goldwax
dozy ming-mong
I don't know anything about Linux! I'm kind of scared of it!
Ripping My CD Library To Lossless Files - What A Process!!
- Thread starter Dr. Music
- Start date
I don't know anything about Linux! I'm kind of scared of it!
Roving Sign
Active Member
You dont really need to know much about Linux to use vortexbox. You can manage the system from any OS with a web browser.
All you really need to learn is how to burn an .iso image to CD.
When it's done installing - it will grab an IP on your network - point your web browser to that address and away you go.
Pop in a CD and it will rip and tag automatically, discharge the disc...next.
o0OBillO0o
Active Member
Wigwam Jones
Caesar non supra grammati
It's an operating system like any other, but it does require at least some basic computer knowledge. However, to find out if it's the kind of thing you can live with, an easy thing to do is to download one of the many free 'Live' CD images from the web, burn to disk, insert disk, and reboot the PC. You get a Linux OS booted up and running, you can play and do all kinds of things and not damage or remove the OS you have installed currently. Once you're done, you can simply remove the disk and reboot the PC to go right back to what you had, no changes, or choose 'install to hard drive' if you want to install the Linux OS.
For the more adventurous, you can have the best of both worlds. My wife's PC has Windows XP and Ubuntu installed, she can boot up whichever one she prefers for whatever it is she wants to do. There are other ways of doing it too, including running one OS inside a window in another. All kinds of options.
However, it's still not for everyone. I get that. I've been working with Linux since 1994 or so, and I think it's great and has come a long way. But it is still not so intuitive that it doesn't intimidate people.
o0OBillO0o
Active Member
tx_polkhead
Well-Known Member
Currently at just over 11,000 tracks in iTunes on a windows 7 machine. Till about a year ago all those tracks were getting ripped in Apple Lossless Audio Codec. THEN...
I got an invite from Google to join the then new Google Music, now Google Play. Free cloud storage and web access of my own music files, for free...Thanks you sir may I have another!
The down side ALAC is not a Google Play supported file format! Now I rip AAC, file sizes are smaller and I doubt my ears could hear the difference and loving the joy of my library from any wifi connection. Actually I only have the last 2,700 or so files uploaded to the cloud, I plan on converting a large chunk of the ALAC library to AAC as I head out of town on vacation and then let Google Music Manager work on the uploads while I am away!
I got an invite from Google to join the then new Google Music, now Google Play. Free cloud storage and web access of my own music files, for free...Thanks you sir may I have another!
The down side ALAC is not a Google Play supported file format! Now I rip AAC, file sizes are smaller and I doubt my ears could hear the difference and loving the joy of my library from any wifi connection. Actually I only have the last 2,700 or so files uploaded to the cloud, I plan on converting a large chunk of the ALAC library to AAC as I head out of town on vacation and then let Google Music Manager work on the uploads while I am away!
js1138
Super Member
I tend to agree, but I have dozens of CDs that don't show up in the online databases, so I have to type in the names. I also see errors in the downloaded genre and titles. Lots of my music is classical, and there doesn't seem to be any standard for the metadata.
I also encounter disks that cannot be perfectly ripped. I have to decide whether to use aggressive cleaning or to try to rip them using a non-secure method, and risk having audible defects.
Many of my CDs are used and abused. On those that have deep scratches, I haven't found anything that works, but on those that are scuffed or milky, I've found Soft-Scrub can clean them up, used with microfiber cloths. They are of no use to me if they don't play, and if I can get a perfect rip, I have it "forever."
Some CDs look OK but take a long time to rip. the drive slows down to less than 1x.
I've done almost 600 and have almost as many to go.
o0OBillO0o
Active Member
Some aren't as savvy as you. Yay for you! The process has not been perfected could you post .pdf file with your step by step instructions so that all may witness your method? Include screen shots,etc..
Wigwam Jones
Caesar non supra grammati
That's because it is all put in by volunteers over the years, I believe. I have had some that could not be found in the online lookup either. I typed them in by hand.
I have not run into a single disk that I could not rip after cleaning, except those that were physically damaged (pinholes, etc). In which case, nothing can read them, they're broken.
I buy mine at the thrift shop. Same deal as you. Same issues.
Yeah, I'm not sure where I'm at. I was at about 600 myself, but I've bought a lot of 3-for-a-dollar thrift shop CDs since then, and ripped them all. I'm probably at about 1,000 or so now. Sometimes they take awhile, sometimes they're really quick.
Wigwam Jones
Caesar non supra grammati
Really? OK. How about I just put it here.
Step 1: Start Asunder
asunder_001 by Wigwam Jones, on Flickr
Step 2: Put Music CD in drive
asunder_002 by Wigwam Jones, on Flickr
Step 3 [optional]: Choose destination directory
asunder_003 by Wigwam Jones, on Flickr
Step 4 [optional]: Select encoding method (one or more)
asunder_004 by Wigwam Jones, on Flickr
Step 5: Press 'Rip' Button
Step 6: Look at finished output
asunder_005 by Wigwam Jones, on Flickr
asunder_006 by Wigwam Jones, on Flickr
That's it. Works great. It's free, doesn't require incantations to the audio godz or weird algorithms only understood by the high priests of music. Rip and go. Done.
js1138
Super Member
I'll buy the ease, but it doesn't seem to support secure ripping or accuraterip.
I went to EAC after having to redo a hundred audiobook CDs that had skips and repeats and other defects scattered throughout. Not lots, but the iTunes ripper produced no log of errors, so there was no way to know which tracks were defective.
It seems kind of useless to rip to flac if you don't know whether or not you are getting a bit perfect copy. After having a bad experience that cost a lot of time, I don't consider accuraterip to be optional.
