Ripping your CDs aka masochism: how did you do yours?

[MajorFubar]

Now I always said I would never do this. Feel free to point your finger and snigger 'I told you so'.

What kickstarted it was my purchase of an HRT Strearmer II+ in March after receiving a £250 Long Service Award from my employer. Initially, I used the Streamer just to enjoy my Spotify Premium. Then I made the mistake of test-ripping a couple of my favourite CDs to ALAC in iTunes, and I discovered that iTunes + ALAC rips + BitPerfect sounds better than my CD player. Oh dear. What have I done.

I don't know how other people have approached this, but to save both my sanity and hard-drive space on my Mac Mini I decided to only rip the CDs I thought I was ever likely to sit down and listen to 'properly', as opposed to CDs bought primarily by Mrs Fubar as background music to chat to and 'girly party music'. It's amazing how that criteria expurgated my collection: from 500+ CDs, I narrowed down just over 120 to rip, and during this last weekend, while it seemed like the rest of the country got steaming drunk in blind-adulation for the nation's richest octogenarian whom they've never met and probably never will, I set-to and ripped the lot.

Only trouble is, after ripping all 120+ CDs and tracking-down missing art for quite a considerable number of CDs which I wouldn't exactly class as obscure, just about the very last thing I want to do now is sit down and listen to the damn things. In fact at this point I'd happily torch the lot.

Anyhow I celebrated my new digital freedom last night by hooking-up my iPhone to my Mac Mini and leaving iTunes running overnight to transfer my 'top 75' albums to my iPhone as 128K AACs, so that when I can actually face listening to my music again I've got most of what I like in both glorious HiFi quality on my Mac Mini and in perfectly-listenable quality on my iPhone.

 

[Xanderzdad]

Hi MajorFubar

I feel your pain. I initially ripped all 1200 albums as 256 or 128 depending on how I rated them. Then when I got a NAS I started again in ALAC!

The first time I did it the hard way and tried to plough through 20-30 albums a day - it was a real chore.

For the ALAC I started with my favourites and with any I wanted to listen to. I also ripped any new ones as soon as they arrived. Now slowly wading through the rest although not bothered to rerip any I don't like (i.e. the kids etc).

To make it even worse I kept a 2nd copy at 256kpbs VBR for my iPhone but now iTunes will allow that automatically for any I transfer to my iPhone. That's allowed me to delete all my 256 versions and free up more space on the NAS for new music ;-)

Haven't used my CD player for 6 months and really loving my Squeezebox Touch.

 

[MajorFubar]

Hi MajorFubar

I feel your pain. I initially ripped all 1200 albums as 256 or 128 depending on how I rated them. Then when I got a NAS I started again in ALAC!

That's the issue. I know full well if I hadn't ripped them losslessly at this point, I'd never be fully happy that I've not ripped them at the best possible quality, irrespective of whether I can hear the difference or not, such is my OCD!

I kept a 2nd copy at 256kpbs VBR for my iPhone but now iTunes will allow that automatically for any I transfer to my iPhone. That's allowed me to delete all my 256 versions and free up more space on the NAS for new music ;-)

Yeah it's a brilliant feature tbh especially if like me you've only got a small iPhone (16GB) and the ALACs eat into it mercilessly. I wasn't aware it was a particularly new feature because I'm really new to this (can you tell); I wouldn't like to have to keep duplicates in lossy-format just for my phone. Fair dos, waiting for it to convert albums to a lossy-format on the fly as you need them is a bit time-consuming, but you can just leave it to get on with it overnight, like I did, and another great thing is you've not got wasted space on your hard-drive holding two versions of the same album. I love it.

 

[Lee H]

I found it so tedious that if (God forbid) I had to do them all again for some reason, they'd probably be sent off to someone to do it for me.

 

[Alec]

DbPoweramp rips to 2 formats at a time if you want. So you can rip losslessly and to MP3 in one go. I did that. Discovered since that a bit more time scanning the tag and art info wouldn't have gone amiss, but that applies to some download services too. Hello itunes.

