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Community Newsletter: Q&A: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection
- 1/18/08 4:08 PM
How I roll
by wrocnrob - 1/18/08 9:47 PM In reply to: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I still use separate programs for different functions.
-WMP or EAC for ripping to wav. Both are free. EAC is better for old discs. EAC can also access freedb, which I use only for filenames.
-Speeks frontend for flac and Speeks All2Lame as a frontend for Lame 397. You can configure EAC to do this, but I like simple steps. All free. BTW, I convert the wav files to flac for backup, but I listen to mp3 conversions. I don't do this because mp3's are better. I use the mp3 format because I have other mp3's which were downloaded and don't sound as quite as nice as lossless, but if you listen to mp3 all the time, this difference is not so pronounced. You can always do some blind tests. I've found Lame 397 using the "--preset extreme" switch sounds very good.
-Mp3tag for ID3 tagging. I don't know if it will automatically get artwork, but I usually find artwork myself. Then I know what it is and what size it is and embed the artwork directly into the mp3. This is time consuming though. I use Irfanview to crop & resize artwork.
-foobar2000 as a general player. I use an old version, simple and opens files quickly.
-itunes or wmp 11 for listening to playlists. The full screen "album view" in itunes is nice. I have found it difficult to use extensive library functions because every time you change any ID3 info, you need to delete the file and replace it in your library. The players I've used don't do a good job of updating the ID3 tags. So I don't keep a huge library in a player. For playlists I really like; I copy the mp3's to into a seperate folder and number them.
Ripping CD's
by unknowndude - 1/18/08 9:55 PM In reply to: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I personally use Windows Media player. Versions 9,10 or 11 work fine. Before starting go into the options and set your storage folder, I use "My Music". Then set your file name format. Using track-song-artist works well when searching for songs later. You can also include album name.
I also recommend setting file type to 128mbps mp3. This gives an mp3 file of CD quality. Since you are ripping a CD, using a higher bit rate is a waste of storage space (it's not going to get any better quality).
This is all free if you are using a Windows PC. If you are running a Mac, ITunes will rip just as well. It just creates the storage folders in order of contributing artist rather than album artist. It complicates manual sorting, but works well with the way ITunes displays sort options.
Feel your pain
by hurple - 1/18/08 10:01 PM In reply to: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hey, Dan M, I feel your pain. I have a CD collection that contains more than 5,000 individual discs, and last year I undertook the task of ripping them all for my Zune. It took 8 months, but I finally got them all and have been a happy camper ever since.
Because I am a bit of an anal-retentive audiophile, I wanted the absolute best quality I could get and didn't mind it taking a little longer to get it. I ripped every disc using Exact Audio Copy, each disc into it's own folder consisting of the release date (YYYY-MM-DD) followed by Album Title, and placed each of those in a folder named for the artist (Last Name, First Name). Then, each night before bed, I set all the day's ripped files to encode using Razor-Lame (settings = VBR 128-320 with speed set to quality 2).
Unfortunately, Razor-Lame does not tag, so then I added tags using Tag&Rename. I usually grabbed the tag info from Amazon (editing the artist info and release date and such as needed). If I needed to add artwork, ie if Amazon didn't have it) I grobbed it from AllMusic.com (also usually a good place to get release dates) and added it using Tag&Rename.
I store the, nearly, 500gig results on a 750gig external HD that I only turn on when needed, to hopefully extend it's life.
If I were to dave to do it all again, today, I would probably use dbPowerAmp rather than Razor-Lame, since dbPA has now added a batch encode feature and can tag the files so that I could save myself the Tag&Rename step.
As others say, the secret is to take your time, try multiple tools and multiple settings, and find the correct trade-off between time, effort and quality for your purposes. And, the best part is, if something does go wrong, you can always just pull the disc back off the shelf and rip it again.
Hope this helps.
EAC and catalogs
by AndySocial - 1/19/08 4:54 AM In reply to: Feel your pain by hurpleI'm also a huge fan of EAC for its error-handling as well as the sheer customizability of the rip via settings for the external encoder.
What do you use for a music organizer, if anything? I avoided using anything for many years, but after ripping a couple hundred disks I started using MediaMonkey (Winamp and WMP just didn't fit my temperament I guess).
Just curious what someone else with a large collection uses.
