa e-280)
It will acept images from the internet, like Amazon, but it it time consuming to use the Adavanced tagging tab.
If audio grabber does this completely, I'd opt that way
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