A question about backing up my cd collection...

[char_lotte]

'evening all,

I'm planning on backing up my cd collection to hard disk soon and my cunning plan is ....

1) Buy an external 1tb hard drive

2) Download ripping software to my laptop

3) Put life on hold and rip cd's to newly aquired hard drive

So.....what is the best software to use and what is the best format to save them in? Also , is this the best and easiest way to go about such a task?

Apologies for such a basic question.

Charlotte

 

[Ravey Gravey Davy]

You are going to get lots of differing replies to this(hopefully). However I downloaded itunes, ripped everything at 320mpbs rather than lossless, and transferred it from laptop to separate HD. It serves us fine.You can go for a lossless format if you want , but it depends what you are playing it back on,and how ,ahem, paranoid/serious/dedicated you are about the sound.

 

[char_lotte]

You are going to get lots of differing replies to this(hopefully). However I downloaded itunes, ripped everything at 320mpbs rather than lossless, and transferred it from laptop to separate HD. It serves us fine.You can go for a lossless format if you want , but it depends what you are playing it back on,and how ,ahem, paranoid/serious/dedicated you are about the sound.

Hello again Ravey Gravey Davy.

I would like to stay away from any software that starts with an "i", and I consider myself to be a quasi autistic, O.C.D. purist when it comes to sound quality....!

 

[Ravey Gravey Davy]

You are going to get lots of differing replies to this(hopefully). However I downloaded itunes, ripped everything at 320mpbs rather than lossless, and transferred it from laptop to separate HD. It serves us fine.You can go for a lossless format if you want , but it depends what you are playing it back on,and how ,ahem, paranoid/serious/dedicated you are about the sound.

Hello again Ravey Gravey Davy.

I would like to stay away from any software that starts with an "i", and I consider myself to be a quasi autistic, O.C.D. purist when it comes to sound quality....!

I also avoided the i letter but it is so f'ng good I used it .You can also rip to your required level.-Use the dropdown menu and underneath lossless there is a QA OCD P option.

 

[quadpatch]

I like audio detailed rather than bland "good enough" so went for lossless, on a 1tb drive you will get about 3000 CDs worth in that format so it depends on your collection if you feel like you may need to compramise or not. I originally ripped to FLAC because I thought it made more sense but I found iTunes useful for sharing safely at work and the wife has an iPhone so it made more sense to convert my entire collection over to Apple Lossless (ALAC). Seems strange that way but Foobar and JRiver both support the Apple format, it's a shame i devices and software doesn't support FLAC but they're a**holes that way so it help to conform to the scumbags .

I use 'Easy CD-DA Extractor' to rip / convert my music from CDs, works really well but costs a few pennies. If you want to avoid any cost I'm sure there are loads of freebies out there. Foobar probably does it but i haven't tried. JRiver does but that's not free either and it doesn't do ALAC by default.

 

[Overdose]

Ripping your music collection is tedious and time consuming, so you only want to be doing it once. If storage is no object, rip to a lossless codec and make sure that you use software with error correction. Files can be transcoded to different types later and compressed at will.

Software I have used for ripping: iTunes, EAC, Rhythm Box and Banshee

For tag editing: Puddletag (the best I have come across) and iTunes.

Tips: Clean your CDs before ripping. Manually search for album covers and paste these into the appropriate album folders as you go, the file needs to be named 'folder.jpg' this will be read by the software playing the lossless files. Take time to think about how you want to arrange your music folders on the hard drive, it will make finding things easier. Try to ensure the correct metadata is shown before ripping, this will save time at the end when the inevitable metadata clean up starts.

iTunes is not so bad once you get to know it, it is a fairly easy tool to use, if only for ripping and arranging metadata.

Most of my library was done on Linux based computers and I had no major issues. I have used Windows and Mac Pcs since, also with no particular problems.

 

[professorhat]

One thing I would say is, rip to a lossless format - doesn't matter too much which one in the long term, you just need to decide the one you want for the short term. The reason for this is, once you've ripped into lossless in one format, it's relatively easy to convert to any other format in the future, without having to go through the re-rip process. As Overdose has said, ripping is a tedious (and extremely manual) process for which there is no shortcut. So using up a bit more space to avoid having to do it again, in my opinion, is well worth it.

 

[char_lotte]

Thanks everyone. I'm going to go use EAC and rip to FLAC I think. That means I can use my phone to listen on the hop and perhaps a little Sony walkman when on holidays.

Any pitfalls to look out for do you think ? Apart from being the dullest girl in town ?

Thanks.

 

[Overdose]

No pitfalls, but make sure that you sort out all of the metadata post rip, because if you don't and have only the mildest OCDness, you'll start twitching if your music is not 'organised'.

I am speaking from personal experience.

 

[The_Lhc]

No pitfalls, but make sure that you sort out all of the metadata post rip,

Wouldn't it be better to sort it out pre-rip?

 

[chebby]

Remember to back-up the drive regularly. (Keep the backup somewhere safe 'offsite' like a relative's house.)

Just very recently (last week I think) someone was on here asking how to retrieve all their music files after an accidental deletion.

Keep all the CDs stored away somewhere.

 

[char_lotte]

Thanks all , I'll give it a trial run in the next couple of days.

 

[Alec]

No pitfalls, but make sure that you sort out all of the metadata post rip,

Wouldn't it be better to sort it out pre-rip?