 

[CnoEvil]

The (albeit expensive) RipNas makes life quick, easy and painless.

 

[Alec]

I do understand why it gets to people. I did consider getting someone else to do it, and I wouldn't rule it out if it ever needs to be done again. And I have a relatively small collection.

 

[michael hoy]

DbPoweramp rips to 2 formats at a time if you want. So you can rip losslessly and to MP3 in one go. I did that. Discovered since that a bit more time scanning the tag and art info wouldn't have gone amiss, but that applies to some download services too. Hello itunes.

+1 for Dbpoweramp, I rip my CD to Flac, Apple lossless and Mp3 all at the same time. I mainly use Flac for my listening and the Mp3 is for my wife's iPod Touch.

 

[amcluesent]

Why didn't you give Mrs Fubar a break from the ironing, and get her to rip all the CDs? :roll:

 

[MajorFubar]

Why didn't you give Mrs Fubar a break from the ironing, and get her to rip all the CDs? :roll:

I think she'd fight me for the ironing-board if I told her the alternative was a couple of hours ripping CDs.

 

[nads]

EAC. does art work. Does lyrics. To FLAC.

Then open iTunes and rip to 256AAC

Dors not take long as long as th ODD ones not buffer. BD drives are poor.

 

[tino]

No pain ... no gain!

At least now you only have to rip CDs as and when you acquire a new one (about 5 mins) ... unless you want to rip the other 380 in your collection :O

And think yourself lucky you don't have to rip vinyl where you can only record at x1 speed and have to declick and dehiss using software afterwards!

 

[Alec]

DbPoweramp rips to 2 formats at a time if you want. So you can rip losslessly and to MP3 in one go. I did that. Discovered since that a bit more time scanning the tag and art info wouldn't have gone amiss, but that applies to some download services too. Hello itunes.

+1 for Dbpoweramp, I rip my CD to Flac, Apple lossless and Mp3 all at the same time. I mainly use Flac for my listening and the Mp3 is for my wife's iPod Touch.

So it can do THREE formats at a time?

 

[Gusboll]

dBpoweramp became my friend/enemy for almost 3 months before everything I had was ripped to FLAC and my brain (and that of my OH) was shredded. I've now backed up in two different places as I never want to go through that again. It was worth it though; the Squeezebox Touch is a mighty piece of hi-fi equipment.

 

[Chokobolt]

I am in the middle of the ripping-process. I use dBpoweramp CD Ripper ripping to FLAC. It really is a big project, and I need to rip about 70 CD's more before I'm done (that's my parents CD's).

I am really looking forward to sitting with my iPod Touch running the Sonos App, browsing through all (150) the albums

 

[MajorFubar]

And think yourself lucky you don't have to rip vinyl where you can only record at x1 speed and have to declick and dehiss using software afterwards!

Done my share of that, ta There's an awful lot of stuff out there which never made it to digital, neither CDs nor downloads, and the only way to get it onto CD or your computer is to record your LPs. I've even come across one or two commercial CDs over the years which have very clearly been produced from a vinyl master. Presumably in these cases even the mastertape cannot be sourced/has been lost/damaged/erased.

 

[sc1]

I ripped about 2.5k odd cds.

It took a spare PC with 2 dvd/cd drives plonked next to me in the lounge and a significant amount of time. Used dbpoweramp to rip to flac, then used the converter to convert to alac, mp3 etc.

Benefit of using dbpoweramp for me is the artwork gets tagged correctly and almost all cds were found. For the very few that weren't I ended up using mediamonkey to rip to flac, where you can tag from the internet, for example if it is for sale on amazon. I found EAC didn't identify as many cds correctly and after a while I couldn't face any more manual inputting. If you rip in itunes the artwork doesnt seem to be permanently there, i.e if you have to reload libarary.

Now I just rip the cds as I buy them. Have the files on both flac and alac on more than one drive as I never, ever want to have to do it again. Not even sure I would have the heart to do it agian even if the worst did happen, oh and my wife would kill me.

