Importing my cds to imac

[theflyingwasp]

I have about 500 cds if I import them all to iTunes my brother in law says I do not own them anymore so do not sell or throw away the disc? Is there another way to store all my music in my mac?

I have all the rest of the apple gear except the iPhone 5s,the home sharing function will be great as all the music will be on all my devices ,will it be so straight forward if I'm not saving all the cds to iTunes..

 

[MajorFubar]

Think it's a case here of 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing'.

If you rip them to your computer, keep the original CDs, and solely stream the rips purely for your own use, then while the law doesn't expressly permit it, no one is really going to bother. If you sell or give-way the original CDs but keep the rips, or distribute/stream your rips to other parties, then that's a totally different matter.

 

[theflyingwasp]

Thanks for the info majorfubar.

it will be a pain to keep the discs but I will do so just incase.

do I have no choice but to import to iTunes ? It's not that big of a deal but I've heard horror stories of people losing all their music when iTunes updates it's software.i had planned to spend quite a bit of time to import all my CDs and to be honest it's a tad more than 500 albums.i don't want to waste hours all my life only to re-import them when it crashes .

the plan was to import them all then back it up then back it up again .i just want rid of the CDs .everything will be streaming through my pads and Apple TV hopefully.

im more into home cinema than hifi so even if the quality isn't perfect I'm not that fussed .

 

[MajorFubar]

Most of those who claim they lost all their music by updating iTunes probably just don't know how to point it in the direction of their library old library (though you don't normally have to). That said, you should always backup your rips. I've ripped over 600 CDs and I keep a backup on a spare USB HDD. The thought of having to do it again fills me with horror.

 

[John Duncan]

The Major talks much sense, as always. It's actually very difficult to lose your files once you've ripped them (especially if you follow best practice and back up your mac regularly), and iTunes is as good as anything, IME, if you turn 'error correction' on in iTunes settings.

If you have plenty of hard disk space, rip to Apple lossless, if not, rip to 320k AAC. To me they are indistinguishable but it's easier to rip lower res copies if you need them (for iPhone say) than to rip your CDs again if you suddenly have a hankering for CD-resolution files.

 

[Binman]

I did this task a few years ago. All my CDs are now boxed up in the loft.

I used a program called dbpoweramp to rip. It allows you to:

1. Rip two different formats at the same time to two different locations. I use this to rip to FLAC to a external drive, and mp3 to internal drive for use with iTunes.

2. Check for accurate rips

3. Easily change formats once ripped.

Its costs about £28 but I think they do a free trial.

 

[Dave_]

iTunes is as good as anything, IME, if you turn 'error correction' on in iTunes settings.

I disagree.

Regardless of what you use to manage music I wouldn't use iTunes to rip. (Having had a handful CDs that iTunes either couldn't or badly ripped that dbpoweramp had no trouble wth)

So given how tedious and laborious it is to rip a large collection you only want to have to do it once, and that to me means verification that the rip is accurate/error free.

A tick in a check box simply don't cut it...

 

[theflyingwasp]

Thanks for all the info guys

now eh.... How much gig will I need for 7000 albums I have 34 folders of 208 albums been collecting CDs since 1995 ,pre- owned cost pennies nowadays,hence the reason my collection has grew to such a size but I'm sick to death of looking at them.

thats why I'm worrying about backing things up and reading about people losing their music library's etc I don't mind the time it will take to import them there is no rush but if I lost it with some sort of apple iTunes software update I would not be a happy bunny.

i have the imac i7 with 1 terabyte fusion drive

1- if I import them all at lossless how much gig will that use up?

2- with a collection of this size if I backed them up on one external hard drive then another for safety can I just put them away for good?

3- I have the apple USB SuperDrive is this up to the job or should I be looking at other drives for importing?

 

[chebby]

now eh.... How much gig will I need for 7000 albums I have 34 folders of 208 albums been collecting CDs since 1995

Be very selective.

7000 CDs would take almost 10 years to listen to at the rate of two per day, 350 days per year (without ever listening to the same one twice within that time).

Do you really think you need to rip all of them?

