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

I've been really pleased with Windows Media Player 11 and its lossless encoder. I haven't noticed any difference in quality from the CDs it has ripped or the ones I have done with EAC. WMA lossless is unfortunately not supported in a lot of portable media players, but it is easy enough to convert a wma lossless file to a standard mp3 or wma lossy file.
 
Years ago, I ripped all my CD's at 192k on iTunes. Then re-ripped them at 320k because I wasn't satisfied with the sound played thru the main system. I though I could live with 320k as a compromise between size and quality. Four years ago, I re-ripped everything to AIFF and although it took awhile and was a PITA, it was well worth it. For anyone who's contemplating and sound quality is of utmost importance, do yourself a favor and skip straight to a lossless format. And make sure you backup to another hard drive. I learned the hard way 2 years ago when my drive crashed. Re-ripped yet again to AIFF and backed up. Hard drives are cheap, time isn't.
 
For what it's worth:

1. Purchased Phile Audio from the Apple App store for Macs ($7)

2. Then purchased 2 x LG GE24LU20 DVD/CD EXTERNAL USB DRIVES ($40 ea)

3. I have a Macbook Pro from June '08 ($$$$)

4. I have 500 GB external WD Firewire HD (<$100)

5. I use iTunes for playback and store music on the 500GB WD drive. (Free)

Process:

1. Insert CD in Drive one, then Drive two. push close.
2. Find Album Album artwork through Phile Audio using Bing.
3. Press "RIP" on Drive one, then Drive two (MY preferences save file to Apple Lossless - but you can chose as many as you one and it does it at the same time!)
4. wait about 2 minutes and "ding!", and it auto ejects.
5. repeat step 1.

Using the Macbook's internal drive I got about 5 minutes average per disc.
For 100 CDs it used to take me 8hrs20min.

Now with just the two drives I can do 2 CDs in 2 Minutes - in other words two discs simultaneously. AVG 1 Min a disc but it takes 2 minutes to Rip just one. okay think you got my point .

I have now brought my 100 Disc Rip Rate to ~2hrs30Min if you add about 30 sec to change disc and find album art, a ~5hrs50min time saver!

(I found 3 drives at once slows down everything (saturates the bus?) )
 
http://allflac.com/?n=1 this is faster if you dont have any cd's to convert most albums you buy from this site are like couple dollars and are all flac

Cool, still doesn't help us with the CDs we already own.

Does anyone have what they claim to be the fastest (& Best) Ripping method to get all music to your Computer?

Can be CD to .WAV or .AIFF and then convert at a later time to any other format..
 
computer programs you might find handy

Cd extraction: Exact Audio Copy: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ Free program.

Backups: SyncBack Freeware V3.2.26.0, http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html#freeware, reduces backup time by "syncing" your data, only copies files that have changed, Free program

Tagging/Renaming files: Tag&Rename, http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm
Tag, rename, and pull cd information including pictures from Amazon or freedb. $29.95, but a real time saver.

These are windows based programs, they may have mac versions, not sure.
 
Cd extraction: Exact Audio Copy: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ Free program.

Backups: SyncBack Freeware V3.2.26.0, http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html#freeware, reduces backup time by "syncing" your data, only copies files that have changed, Free program

Tagging/Renaming files: Tag&Rename, http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm
Tag, rename, and pull cd information including pictures from Amazon or freedb. $29.95, but a real time saver.

These are windows based programs, they may have mac versions, not sure.
Yeah Mac OS X

XLD or Phile Audio -Ripping (FREE, $7)

Apple's TimeMachine- back up (FREE)

TuneUP Media's TuneUP- Tag and track identifier ($29.99)
 
I've been putting music into my Windows machines since early in 1999. The Real Jukebox was my introduction. I still maintain the "RJB" folder in the Music folder. Initially, I ripped everything "good" (Led Zeppelin, Yes, Stones, Neil Young) at MP3 320 kbps and everything else (Madonna, LL Cool J, Sinead O'Connor) at MP3 192 VBR.

About 5 years into it, probably 2004 or 2005, I started using the Windows Media Audio 9.2 Lossless to import CDs using Windows Media Player, and then Adobe Audition to digitize a pretty decent vinyl and cassette collection using the same codec.

Files are bigger, but they can all be downsized for portable players.

Windows Media Audio 9.2 Lossless VBR Quality 100, 96 kHz, 2 channel 24 bit 1-pass VBR with a Bit rate of 3.23 Mbps sure seems like it would be better than a lowly 130 kbps VBR MP3 . Sometimes I like to think I can tell the difference (sometimes I can), but honestly, I'm more a fan of just getting into the music instead.