Can't even begin to comtemplate doing the vinyl.

 

[ESP2009]

For my sins, with only the merest and vaguest outlines of any plan, with 1Tb of HDD on my laptop, I decided to rip our combined CD collection to lossless. Flac was my format of choice, and Winamp the software. Off and on, for the better part of two months I laboriously loaded CD after CD into the drive of the laptop. There were set-backs and false starts. Certainly, there has been frustration and irritation. Album artwork has been a pain, particularly for older discs. Likewise the info that gets loaded might be inconsistent across a multi-CD package or collection. It might be completely wrong!

I now have 977 albums (according to Winamp) on my laptop, on an external 500Gb drive, and the NAS I have finally ended up purchasing. I know that the OH has still more at work that I haven't got my paws on. I opted to rip 99% of what we own, irrespective of whether it passes my taste filter or not or even if I will ever listen to it. At least we have everything stored and backed up. Looking at what Winamp shows in its audio library there is an awful lot of tidying to do if I want to fully index, categorise and sanity check everything. I have to say that the classical CDs are the worst for cataloging.

What I will probably do now is trim down the files on my laptop to MY listening. Sort the wheat from the chaff as it were.

Would I go through the pain all over? Probably - in the long run it is probably worth the effort. However, a concentrated effort is pretty soul destroying if you have a life.

 

[michael hoy]

DbPoweramp rips to 2 formats at a time if you want. So you can rip losslessly and to MP3 in one go. I did that. Discovered since that a bit more time scanning the tag and art info wouldn't have gone amiss, but that applies to some download services too. Hello itunes.

+1 for Dbpoweramp, I rip my CD to Flac, Apple lossless and Mp3 all at the same time. I mainly use Flac for my listening and the Mp3 is for my wife's iPod Touch.

So it can do THREE formats at a time?

And more:

Just use Add Encoder.

 

[philipjohnwright]

There is a detailed guide to using DbPoweramp on the Computer Audiophile website; it's part of a wider article on ripping strategy. Very good, I followed it pretty much to the letter to do my 2000+ CD's. DbPoweramp is Windows only by the way. I now rip on windows and play on Mac Mini.

Andrew / moderators - I hope referencing another website isn't a problem. Hopefully not as they don't sell magazines, but no offence if you want to delete this post

 

[MajorFubar]

Well that's another first for me.

I've just received a CD I bought online the other day which will probably never see the drawer of my CD player: Caro Emerald, Deleted Scenes From The Cutting Room Floor. Have to say, I'm one of what must be a dying minority of people who enjoys upwrapping physical media like CDs and LPs and thumbing-through the artwork and booklets.

 

[Overdose]

Painful as ripping is, I find it pales into insignificance when compared to sorting out all the metadata. :O

 

[Alec]

Painful as ripping is, I find it pales into insignificance when compared to sorting out all the metadata. :O

When all goes well, that is a part of ripping.

 

[DIB]

I'm another dBPowerAmp person, all 800+ CD's duly ripped into FLAC over the years. Tried EAC but it's just far too slow, life's too short for all that nonsense. Likewise I had a longterm plan to rip all my vinyl using Audacity, but again that got so long and tedious I gave it up as a bad job very quickly.

.

 

[tino]

Maybe we are all getting too soft in this day and age ... I mean it's not that hard to rip a CD to FLAC in about 3 minutes and having the metadata and artwork automatically downloaded for you.

In the time it takes to read a couple of the posts on this thread you could have ripped a couple of CDs already. Meta data sorting and cleanup can be done at any time afterwards.

I do sympathise with those having uber large music collections, but really, there's no need to lock yourself in a dark room for a couple of weeks and rip everything in one go.

PS ... back to the original question .... about 250 CDs ripped with EAC, artwork sourced on t'internet and resized/tidied up using a PC graphics program, then meta data cleaned up in Foobar 2000. Also format shifted < 100 vinyl albums and only 60% through the post editing process :wall: