Looking for Advice on Ripping my CD Collection (1 Viewer)

[Mike Frezon]

I'm now up to 9220 FLAC tracks from 600 albums and 164 artists. I have used up 180GB of my 1TB SSD drive.

The number of "artists" has actually decreased as I have reclassified several into genre specific areas. For example, I probably fed about 100 theater-related discs into the B2...but I have the artist on each of them listed as "Broadway." So that only accounts for one artist for all those discs.

So while a pop/rock track might be listed (Artist/Album/Track):

Steely Dan>Aja>Peg

for my theater cast recordings it will likely be more like:

Broadway>Oklahoma (Original Broadway Cast)>The Surrey with the Fringe on Top

I'm doing the same formatting with my film soundtrack CDs.

This classification business is the most vexing of the process. After each batch of discs I enter, I am taking the time to enter all the info for those discs which do not appear in the database as well as try to organize the discs into genres and playlists as successfully as possible. I hope I'm doing it in a way that makes me happy when all is said and done.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Does anyone know if there are easy ways to batch convert flac files to mp3s?

I'm surprised Abobe Media Encoder doesn't do this. It doesn't recognize flac files at all.

In VLC:

- go to Media -> Open Multiple Files
- drag and drop your *.flac files into the "File Selection" box
- hit the arrow on the right side of the "Play" key (next to the "Cancel" key) and go down the menu to "Convert"
- in the convert box, change the "Settings" to Profile "Audio - MP3" by clicking on the right side with the arrow and go down the menu
- click on the "Start" key and it will convert all your *.flac files into corresponding *.mp3 files

Back on page 10 of this thread I asked about conversion of FLAC files to MP3s.

Based on jr's recommendation, I have been trying out the multi-file capabilities of VLC. It seems to work pretty good. I also tried using the NIH Suite's "Switch" program. I can't see why I would pay for the NIH program over the free VLC program.

Does anyone have any suggestions about a better way to convert FLAC to mp3? I've got an open mind!

 

[HawksFord]

I've been reading this thread with a great deal of interest because I'm in the same situation. I found myself listening to music less because of the hassle of finding the CDs I wanted in my collection. It's ordered alphabetically by artist but spread out over multiple locations in the house. I gave serious thought to a Brennan B2, but finally decided that the best solution for me is a Plex server running on a NAS. I got that set up this morning and have started the long process of ripping CDs to FLAC. It's going to take awhile.

 

[Guardyan]

I've been reading this thread with a great deal of interest because I'm in the same situation. I found myself listening to music less because of the hassle of finding the CDs I wanted in my collection. It's ordered alphabetically by artist but spread out over multiple locations in the house. I gave serious thought to a Brennan B2, but finally decided that the best solution for me is a Plex server running on a NAS. I got that set up this morning and have started the long process of ripping CDs to FLAC. It's going to take awhile.

What method will you be using to rip your CDs?

 

[HawksFord]

I'm using dBpoweramp. It's working well so far, but I haven't gotten to anything particularly unusual yet.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Please keep reporting in to this thread, Maurice, on your progress.

I have hit a pretty typical snag on my progress--life! I have had to put this project on the back burner for a bit as I tend to some other things. It's too bad because I was really going gangbusters.

 

[BobO'Link]

Just be patient. When I ripped my 1400 title collection (around 2000 discs) it took almost 9 months to rip everything. I'd come in from work and rip stuff until I went to bed - every day, and all day on Saturdays with about a half day on Sundays. If I missed some time or days I didn't let it bother me as I knew it'd get done eventually. Now it's a very laid back affair as there's only the need to rip any new purchases and I take my time with them, sometimes letting 4 or 5 build up before I do them.

 

[HawksFord]

I got the letter A done. Had a couple of oddballs that required me to enter the data, but that was expected. Looking ahead, there sure are a lot of bands I like that start with B. I'll be working on those for awhile. Fortunately, I work from home and can generally flip to my personal computer throughout the day to take out one CD and start another.

 

[greenscreened]

You really made some progress, Mike.
Sorry to hear about your temporary snag.
Hope all is well.
When you get back to it, you'll get your second wind and perhaps even continue on with even more passion.


I just checked my iTunes library for 'Date Added' and found that in the first year, I added 807 CDs. I now have 1432 CDs in iTunes.
Kinda slow compared to others here.

