Rip CD collection to HDD (best way of)

[admin_exported]

I am going to rip my full CD collection to HDD and only want to do this once.

What is the best ripping software to use? Prefer lossless.

I will be using iTunes and an iPod for portable music and will be looking to play HDD music though HiFi in the future.

Will ripping with iTunes give me future proof of lossless and being able to use the files with other players? Or will it limit me to using iTunes?

Many thanks in advance

JB68

 

[nads]

well iTunes will limit you to playing it on both the Hifi and the iPod.

Apple lossless is the the only (?) option if you want lossless and i pod use.

 

[Anonymous]

Only other option would be to rip to .AIFF format which is uncompressed/lossless with iPod compatibility.

The downside is the fact it's uncompressed so it does take up more room and I couldn't tell the difference with my AKG K702 cans.

Unless you've got a 'classic' iPod with a big hard drive even AAC Lossless will limit what you can sync over though as the average file is 30Mb.

 

[Anonymous]

I ripped mine into FLAC using dbpoweramp (lossless and most compatible with Squeezebox).

Dbpoweramp also has a "convert" feature, so Flac can be converted into ipod friendly format - you still keep a copy of the Flac format as well.

But if you're a fan of itunes & ipod then Apple Lossless seems to be the best route for you.

 

[Anonymous]

Martyp:

Only other option would be to rip to .AIFF format which is uncompressed/lossless with iPod compatibility.

The downside is the fact it's uncompressed so it does take up more room and I couldn't tell the difference with my AKG K702 cans.

Unless you've got a 'classic' iPod with a big hard drive even AAC Lossless will limit what you can sync over though as the average file is 30Mb.

Understood,

however, if the average file is 30Mb and there are 10 tracks (files) on a CD, that would equal 300Mb for an ave CD
If 1Gb = 1024Mb
Then 1024 x 120 = 122880Mb
122880 / 300 = 409.6

I can fit 400 Cd's of average size on my iPod

Now, I have had a bottle of vino, left my glasses at the office and had a hard week in work..... so excuse the math if incorrect ;-)

 

[Anonymous]

heystak:I ripped mine into FLAC using dbpoweramp (lossless and most compatible with Squeezebox). Dbpoweramp also has a "convert" feature, so Flac can be converted into ipod friendly format - you still keep a copy of the Flac format as well. But if you're a fan of itunes & ipod then Apple Lossless seems to be the best route for you.

Not a fan of iTunes, only been using it since i got the iPod 120Gb (free gift) 2 weeks ago.

I would be very interested in using Flac and dbpoweramp, how do you find it?

JB68

 

[Anonymous]

Yep, thats about right. The file size depends on the complexity and length of the track (30Mb is average, the largest I have so far is 64Mb - Meat Loaf, Bat out of Hell @ 9:50 / 908 kbps)

As you have a classic iPod with a 120Gb HDD you'll have no problem with AAC Lossless files. What I meant was the 'Touch / Nano' generation iPods have smaller hard disks in them. I've only re-ripped some of my CDs over to lossless and I'm just over the 30Gb mark with about 1200 songs now.

So with a 32Gb iPod touch I'd be struggling even now and with my 16Gb iPhone 3G I need to make playlists up.

However, you can re-encode lossless files to lossy ones which I'll end up doing when ripping is completed.

 

[SteveR750]

Can you not rip with EAC (Exact Audio Copy) which will copy as the original .wav file and then use itunes to import/convert into apple lossless? I'm not sure hown good itunes is at ripping loslessly.

 

[John Duncan]

It's very good at ripping losslessly. Turn error correction on and I'll bet your rips would be indistinguishable from the faff that would be EAC/dbPoweramp/FLAC. And I don't get the emnity towards iTunes - it's just a media player! Admittedly, it works a bit better on the Mac than on Windows, but in the end the convenience would win it for me.

As for using apple lossless, don't think there are any other portable players out there that'll support it, but plenty of streaming clients do (Squeezebox etc), and if you really do get stuck in the future, use a conversion utility to unzip them back to WAV and into whatever lossless format you want at that time.

 

[Anonymous]

OK John, you have just about sold me on itunes.

Still another Q though, when ripping CD's using itunes, can i rip them to an external HDD?
Also, once ripped to external HDD would i then need to transfer to my itunes library?

 

[John Duncan]

Yes, you can set your iTunes Library location to an external hard drive in Edit/Preferences/Advanced/iTunes Music Folder Location (that's the Windows menu).

If you already have music ripped in iTunes, change the location of your iTunes library as above, and then do File/Library/Consolidate Library - this'll move all your existing stuff into the new location.

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you John, I am currently plugging the HDD in and looking for the first batch of CD's.....here goes!

 

[John Duncan]

Cool. Don't forget to set import settings in Preferences to Apple Lossless and Use Error Correction...

 

[Anonymous]

Phew.....its slow!

Think I must have a fussy CD drive as its rejected a few CD's that usually play ok

 

[The_Lhc]

jakeblues68: Phew.....its slow!

That'll be the error correction. I don't actually use it myself, speeds things up a lot, I might try one just to see what difference it makes in sound quality.

 

[John Duncan]

Oh yeah, error correction in windows takes ages (unlike Mac)...