Two essential steps for a large collection
by thorrall - 1/18/08 11:00 PM In reply to: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I also had the same issue. The two things I consider most important:
1. Be sure to rip to a lossless format. Drive space is ultra-cheap these days so the extra space required doesn't matter. If you rip to a lossless format, than any future conversion to a compressed format for the portable player of your choice will be the best possible quality for that format and speed. It is not a good idea to convert from a compressed file to a different compressed format as the psychoacoustic compromises of both will add up.
It doesn't matter what lossless format you use as they are all easily batch convertible to the compressed format of your choice before syncing to a portable device. Pick on the basis of ripping speed or convenience. FWIW, I used iTunes, but FLAC or wma may be faster.
2. Be sure whatever drive you used is mirrored (best), or at least synchronized regularly with another drive of equal or larger size. You will spend a lot of time ripping, and the last thing you want is to lose all that time when a drive fails as is eventually inevitable . Again, drive space is cheap compared to your time.
Ripping a big collection
by Rae Farrell - 1/18/08 11:21 PM In reply to: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have over 3000 songs.
They are all in I-Tunes.
If your anal like me, and love structure.
I-tunes does it all
I find I-tunes the best.
I use a Mac book.
Lime wire or acquisition will place your choice right into I-tunes.
You must go into I-tunes edit as the P2P's. person to person share files
will come in with bad spelling, grammar, etc.
Be fussy start it out right, going through 2 to 3 thousand songs after the fact will be brain melting.
Happy down loading.
Exact Audio Copy
by ph15h - 1/19/08 12:04 AM In reply to: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
This is THE best CD ripping software. Combined with the Newest version of LAME, you can have the greatest Quality of MP3s at the most Space efficient. Using variable bitrates, you'll have only the amount of information that the song holds and to its max, so the music is retained in its purist form and kept in the most space efficient way.
It's kind of hard to set up, but when you get it done correctly, NOTHING will beat it.
www.exactaudiocopy.de
virtual reality collection
by regman - 1/19/08 12:29 AM In reply to: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I've no real advice on what to offer for rippin. I've used a huge variety over the last few years . However storage is the key issue . Burn back to cdr or dvd as back up, but to get the most out of your collection place them on a massive storage device -a usb hard drive . A 500 gb drive will store about 9000 cds but the important part is it becomes your record deck . Open up something like winamp, load your whole collection and press random play . Suddenly instead of playing individual records, u are playing your whole collection . You can then jump from something u bought last week to something you bought 2 or 3 decades ago. Its a completly new record collecting experience .
Please feel free to find out more from my page:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/steveislip/mp3-lp-side.html
PS Don't forget to rip album images at the same time and then when thats finished try rippin your music dvd's
Professional CD ripping
by james.watters - 1/19/08 12:37 AM In reply to: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If you think about paying someone else to do it avoid the fate of a friend who had CD's put into iTunes for his iPod and discovered that the collection could only be updated on the computer of the company which ripped the CDs.
Re: Professional CD ripping
by euspos - 1/19/08 1:01 AM In reply to: Professional CD ripping by james.wattersVery good point! Also just another reason to stay away from ANY format (or application) that adds a DRM layer. It is not about enabling piracy, it is about "manageability" of your music collection.
I'm confused....
by Frank McCright - 1/19/08 1:17 AM In reply to: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
...what do you need this program to do that iTunes (which you have) doesn't already do?
Re: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection
by jarmovarjotie - 1/19/08 1:26 AM In reply to: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Hi!
I use Freerip (free program, available at Download.com). I'm rather satisfied with its usability and quality. I prefer bitrate 192 or better.
Greetings!
Best Music Library Manager
by drjboulder - 1/19/08 1:59 AM In reply to: Re: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection by jarmovarjotieWhy anyone would let their Music library be mucked up by the likes of Itunes, Windows Media player, Yahoo Jukebox, etc... Is beyond me.
If you want to truly have control over your library, you need Media Monkey. Period.
Windows Media Player
by Cee66uk - 1/19/08 2:17 AM In reply to: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Your first reply would have been sufficient, WMP allows you to set the best quality, which format you want the song in, organises the songs into their own folder, with cover and names the songs.
I used to use audio grabber but find this saves having to rename folders .
Music ripping
by beyondtoday - 1/19/08 3:23 AM In reply to: Advice needed for ripping a huge music CD collection by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Personally I like Nero 7 it is very good. or I also use Easy cdda it also has a file convertor function that comes in handy for remastering work or if you are skint for cash an old faverite of miine is a little program call freeripmp3 this one allows more flexablity when it comes to data entering
Hope this has helped your quest
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