Either way, it's worth sorting as Overdose is right. But then I downloaded some stuff from one of the better known sites (I don't actually know which, but I only use certain sites) that wasn't very well tagged, which made me do rather more than twitch. Still haven't sorted it, mind.

 

[nads]

Thanks everyone. I'm going to go use EAC and rip to FLAC I think. That means I can use my phone to listen on the hop and perhaps a little Sony walkman when on holidays. Any pitfalls to look out for do you think ? Apart from being the dullest girl in town ? Thanks.

dont rip too many in a go as the drive will get hot.

dont use a BD drive to rip a cheap CD or DVD drive will do a better job as they do not buffer (or buffer less). they also rip faster.

the new version of EAC will also do art work and lyrics..... I use it for the art work.

 

[davejberry]

if you don't mind paying...dBpoweramp is great software. good metadata retrieval and easy to manually update or add missing bits

fast (especially on multi core processors}

verifies rip accuracy using accurip service

rip to a lossless format, it comes with batch processing options if you want to convert at a later date.

took me a couple of weeks to copy 600 + discs working in the evenings using a dual core machine with two drives

 

[char_lotte]

Once again thanks for all your replies.

I was planning on just using the cd drive on my laptop (Sony Viao) to rip onto external drive. Also, thanks for the heat advice, I'll just take it easy.

I like to listen to cd's all the way through so will just rip a few whilst listening, so be prepared for some obscure posts in the listening section as I go through them.

I'm planning on still using the original cd's to listen to, just want this hard drive as a back up us some are getting quite old now.

Thanks

Charlotte

 

[Paul.]

I was planning on just using the cd drive on my laptop (Sony Viao) to rip onto external drive.

Are you ripping direct to the external disk without keeping a copy on the laptop? You need to keep your library in duplicate, hard disks are flakey things, especialy external usb hard disks. This is going to take you a long time to complete the ripping, its worth keeping everything in duplicate cos your CD's will last longer than your HD's!

 

[John Duncan]

Tell me about it...

 

[char_lotte]

I was planning on just using the cd drive on my laptop (Sony Viao) to rip onto external drive.

Are you ripping direct to the external disk without keeping a copy on the laptop? You need to keep your library in duplicate, hard disks are flakey things, especialy external usb hard disks. This is going to take you a long time to complete the ripping, its worth keeping everything in duplicate cos your CD's will last longer than your HD's!

Yes, as I was thinking I didn't want it all clogging up my laptop.

I suppose I could buy another hard disk and just copy it over as extra redundancy on my initial redundancy?.

Computer audio indeed!

 

[Paul.]

You can never have enough backups. My laptop hd packed up on my Dell Inspiron, so I plugged my backup disk in to my dads machine and watched as the logic board of my backup fizzled and burned. Hard disks only exist to make you suffer!

 

[tino]

Plan ahead ....

Rip to lossless format e.g. FLAC and convert / downconvert as required. Always keep your master copy in lossless.

EAC is good for ripping ... make sure you set the error correction to high ... and check the results after ripping in case there were any errors

Don't rip too many in one go ... 10 a day for example ... otherwise you will get bored very quickly. No need to listen to them as you rip ... these days you can rip at 20 or 30 times playing speed so the process will pass much more quickly if you don't listen. Also take care not to stress the CD drive with too many consecutive high speed rips.

Double check the tags with your actual CD ... and edit if necessary

Get the album artwork as you go along ... try and get the largest artwork you can find e.g. 1000 x 1000 pixels and scale down for different devices e.g. 240 x 240 or 500 x 500 as necessary. It's up to you if you want to bother with both front and rear album artwork. I keep my artwork separate from the albums but in the same folder structure.

Think about the difference between Album Artist and Artist and how to handle compilations with the "Various Artists" Album Artist label.

Organise your folders into Album Artist / Album

I like to ensure my filenames are output as track number + song title ... e.g. "01 Title.flac" so that the tracks are always ordered independently of any tagging or storage device used.

Be wary of multi-CD albums ... I normally suffix each CD with [Disc X] or where X is the number of the CD. I also make sure the tags store the relevant disc number and total number of discs.

You can invent your own tags if it makes organising your libraries easier ... for instance I have a tag which differentiates between Singles, Albums, Compilations and Classical Works

Backup regularly!

Load up your music library as you go along into music player software to see how it looks and make corrections to tags etc. as necessary. I use Foobar2000 to check and correct tags and it's my principal PC music player software. It also does converting to other formats as necessary.

Best of luck!

 

[char_lotte]

Thank you Tino that was ....... thorough.!

 

[tino]

Thank you Tino that was ....... thorough.!

... very OCD I know ... but having gone through the process I thought I would let you know what's in store for you!

... lots of this ... :type:

... ripping vinyl is far more painful though .... :help: ... hopefully you don't have to go through that process as well!

 

[char_lotte]

Thank you Tino that was ....... thorough.!

... very OCD I know ... but having gone through the process I thought I would let you know what's in store for you!

... lots of this ... :type:
... ripping vinyl is far more painful though .... :help: ... hopefully you don't have to go through that process

Hi Tino, I had to digitize my Dads records s few months ago. Thankfully I don't own any.

 

[Overdose]

No pitfalls, but make sure that you sort out all of the metadata post rip,

Wouldn't it be better to sort it out pre-rip?

No, the reason being that you can bulk edit post rip and edit multiple albums at the same time.