Re-ripping ... faster please!

[matt49]

When I started ripping CDs about 10 years ago, I was ripping for use with an iPod, and then a Sonos set-up that played in the kitchen through serviceable speakers. Back then I saw no reason not to rip in AAC. It was only a couple of years later that I started streaming music on my "proper" hi-fi and realized that lossless formats did sound better. This has become more of an issue as I've upgraded my hi-fi: not that the AAC rips sound any worse than they used to, just that the lossless rips now sound so much better.

I'm now in the process of re-ripping those early rips, about 400 CDs. Working through the classical stuff in alphabetical order, I've just reached Busoni. (OK, that's much better progress that it might seem: B's a big letter after all.)

But it's a slow process, for two reasons. I use dbpoweramp, but it runs quite sluggishly, about 5x normal play speed. And I'm also rather fastidious about metadata, especially on classical music. The metadata supplied on classical CDs is thoroughly unsystematic, at least for my purposes, as I like to browse my music by artist name, and I want the composer's name to appear in the artist field. So lots of fiddly re-tagging.

So my question is: is there anything I can do (aside from buying a faster PC) to speed up ripping and tagging, assuming (a) I want the best quality rips and (b) I won't change the way I organize my metadata?

:cheers:

Matt

 

[hone_u2]

Hi Matt,

Wonder if you've tried this...

http://tagscanner.en.softonic.com

Cheers

 

[hone_u2]

Hi Matt,

Wonder if you've tried this...

http://tagscanner.en.softonic.com

Cheers

 

[MajorFubar]

I feel your pain but I don't have an answer.

I ripped over 600 CDs, only about 20 were classical, so just over 3%, but getting the tags right on that 3% easily took 10% of the time :help:

I remember posting a whine-athon on here about it. It didn't speed-up the process but it made me feel better.

Be strong, brother.

 

[matt49]

Hi Matt,

Wonder if you've tried this...

http://tagscanner.en.softonic.com

Cheers

Thanks for that. I'll have a dig around and see what it brings to the party.

:cheers:

I feel your pain but I don't have an answer.

I ripped over 600 CDs, only about 20 were classical, so just over 3%, but getting the tags right on that 3% easily took 10% of the time :help:

I remember posting a whine-athon on here about it. It didn't speed-up the process but it made me feel better.

Be strong, brother.

Thanks, Major!

I suspect hot coffee and chocolate biscuits may be the only way to make this bearable.

I've made quite a bit of progress in the last 24 hours and am now up to Chopin.



Matt

 

[steve_1979]

I have no advice for speeding up the ripping process (especially when it comes to tagging classical music) but whenever I've had a lot of ripping to do I do it while watching TV. At least that way you do don't get bored.

 

[SiUK]

My classical CDs always get ripped last because adding the meta data is simply a right PITA! Often you'll come up empty searching freedb etc.so it means manually entering everything and it is laborius. To speed up the ripping process (a little) I have used two identical drives to rip music for a long time - I open two instances of Exact Audio Copy and rip two discs at the same time...or almost. Still takes a time but a lot quicker than one at a time.

 

[DocG]

Hi Matt,

I don't have any personal experience with systematic ripping of a complete library, but these are my two pence:

1/ You might speed things up using a stand-alone CD-drive: the drive in your computer is probably more prone to reading errors, thus longer ripping time.

2/ The man you need to hear is Mr. Everard. I bookmarked this tip he gave on the subject a couple of months ago. As Andrew is mainly into classical too, it could be of help.

Keep up the good work! :cheers:

 

[matt49]

To speed up the ripping process (a little) I have used two identical drives to rip music for a long time - I open two instances of Exact Audio Copy and rip two discs at the same time...or almost. Still takes a time but a lot quicker than one at a time.

Twice as quick. Genius!

:cheers:

Matt

 

[matt49]

Hi Matt,

I don't have any personal experience with systematic ripping of a complete library, but these are my two pence:

1/ You might speed things up using a stand-alone CD-drive: the drive in your computer is probably more prone to reading errors, thus longer ripping time.

2/ The man you need to hear is Mr. Everard. I bookmarked this tip he gave on the subject a couple of months ago. As Andrew is mainly into classical too, it could be of help.

Keep up the good work! :cheers:

Cheers, Doc.

Good thought about the stand-alone drive. I have a decent one sitting in a drawer.

The software AE likes scares me slightly: it seems you have to let it automatically edit your metadata in the background. Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Matt

 

[SiUK]

Twice as quick. Genius!

Argh argh!

Actually it isn't twice as quick, not that simple. But it is quicker though...depends on PC resources (not just ripping, but compressing to flac remember) and whether EAC decides to suddenly slow down one of of the drives to more accurately rip a cd etc. I've had a few 'zip through' and it could then almost be considered twice as quick, but you still have to account for detecting gaps, creating cue sheet, exporting track list before ripping and then the flac compression post rip.

 

[spockfish]

yep, the hell for every streamer

i re-ripped my 800+ CD collection a few years ago to FLAC, when I was in between jobs and had nothing to do for a few weeks. And like you, I'm very precise with tagging and album art. I use EAC, and for organizing stuff (getting a proper cue file which is also something I'm extremely precise about) I've created my own workflow. So here we go:

- rip with EAC

- retrieve album art with Album Art Downloader

- check files, adjust the .cue file and copy them to my NAS with some basic shell scripting on Linux

- if necessary adjust meta data with Amarok (a good media player on Linux, but also very capable in (bulk) editing of tags

Painful and slow. However, right now I'm enjoying my work every bit!

 

[matt49]

Twice as quick. Genius!

Argh argh!

Actually it isn't twice as quick, not that simple. But it is quicker though...depends on PC resources (not just ripping, but compressing to flac remember) and whether EAC decides to suddenly slow down one of of the drives to more accurately rip a cd etc. I've had a few 'zip through' and it could then almost be considered twice as quick, but you still have to account for detecting gaps, creating cue sheet, exporting track list before ripping and then the flac compression post rip.

Ah, yes, of course. Maybe 1.5 times then ...

 

[matt49]

yep, the hell for every streamer

i re-ripped my 800+ CD collection a few years ago to FLAC, when I was in between jobs and had nothing to do for a few weeks. And like you, I'm very precise with tagging and album art. I use EAC, and for organizing stuff (getting a proper cue file which is also something I'm extremely precise about) I've created my own workflow. So here we go:

- rip with EAC

- retrieve album art with Album Art Downloader

- check files, adjust the .cue file and copy them to my NAS with some basic shell scripting on Linux

- if necessary adjust meta data with Amarok (a good media player on Linux, but also very capable in (bulk) editing of tags

Painful and slow. However, right now I'm enjoying my work every bit!

Yes, at least it's worth the pain in the end, but ...