Ripping My CD Library To Lossless Files - What A Process!!

[Dr. Music]

I've been spending lots...and lots..... and LOTS of time transferring my CDs over to digital lossless files. Album after album after album, digging out stuff I haven't heard in years, hell, a decade and more. Rather than picking songs here and there I'm ripping whole albums so they're preserved for as long as my old ass will be alive. Been trying to work on this ridiculously immense process a little every day for the last three months - I always have a stack of CDs sitting on my desk and while I'm sitting here I just throw in one after the other. I installed a new CD/DVD drive for my computer at about the same time I started this, and it won't surprise me if I wind up having to buy another one whenever I get finished! Since I want everything possible to be of good quality that also means ripping albums I ripped 10 years ago as crummy sounding mp3s, back when there was no such thing as Terrabyte drives for less than $100.

6700 songs so far, with a few hundred more sitting on my desk today. I've got thousands more to go. While I'm looking for one album I'll think of ten other CDs I know I own, some of 'em I find easily, some of 'em NOT so easily - took me two months to finally spot a Wet Willie "West Coast Live" CD on the shelves which I knew I owned thats out of print. Then there are things I THINK I have but I'm not sure - how can I possibly have Trio II and not have Trio??! Then there's the fact that my son has commandeered lots of my hard rock from the 70's, so ripping some of those CDs after they took many beating has been a process. I've got a feeling this will take a few years!

Anybody else undertaken this project?

 

[Fred Sanford]

I've been spending lots...and lots..... and LOTS of time transferring my CDs over to digital lossless files. Album after album after album, digging out stuff I haven't heard in years, hell, a decade and more. Rather than picking songs here and there I'm ripping whole albums so they're preserved for as long as my old ass will be alive. Been trying to work on this ridiculously immense process a little every day for the last three months - I always have a stack of CDs sitting on my desk and while I'm sitting here I just throw in one after the other. I installed a new CD/DVD drive for my computer at about the same time I started this, and it won't surprise me if I wind up having to buy another one whenever I get finished! Since I want everything possible to be of good quality that also means ripping albums I ripped 10 years ago as crummy sounding mp3s, back when there was no such thing as Terrabyte drives for less than $100.

6700 songs so far, with a few hundred more sitting on my desk today. I've got thousands more to go. While I'm looking for one album I'll think of ten other CDs I know I own, some of 'em I find easily, some of 'em NOT so easily - took me two months to finally spot a Wet Willie "West Coast Live" CD on the shelves which I knew I owned thats out of print. Then there are things I THINK I have but I'm not sure - how can I possibly have Trio II and not have Trio??! Then there's the fact that my son has commandeered lots of my hard rock from the 70's, so ripping some of those CDs after they took many beating has been a process. I've got a feeling this will take a few years!

Anybody else undertaken this project?

I'm about 9 years in, not nearly finished. Somewhere over 50,000 songs at this point.

je

 

[JonL]

Fortunately (?) I never bought that many CDs. I have perhaps 100. I have about 2000 songs in iTunes, some ripped from my CDs (haven't done nearly all of them), some online purchases.

 

[VinylHanger]

Try doing this with vinyl. I have gotten to where I am set up to record anything I spin on the TT. This way it happens as I surf and do photo editing, or whatever. Still it takes real time and takes a while. Then eventually I need to go in and edit tracks and declick a few and such.

Lots of time, but worth it when I can stick things on my Mp3 player, or spin in the blu-ray in the front room.

 

[hwirt]

Converted my entire CD collection to FLAC using EAC (exact audio copy), took a couple months. Not going to bother with the vinyl, too much work.

Total Tracks: 31,275

Total Albums: 2,412

Total Artists: 2,031

Total Genres: 147

Total Playing Time: 2457:09:40

 

[Bob Clobber]

6700 songs so far, with a few hundred more sitting on my desk today. I've got thousands more to go.

I got through ripping two double LP's and a bottle and a half of wine last night. I'd drink the Napa Valley dry trying to digitize my whole collection.

 

[drknstrmyknight]

Imagine RE ripping
I stared too early, ripping to MP3 and upping to bit rate over time.
SO, I have been RE ripping everying to flac

As of this morning there are 1362 albums with 12670 songs by 1919 artists serve up by slimserver, and 21,354 to go!

I've digitized a number of LP's that haven't been released on CD, that's a real labor of love ( i.e. PITA)

 

[thisOne]

Wow! I can't believe anyone would actually do all this work..., what are you going to do with the CDs when you're finished? what about a back-up (what if the drive crashes?)

I have about 60 gig of hi res mp3s I ripped over time and I find myself listening to the same two dozen albums since I find the whole play list management so tedious, and just reading this thread made me tired.

I mean..., God bless you and good luck! but what an effort

 

[Dr. Music]

Imagine RE ripping
I stared too early, ripping to MP3 and upping to bit rate over time.
SO, I have been RE ripping everything to flac

As of this morning there are 1362 albums with 12670 songs by 1919 artists serve up by slimserver, and 21,354 to go!

I've digitized a number of LP's that haven't been released on CD, that's a real labor of love ( i.e. PITA)

I don't even want to guess just how many CDs I've picked up since the format came along. Thousands, for certain, and since my tastes run the gamut I'm running across all manner of great music that, while I (usually) didn't forget I owned, forgot how much I liked. And nope, I don't have to imagine RE ripping as I'm doing that as well - like you I started too early and now I'm going back to rectify all those 128kps mistakes I made early on in the game. As has been mentioned before in the forum, you just can't polish a turd.

I can't IMAGINE having to go through the process of doing this with vinyl!!