(What happened the 500 CDs in your first post?)

 

[philipjohnwright]

A CD ripped in Apple lossless will be 300-350Mb - I usually work on a '3 per 1gb' rule of thumb. Flac is about the same. The equivalent ripped in 256k MP3 is 100mb. So 7000 CDs will take up over 2Tb if ripped losslessly.

if you rip losslessly you can transfer to your phone / ipad at a lower bitrate to fit more on - itunes will convert on the fly. I have to say I haven't tried this myself, there are differing reports as to whether it works quickly enough. I personally have separate 256k version of my 3000 CDs on a laptop - the main lossless library being on a NAS (backed up twice, one copy held off site).

For the record I respectfully disagree with JD - for me the difference between 320k lossy files and those ripped lossless is clear to hear (that's why I use Qobuz rather than Spotify now). 320kbs files do sound good though and are fine for most people (ie those not on this forum!).

 

[MajorFubar]

7,000 CDs would also take you the best part of two years to rip if you ripped an average of ten CDs per day, which is probably the highest average you will manage without going insane. (Well it was for me anyway).

 

[BowserWilkens]

hi there, I recently ripped my 400cd collection to the hard drive of my proud little mac mini. In Apple losseless, it required 140GB in total - so for the 7000cd collection you have, you'd need around 2.5 terabytes by my calculation.

I mentioned this in another thread, but here I go again - can you connect multiple drives to a Mac and rip 3 or 4 CD`s simultaneously?

It would have drastically reduced ripping time for me.... but for you I could imagine it would make even more sense.

 

[theflyingwasp]

Thanks for the info.7000 is a ridiculous amount of music but once it's stored somewhere and I don't have to look at them anymore it will be worth it!

 

[theflyingwasp]

I'm more of videophile then audiophile .i will be playing the music through the imac itself with the wireless ruark speakers or on the ruark r4i .im never going to own a high end hifi system .

wether I import at mp3 to save space or apple lossless would someone like me with the equipment I own really notice the diffrence?

should I just get a bog standard external drive or go for the apple time capsule I think there is a 3tb version of that?

 

[theflyingwasp]

As for connecting multiple drives for importing I don't know.even If I could at £60'a drive it ain't cheap.............would save a heck of a lot of time tho .....hmm,

 

[MajorFubar]

Certainly iTunes won't rip multiple CDs at once.

And no you don't need to use the dedicated Apple Airport Time Capsule, unless you reckon you'll make use of all it's features. I use a 3TB LaCie NAS which stores one back-up of all my music and (some) films, plus it acts as a Time Machine for three Macs. It cost me less than £120 from Pixmania. Just make sure that you keep AT LEAST one backup. With the volume of material you're talking about ripping, I'd be suicidal if I lost it. In fact I'd end up at the funny-farm if I lost just the 640 CDs I've ripped, and you're talking about ripping 11x more.

See you in 2016 when you've done it all!

 

[iMark]

I'm also in the proces of ripping all our CDs that are in the attic. The other day the Mrs. was complaining that I only had imported my discs and not hers. Fair point, I suppose.

I use iTunes to rip the CDs and with error correction on it gives extremely good rips. Everything is saved as Apple Lossless files on external hard drive. The only problem now is that my hard drive is nearly full. So I think I will get a 2TB portable drive and back up everything on 2x1TB drives. It's not hard to move the iTunes library to an external hard drive.

Sound quality is interesting. All the rips that I play through the Airport Express and the Cambridge Audio DACMagic sound great, even the popular music ones. I suppose that has to do that these are all older discs that were mastered before the Loudness Wars.

I think iTunes is a much better ripper than the audiophiles think, especially if you rip to Apple Lossless. And now iTunes can convert on-the-fly to lower bitrates, you only have to rip once. it makes the old iPod Nano (2nd Gen, 2GB) even more useful, especially in the car.

The only thing I'm not impressed with is the ripping speed of the external DVD-writer I bought to go with the driveless MacMini. It's a Samsung and with error correction on it doesn't rip any faster than 10x. Maybe there are a lot of errors to be corrected. The results sound great though, and that is what matters.