I went to EAC after having to redo a hundred audiobook CDs that had skips and repeats and other defects scattered throughout. Not lots, but the iTunes ripper produced no log of errors, so there was no way to know which tracks were defective.
It seems kind of useless to rip to flac if you don't know whether or not you are getting a bit perfect copy. After having a bad experience that cost a lot of time, I don't consider accuraterip to be optional.
Wigwam Jones
Caesar non supra grammati
http://littlesvr.ca/asunder/
It's as good as it gets.
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Cdparanoia
Going beyond that gets into the area I refer to as audio masturbation. It may make you feel good, but it doesn't actually produce anything of value.
I think many audio guys just inherently suspect anything that is easy to use. If it doesn't involve a ritual, lots of money, and the approval of some guy who puts 'audiophile-grade torroidal transformers' on TOP of his CD-ROM drive as ballast to secure it from vibrations, it can't be any good.
No incantations required. Rip and go. Done.
js1138
Super Member
OK, but what info do you get if a track is bad? I assume it has some feedback.
I've seen "corrections" made by software. Sometimes they are OK and sometimes not. I do not object to corrections, but I want a list of bad tracks so I can listen and either accept them or not.
I've seen "corrections" made by software. Sometimes they are OK and sometimes not. I do not object to corrections, but I want a list of bad tracks so I can listen and either accept them or not.
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BadassBob
Digitally rendered
Most of the good Linux rippers, such as Asunder, use cdparanoia for error correction. cdparanoia is every bit as good as accuraterip in my experience. Ive ripped over 400 CDs with no issue whatsoever
.
Wigwam Jones
Caesar non supra grammati
It cranks over it until you get tired of waiting and stop it. I've never waited long enough for it to time out, assuming it eventually does.
In such cases, I have taken the disc out and cleaned it carefully and tried again. Checked the disc to see if it actually had physical damage to the foil by holding it up the light. When all else fails, I've used my 'Skip Dr' thing to try to repair the damage. I've even tried, on the few extremely damaged discs I've purchased at thrift stores, to use the Novus scratch repair solutions 1, 2, and 3 to repair the worst damage I've ever seen. Mixed results. In a few cases I got good rips. In others, it still would not rip a particular track.
In one such case, I tossed the CD - it also would not play in my audio CD players, and I could not read it with anything including my work laptop that runs Windows. In the other, I ripped all tracks except the bad one and lived with that.
I mean, you can keep posing 'yeah but what if' questions forever. Not every damaged disc can be recovered by anything. Break it in half and I suppose it's pretty much done for.
But since I really haven't had those kinds of extreme problems, I don't worry about the 'what ifs'. Asunder is free, easy to use, secure, works great, and I still don't understand why ripping music CD's has to be some kind of religious experience.
Wigwam Jones
Caesar non supra grammati
I do not have that problem. Perhaps because I do not use iTunes to rip my music from CD.
It seems kind of odd to refuse to use tools that are not iTunes because iTunes caused you some problems. It's like refusing to ride in cars because planes fall from the sky.
As to bit-perfect copies, as stated, cdparanoia is designed to be low-overhead. If you run it from the command line (but why someone would do that is beyond me), you can get output. I'm sure not what you seem to feel you must have.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cdparanoia
Status indicators
One of the quirks of cdparanoia is that its ripping status is indicated by an emoticon. As per the cdparanoia manual, the following emoticons are used:
:-| Normal operation, considerable jitter
:-/ Read drift
8-| Finding read problems at same point during re-read; hard to correct
:-0 SCSI/ATAPI transport error
:-( Scratch detected
;-( Gave up trying to perform a correction
8-X Aborted read due to known, uncorrectable error
:^D Finished extracting
Personally, I've had no troubles with skipping or glitches of the type you've described, and as I said, I buy thrift shop used CD's 3 for a buck and quite often they are scratched up badly. So no, I don't spend a lot of time worrying about problems I do not have. I rip, I copy, I listen. Life is good - and easy.
js1138
Super Member
I don't think it's a religious experience, and I'm sure you are getting good rips. But in my experience, damage is often limited to a track or two. I may want to skip a track completely rather than lose the rest of the CD.
I watch the progress of the rip while doing other things. If it slows down I may cancel it and examine the disk for obvious problems and clean it. If a track won't rip I skip it. If I really want it, I change the ripping method from secure to burst, just for that track. I can then play it and see if it's acceptable.
This isn't religious. It's just getting the best i can out of the CDs I have. Ninety-eight out of a hundred rip automatically with no problem.
But I have to add that this was not true with the iTunes ripper. I had audible defects on at least one CD in ten. Nasty defects. Even worse, I had no way of knowing that errors had occurred or where they were.
I watch the progress of the rip while doing other things. If it slows down I may cancel it and examine the disk for obvious problems and clean it. If a track won't rip I skip it. If I really want it, I change the ripping method from secure to burst, just for that track. I can then play it and see if it's acceptable.
This isn't religious. It's just getting the best i can out of the CDs I have. Ninety-eight out of a hundred rip automatically with no problem.
But I have to add that this was not true with the iTunes ripper. I had audible defects on at least one CD in ten. Nasty defects. Even worse, I had no way of knowing that errors had occurred or where they were.
js1138
Super Member
I don't even know what this means. I haven't used iTunes in a long time. What non-itunes product am I refusing to use?
I don't use Asunder because I don't run Linux. That seems pretty simple. I don't see that my method is complicated. It is essentially the same as your screen prints. It is certainly no more difficult.
The only thing I see that I am doing differently is skipping bad tracks rather than rejecting an entire disk.