Anyway I just started this thread...lets see what you're listening to
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=354818&referrerid=71385
 
I'm starting to think about ripping my CD collection--between 4K and 5K CDs, best as I can tell.

I also am in the market for a laptop, which I will use for ripping. What should I get? Apple or PC? And which model?

Note that I don't really do portable music--that is, I don't have an mp3 player--though I suppose I'd get one for the car if nothing else if I had a large collection of music files.
 
I'm starting to think about ripping my CD collection--between 4K and 5K CDs, best as I can tell.

I also am in the market for a laptop, which I will use for ripping. What should I get? Apple or PC? And which model?

Note that I don't really do portable music--that is, I don't have an mp3 player--though I suppose I'd get one for the car if nothing else if I had a large collection of music files.

UPFRONT: 5K CDs = around 417hrs of Ripping and 4 Terabytes of Storage.

This is at 5 Minutes a CD and at full quality(WAV/AIFF).

I guaran-frickin-tee you that some one is going to say it can be done faster and take up less space.

Step one: determine the most acceptable compression. MOST are fine with 256Kbps the same as the iTunes Music Store. This will determine the amount of storage you need. (5K CDs @ 256Kbps is about 1 Terabyte (TB))

Step two: Identify your budget. e.g. a 4TB External Hard Drive + an Apple Laptop w/ iTunes is about $1500

Step three: Identify how you are going to transfer from CD to computer. The cost averages $1 a disc to have it professionally done. Or several slices of pizza and $20 bucks to have the kids do it.
OR

Free if you spend hours a night ripping.

Step four: Ensure you have the right track title, album art, song name, album name etc. These can be tedious but are very important.

I've ripped thousands of CDs, used several compression settings, and lost of my music and done it all again.

What I use now is a McIntosh MS750 (discontinued~ $2300 used) with a Sony CDP-CX400 (discontinued $115 used, ebay). It is a music server and CD Changer combo that allows me load 400 Discs at a time and they are automatically transferred to the McIntosh Music Server with the right Track, Album, Art, etc in FLAC and 256Kbps format. The best thing is that I set and forget and it does it all for me. Yes, it copies the music in real-time (1X) and it takes two weeks, but I can do other things. Of course I also like that it can archive my records, tapes, etc and burn them to CD.

The BEST OF THE BEST Digital music system is The Meridian Digital Music System ($4K and up!). formerly called Sooloos. Hands down the best way to enjoy your music, but it comes with a price.
 
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I've been ripping all mine with a program called Max, .flac format to my mini-mac. Box sets seem to confuse the software when it comes to tagging the info so I have to manually do most of those but otherwise it's pretty quick, 3-4 minutes per cd.
 
Some impressive software lists here ... all to do what jRiver can do on the fly. I've tried a few methods and their Media Center does it all effortlessly. Just load a CD in the tray and it does it's thing ... reads the disk, looks up the track info, rips it using EAC licensed code to whatever flavor you want (FLAC for me), attaches the cover art, and even lyrics if you so desire. Tray pops open when done, so I'll wander off doing whatever and just slap another one in whenever I wander back. It tracks your new rips, so it's easy to just backtrack thru the list to check the results. Impressive databasing and tag editing features ... lots of prebuilt lists, and if you can't find it, you can make it.

** Somebody mentioned WMA Lossless earlier. I had a LOT of stuff ripped in that format earlier. When I decided to convert to FLAC, it was as simple as pointing jRiver to the WMA folder, and telling it to batch convert while importing the whole shabang into my jRiver "library". Very good thing, as most of that was vinyl rips and represented a LOT of hours.

I'm running a 2 terabyte RAID for storage, and also an 80gig super drive for the OS and supporting software. Backup is to an external USB drive, and that's easy using Acronis True Image ... try it, you'll like it!

One caution on RAID - not all RAID is created equal, and your drives might not be recognized if (read: when) you have to swap them into another machine that uses a different controller down the road. A mirror drive is nice if one drive rolls craps, but you still need to occasionally COPY your data to another drive that is NOT set up as part of an array for safety. And yes, store that offsite, or in a fire safe.

NOTE >> You can usually get away with loading one of your RAID drives into the new machine that uses a different controller, THEN build a new array using that as the master. It should rewrite the RAID header without damaging any of your data as the RAID spec requires that header to use the same sector locations no matter what. If it's a system drive, that gets a lot more complicated and your chances of success go down a LOT, which is one reason I use a separate drive for system and software, and only store data in the RAID array.

