Kit for ripping large collection of CDs - advice needed.

jwb1

I have approx. 2000 CDs in my home library, the product of about 10 years of collecting. Naturally, I am now regretting not ripping this collection onto my PC as I was building it up. I now want to bite the bullet and tackle this task.

I've done a bit of research on some options such as Sony's GigaJuke (way too expensive) and the Brennan JB7 (variable reviews) and have concluded that what I need to get are: (a) a high-speed external CD drive to do the transfer and (b) something like a NAS with redundant storage (to prevent some calamity making my hours of effort redundant).

I'm resigned to doing this incrementally, i.e. a few CDs each day.

So, what I need advice on is:

1. Best model of external CD drive to get for this? (Would like a USB one for ease of setup - I have a HP Pavilion dm4-1165dx laptop so eSATA is also an option).

2. Best model of NAS for this application?

Once I get the hardware options sorted, I can then turn my attention to which ripping software to use and which file format to store the music in.

Any advice/experience appreciated.

JB

TroutMask

Ripped mine to iTunes as Apple Lossless. There is a format called FLAC which is basically the same as Apple Lossless: a non-lossy data-compression method.
If I really like the album I rip it full-fat - or keep the CD (less the jewel case). If the album is on cassette, I scan the cover too. That's why i like iTunes, it allows me to save the pdf cover scans as a 'Digital Booklet' of album art. For backup/storage I use G-Tech RAID drives. I also have a 'caddy' and store stuff on raw 1 TB drives as well. If you're going NAS - you can RAID if you buy right - but for a lot of storage it's gonna be big bucks. You might want to consider a PC capable of hosting multiple hard disks - you can then install 2 or 4 large disks (in addition to the OS disk, that is) and RAID 'em up. Then you can make this available to your network.

ED E

Unless you have a €100+ soundcard and €200+ headphones(more if we're talking speakers) then FLAC is overkill. Its cool but its for audiophiles.

Rip em to 320 MP3s. They're slightly bigger than V0(google that) but bring you right onto the edge of lossless, you're going to have everything you can ears can possibly hear (people will argue against this, but in real terms its the case). 320s will be around a third the size of FLACs.

For covers you can embed them in ID3 data, works like a charm.

Decide on your file system before you start. I do it in a stupid way: 1 Directory, thousands of files. The more normal ways would be Master - Artist - Album or Master - Album.

If you were to borrow a second laptop you could then rip rather quickly to your NAS. Probably could keep up with three if you grabbed a big pot of coffee first.

And mother of god, check all the tag data as you go, going back to fix stuff is a nightmare.

Khannie

I would recommend lossless. 2000 CD's should compress down to about 700GB with FLAC or Apples whatevermajig. Should be quite cheap to store, even with a redundant NAS. You can then easily convert all of these to MP3 in a batch and you always have the original CD quality rip if you ever want a different format for some reason.

(I agree though that 320 Kbps MP3 is going to be as good as flac to your ears, it's more for conversion to another format in the future should you want it).

One suggestion: Just buy two 2TB external drives. Make two copies and keep one off site (e.g. in your office). God forbid you have some kind of calamity in the house you still have your precious music safe and sound.

The Th!ng

http://info.vortexbox.org/

jwb1

Lots of good (if mildly conflicting!) advice here....very much appreciate it. I'll be back for more on formats, tagging etc when I get the hardware sorted.

One item no one addressed was my question on the external cd drive. The internal one in the laptop is just too slow. Any thoughts on this? Guess I'm looking for a good 48x drive with its own power supply but driven off USB if poss.

Jb

mordeith

jwb1 wrote: »

Lots of good (if mildly conflicting!) advice here....very much appreciate it. I'll be back for more on formats, tagging etc when I get the hardware sorted.

One item no one addressed was my question on the external cd drive. The internal one in the laptop is just too slow. Any thoughts on this? Guess I'm looking for a good 48x drive with its own power supply but driven off USB if poss.

Jb

I'd imagine any external CD drive would be capable of ripping at 48X although you may find that that it rarely achieves anything like that speed. Also if you are using software like Exact Audio Copy you could have various settings selected like read error detection and jitter correction that will reduce the speed of the rip.

U_Fig

I have about 400GB of music stored as MP3.. About 80000 tracks give or take not in great quality but have a backup of all on 2 external drives in FLAC or Apple lossless.. When I ripped them I used a desktop with 4 cd drives simultaneously..it worked pretty well but it's quite CPU intensive and you need a good bit of ram.. At the time I used a top end gaming rig for the bulk and then my normal desktop after that.. I use the mp3 on one NAS to olay through my tv n that the keep the lossless for when using my sennheiser headphones (audiophile quality)

I have some of the CDs still but space wise I couldn't keep them all in my house my uncle has his own audio room where most are now

Cd drives are cheap if you can get multiple it'll speed up the time providing the CPU and ram can handle it

CORaven

Just something of note. When ripping music, do as ED E suggested, check every album that the tag data is right as you go along.
There are several products that all do much the same thing change the meta data it to correspond with what is hosted on a music database - artist name, track listing, cover art. They explain it better: http://lifehacker.com/5511473/start-to-finish-guide-to-whipping-your-musics-metadata-into-shape

One thing I do like about Jaikoz is that it can rename your music files and folders to user defined settings.
I currently have "ArtistName > [YearofAlbum] NameofAlbum > TrackNumber - TrackName".
I was doing it manually before and it drove me nuts.

U_Fig

tho be careful with programs that find it automatically..i had issues the when using one that they generally replace the original file with a copy of the original with the new info and i had issues of some files becoming currupt and bits missing from start of songs i used musicbrainz picard

jwb1

Thanks to everyone for taking the time to post responses to my query - all very helpful. Here's how I'm thinking I'll proceed:

1. QNAP or Sonology NAS with either 2 x 1TB or 4 x 1TB drives. NAS allows me to stream to devices without need for powering up or tying up the laptop.

2. Use dbPowerAmp to rip (with EAC as a handy backup) and use something like Jaikoz to get the tagging architecture sorted.

3. Rip using FLAC and use this as a base for generating other formats such as MP3.

4. Give the internal laptop CD drive a go (EAC can get a much better speed out of it than iTunes) and supplement with another if necessary.

Thanks again....any further comments/advice will of course be appreciated.

JB

Capt'n Midnight

just in case, for the most common albums (more likely to have proper tags) this is the lazy way to do it

for windows media player and itunes you can set lossless, and also set to auto rip CD's and eject when finished (not too sure you can get a free, full speed FLAC ripper in windows that does this)

so it's pop in a cd each time it spits out the previous one

with itunes when you are finished you can then add all the tracks to a new playlist and then change the rip settings to 320 / variable rate and select all and then convert to mp3