I only want to do this once

[admin_exported]

I am going to archive my CD collection for disaster recovery purposes (e.g. the house burning down, the other half chucking them away in a fit of rage...). At some point down the line, I imagine I will also want to use the resulting files for playback purposes, e.g. PC or NAS to DAC, although for the foreseeable future I will continue to use the CDs.

I would like the resulting rips to have all the necessary tagging for artist, album, track number, track title etc. Album art would be nice, but not essential. Some questions, interelated, I know:

1) What is my best option for format? Storage space is not really an issue, so I could rip to WAV or one of the lossless formats. I want these rips to be future proof - will Apple Lossless still be supported 20 years from now for example?

2) If lossless is the best option, should I go FLAC or Apple?

3) What is the best option for ripping? I can go iTunes or EAC with Accurip.

4) Does hardware quality make any difference for ripping? I will be using the CD/DVD drive in my ageing laptop, unless there is a clear benefit to buying a better quality external drive.

 

[Superaintit]

IME there is no discernable difference between a pioneer plexwriter in a windows machine and a slot-in drive in the mac mini. I own both windows and mac. I think the choice for lossless format will depend on your current system and future plans. If you plan to go mac or like itunes, choose apple lossless. Otherwise go for flac, eac, foobar, windows etc

1)IME Mac and itunes is a very user friendly solution, so I chose apple lossless. WAV is not an option for me as it can't be tagged.

3)Rip one cd with Itunes with error correction on. Then rip the same cd with EAC. Compare and decide. If you want my opinion I would go for Itunes.

 

[John Duncan]

Yup, more or less what I was saying earlier - iTunes/Apple Lossless; Anything Else/FLAC. You can always change your mind - you'll always be able to convert to WAV or another format in the future.

 

[VoodooDoctor]

Found a program called Songbird that plays FLAC on the Mac. I was trying to stream some master quality FLAC files (from the B&W Music club) and it seemed to work OK. Haven't really delved into the settings to see what I can change yet.

 

[Anonymous]

>> 4) Does hardware quality make any difference for ripping? I will be using the CD

Can be a huge difference, AccurateRip maintains a table of drive accuracies from the results submitted to accuraterip:

See: http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?t=18088

The best drive has a roughly 1 in 200 chance of having an error (when averaged out over 100'000's of discs), the worst drive about a 1 in 7 chance...

>3) What is the best option for ripping? I can go iTunes or EAC with Accurip.

On normal discs the results would be the same, but note even the best drive has an error from 1 in 200 discs, iTunes would not tell you there was an error, EAC with AccurateRip would. The difference is night and day.

 

[Gerrardasnails]

tractorboy:I am going to archive my CD collection for disaster recovery purposes (e.g. the house burning down, the other half chucking them away in a fit of rage...). At some point down the line, I imagine I will also want to use the resulting files for playback purposes, e.g. PC or NAS to DAC, although for the foreseeable future I will continue to use the CDs.

I would like the resulting rips to have all the necessary tagging for artist, album, track number, track title etc. Album art would be nice, but not essential. Some questions, interelated, I know:

1) What is my best option for format? Storage space is not really an issue, so I could rip to WAV or one of the lossless formats. I want these rips to be future proof - will Apple Lossless still be supported 20 years from now for example?

2) If lossless is the best option, should I go FLAC or Apple?

3) What is the best option for ripping? I can go iTunes or EAC with Accurip.

4) Does hardware quality make any difference for ripping? I will be using the CD/DVD drive in my ageing laptop, unless there is a clear benefit to buying a better quality external drive.

I'm going to go against the grain here. I think the easiest way is using Windows Media Player. Ripping to WMA Lossless is easy and the artwork and details are all automatically archived for you. I'm aware that with Itunes you have to give them your card details (you don't have to buy anything) before you get artwork. I literally put my cd in and it rips automatically and is filed nicely away - about 2-3 mins per album.

 

[VoodooDoctor]

I initially started ripping my CD's with WMA Lossless but noticed that it was constantly chucking up errors with Accuraterip. Apparently, the encoder loses a few packets from the end of the file, which means that it can't be checked properly.

It bugged me enough to start again...

 

[Gerrardasnails]

VoodooDoctor:I initially started ripping my CD's with WMA Lossless but noticed that it was constantly chucking up errors with Accuraterip. Apparently, the encoder loses a few packets from the end of the file, which means that it can't be checked properly.

It bugged me enough to start again...

I've not had any problems so far - 400 odd albums - but I would have stopped and tried an alternative in your situation too.