I also like portable - got USB on my cars and bikes. I select the good stuff from the FLAC folders and batch convert that to 320 MP3 using the right click windows utility built into Explorer. Store those in a road tunes folder. A neat utility to get those onto a thumb drive is FlashShuffler ... just point it to your MP3 folder and your thumb drive, tell it how much to copy, it selects a random list, and hit the go button.

Oh. And keep your old CDs ... it's not only practical ... it's the law!

PS ... jRiver also does pics and videos too ... they just added support for blueray and sacd ... one shop stopping!
 
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UPFRONT: 5K CDs = around 417hrs of Ripping and 4 Terabytes of Storage.

This is at 5 Minutes a CD and at full quality(WAV/AIFF).

I guaran-frickin-tee you that some one is going to say it can be done faster and take up less space.

Step one: determine the most acceptable compression. MOST are fine with 256Kbps the same as the iTunes Music Store. This will determine the amount of storage you need. (5K CDs @ 256Kbps is about 1 Terabyte (TB))

Step two: Identify your budget. e.g. a 4TB External Hard Drive + an Apple Laptop w/ iTunes is about $1500

Step three: Identify how you are going to transfer from CD to computer. The cost averages $1 a disc to have it professionally done. Or several slices of pizza and $20 bucks to have the kids do it.
OR

Free if you spend hours a night ripping.

Step four: Ensure you have the right track title, album art, song name, album name etc. These can be tedious but are very important.

I've ripped thousands of CDs, used several compression settings, and lost of my music and done it all again.

What I use now is a McIntosh MS750 (discontinued~ $2300 used) with a Sony CDP-CX400 (discontinued $115 used, ebay). It is a music server and CD Changer combo that allows me load 400 Discs at a time and they are automatically transferred to the McIntosh Music Server with the right Track, Album, Art, etc in FLAC and 256Kbps format. The best thing is that I set and forget and it does it all for me. Yes, it copies the music in real-time (1X) and it takes two weeks, but I can do other things. Of course I also like that it can archive my records, tapes, etc and burn them to CD.

The BEST OF THE BEST Digital music system is The Meridian Digital Music System ($4K and up!). formerly called Sooloos. Hands down the best way to enjoy your music, but it comes with a price.

Thanks for the detailed info!

However, I think I want to a) go lossless and b) spend as little money as possible. I don't mind (at this point in time!) putting the time in to ripping and tagging CDs myself.
 
Thanks for the detailed info!

However, I think I want to a) go lossless and b) spend as little money as possible. I don't mind (at this point in time!) putting the time in to ripping and tagging CDs myself.

If you can use Linux, give Vortexbox a try. Ive been using it for a couple of years now without issue. I have some pretty obscure music and it hasnt failed me yet.
 
Cd extraction: Exact Audio Copy: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ Free program.

Backups: SyncBack Freeware V3.2.26.0, http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html#freeware, reduces backup time by "syncing" your data, only copies files that have changed, Free program

Tagging/Renaming files: Tag&Rename, http://www.softpointer.com/tr.htm
Tag, rename, and pull cd information including pictures from Amazon or freedb. $29.95, but a real time saver.

These are windows based programs, they may have mac versions, not sure.

Exactly what I do, except for the Syncback software...
 
Back when I ripped CDs the old fashioned way, I used mp3tag to tag my files. Its free, and uses Discogs, Amazon, Amazon.de, Musicbrainz, and freedb for album art and tags.
 
Asunder for Linux, 1.5 tb hard drive, linux, and some time. Done. Rips to both FLAC and MP3 at the same time, I move the MP3 files to an external hard drive that plugs into the back of our new Blu-Ray disc player.

I don't see why this kind of thing has to turn into a three-ring circus with all singing, all dancing, hand-wringing whineapalooza. Rip and go. Done. FLAC is lossless. That's it, it doesn't get any better than that.

Why does everything have to be a religious ritual?
 
Thanks for the detailed info!

However, I think I want to a) go lossless and b) spend as little money as possible. I don't mind (at this point in time!) putting the time in to ripping and tagging CDs myself.

Okay cheapest laptop with at least 1TB of internal Storage. Then use Apple iTunes for Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) or the many other recommended and availiable for Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)

If you are willing to deal with an external USB Hard drive, then don't worry about internal storage.

If you don't need the portability of a laptop. Get a desktop.
 
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