 

[BadassBob]

I have close to 400 albums ripped and converted to FLAC...pretty tedious process. I have mine stored on a 2TB RAID 10 array (4x 1TB drives striped and mirrored), dont want to have to re-rip and convert all that. I may even purchase a tape drive sometime in the future for archive purposes.

 

[Dr. Music]

Wow! I can't believe anyone would actually do all this work..., what are you going to do with the CDs when you're finished? what about a back-up (what if the drive crashes?)

I have about 60 gig of hi res mp3s I ripped over time and I find myself listening to the same two dozen albums since I find the whole play list management so tedious, and just reading this thread made me tired.

I mean..., God bless you and good luck! but what an effort

Backing up is easy - an external 500 GB Western digital drive sitting at the corner of my desk should assure that I never have to worry about losing my files. If that gets full I have a few 250 GB drives sitting around as well, and as cheap as Terrabyte drives are these days I'll gladly pick up another to save myself the hassle of ever re-ripping my music again. I can't tell you how often I've talked to friends with a glassy look in their eye when they lament the fact that they had a hard drive crash and lost all of their music, lots of it they don't own on disc or have backed up anywhere..... I'm a long time disciple of backing up all of my files, music, video, pictures, and of course PC drivers and software. If I work on a friend's computer i will always burn the drivers to disc in the event that I'm working on their computer six months down the road - it's happened before, and I've been thankful I backed all those sometimes hard to find drivers up.

I'm not one who will listen to the same two dozen discs for months on end - while I definitely have my favorites, I'm always on the hunt for new stuff and am revisiting my old stuff.

One thing I'm noticing as I do this is just how many repeats I have on my drive - as they're being re-ripped to a better format its no problem deciding which ones will go, but there are so many cuts that cross over from studio albums to greatest hits packages and also to compilations. I ripped my entire set of Time-Life "Sounds Of the Seventies" CDs last weekend and there were a huge number of duplicates. Now if I can only get up the gumption to get started on the "Sounds Of The Eighties" set!

 

[Fisherdude]

I'm about to get started.

I've been using 320 kbps AAC files for as long as I've owned an iPod.

Now, I just bought a 120 GB iPod Classic to set up as a music server, using a Wadia i-170 Transport and the Grant Fidelity Tube DAC-09.

So, I'm abandoning my previous files, and starting over ripping my CD collection using Apple Lossless to a 1 TB external drive. My previous collection was around 2,500 tracks or so. The new will be a bit larger.

As soon as golf season is over!

 

[Fisherdude]

...One thing I'm noticing as I do this is just how many repeats I have on my drive - as they're being re-ripped to a better format its no problem deciding which ones will go, but there are so many cuts that cross over from studio albums to greatest hits packages and also to compilations. I ripped my entire set of Time-Life "Sounds Of the Seventies" CDs last weekend and there were a huge number of duplicates. Now if I can only get up the gumption to get started on the "Sounds Of The Eighties" set!

I have the same problem. So many original albums by a single artist, plus his/her "Greatest Hits" albums, plus other compilations of blues or jazz that have some of the same cuts.

It's a real chore.

 

[vegabass25]

Just putting the 70 CDs i listen to alot on my PS3 was a real bitch. Good luck!

 

[Sam Cogley]

I have all of my CDs ripped to both FLAC and MP3 (for portable applications) using EAC. Now I need to go through and re-tag everything. The initial ripping took a few months, though I don't remember exactly how long.

 

[hwirt]

Wow! I can't believe anyone would actually do all this work..., what are you going to do with the CDs when you're finished? what about a back-up (what if the drive crashes?)

I have about 60 gig of hi res mp3s I ripped over time and I find myself listening to the same two dozen albums since I find the whole play list management so tedious, and just reading this thread made me tired.

I mean..., God bless you and good luck! but what an effort

"Wow! I can't believe anyone would actually do all this work..., what are you going to do with the CDs when you're finished?"

Yes it's a lot of work but once completed you can box up the CD's and store them in a safe place.

"what about a back-up (what if the drive crashes?)"

Backup is a must have, I run two identical 1.5 Tb drives using one as a working drive the other as a backup.

" find the whole play list management so tedious"

Using a Squeezebox with Squeezecenter software, the software scans you music folder and catalogs your entire collection.

Here is a thread explaining Squeezebox/Squeezecenter, scroll down to post #10.:

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=233078&highlight=squeezebox

 

[stoutblock]

I have about 1800 songs ripped in FLAC using EAC. I do a couple of CDs a day.

Reminds me of when I used to take my Kenwood cassette recorder over to all my friends house to copy their LPs. That took forever!

 

[Dr. Music]

I have about 1800 songs ripped in FLAC using EAC. I do a couple of CDs a day.

Reminds me of when I used to take my Kenwood cassette recorder over to all my friends house to copy their LPs. That took forever!

My work output on the project varies - some days I might rip though 20 CDs in a day, sometimes only a few, depending on how much time I spent at home and what I'm doing. While in a sense it's effortless, there is a constant changing of discs and shuffling CDs back and forth from row after row of shelves!

I can also remember the old days copying albums to cassette..... I think one reason I'm glad I own on disc what I rip is so I know I HAVE it TO rip!

 

[RichPA]

This is what holds me back from going the music server route - I'm afraid I'd be ripping CDs forever.

 

[jimfet]

Wow! I can't believe anyone would actually do all this work..., what are you going to do with the CDs when you're finished? what about a back-up (what if the drive crashes?)

I have about 60 gig of hi res mp3s I ripped over time and I find myself listening to the same two dozen albums since I find the whole play list management so tedious, and just reading this thread made me tired.

I mean..., God bless you and good luck! but what an effort

If the drive crashes, you have 2 identical drives, just for that reason. At least I do.