I also have around 200 or so other assorted CDs removed from iTunes and saved to an external HD only.
Those are mostly stuff from the 1930s upwards, that were purchased more or less for historical and/or for merely having a vast collection, rather than listening to them on a home or car system, or even my iPod, due to the primitive recording technology.

The 1950s-60s are pretty well represented, though it wouldn't hurt to add a hundred or two more individual song titles there.

The seventies could use all of that.

The 1980s through the present could use at the very least, 500 more tracks.

Please don't even get me started on Classical though, as I could go broke on what I need to buy.

I am basically OK with what I now have, but if the powers that be would dust off the tape boxes and release complete versions of the original hits (no alternate takes) of instrumental backing or aCapella tracks and select isolated instruments (from the multi-tracks of original hit versions) etc, I would definitely do my part to help put one or two of their kids or grand-kids through college!

Everything is well catalogued and tagged with ample amounts of cryptic (for space confinement) corresponding (primarily) single letters, symbols, or numbers-meta data in the comments, description, show, grouping etc. columns in order to aid in recalling them via Smart Playlists.

A sampling of a few of them in the comments field would be:

I - instrumental songs
IV - instrumentals with no spoken words, just oohs and ahhs
3 - songs with prominent Hammond B-3 in them (or other grownup sounding organs), and/or solos in them that I like
33 - solo organ, most likely Classical
In the same vein as 3:
6 - sax
8 - piano
88 - solo piano
G - acoustic guitar
GG- solo AG
7 - harmonica
H - harpsichord
! - songs with electric guitar solos
1 - songs with distorted/fuzzed electric guitar solos in them, as the workers in my last (and main) job didn't consider a song Rock if the guitars output didn't receive that kind of treatment, no matter how up-tempo or driving the song's rhythm track is.

Description column:
W - women-only vocals, not even male b/u vocals

Shhh...between you and me, I use the 'Composer' column strictly to tag the year, month and date the track or album was either released, or hit the Billboard charts...67-01-01, so I can then sort that playlist's column chronologically and play the 3-5*s from selected year playlists in chronological order in the Library or on the iPod.
Hopefully, the songwriters here won't see this, as I posted that in a forum way back when and nearly got booed off the forum!
In my defense, if I like the song or artist well enough to have purchased the CD and backed it up to iTunes, I probably already know who wrote it.

Starting from 50-01-01 through 79-12-31 and playing all the 4-5* songs in chrono order, in 12+ hour daily shifts, is ever so lightly penciled in on my music bucket list!

Soooo my CDs and their meta data is pretty well accounted for, it's the playlists that need a serious couple of days worth of 12+ hours worth of tightening up and/ or deleting.
I've got 376 themed ones on the iPod 160, down from 500 on it (only 50 or so of them are by specific artist, and half of them need to go).

I'm afraid to even start counting the playlists in the library!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Please keep reporting in to this thread, Maurice, on your progress.

I have hit a pretty typical snag on my progress--life! I have had to put this project on the back burner for a bit as I tend to some other things. It's too bad because I was really going gangbusters.

I’ve now been ripping my movie discs to my Plex server for over two years! This stuff takes time

I’d like to redo my CDs since my digital music collection is a hodgepodge of formats and qualities and I’d like to standardize it with one choice of a high quality format instead of mix and match but I think I’m years away from having that kind of time! On the plus side, the more time that passes from my original purchases and rips, the more I realize I’m never going to listen to certain things again. So when it comes time to overhaul all of that, I’m thinking it’ll be both a ripping and a purging product. Perhaps I don’t need multiple copies of albums I never liked that much in the first place

 

[Bartman]

You guys are hard core. I started ripping my CDs to MP3 when I got a car with a CDR MP3 player in 2005. I created artist collections in chronological order, one per CDR. Each CDR would last about a month of commuting. Unfortunately, my 40+ CDRs are missing album and song titles. Not a problem when you're driving, as you don't want distractions but a nuisance now. However, generally I know the artists well enough to orientate myself.
Later I moved to ripping to iTunes and then Linux (ABCDE then Asunder) that have databases. I moved my CDRs to SD cards for use with my Fiio M3K Hi-Res player and Mibao M550 Bluetooth player. Many of the Chinese MP3 players will not play AAC but I found an AAC to MP3 conversion program. I spent last winter curating my MP3s for a consistent look on the players and remove inconsistent files (artwork etc).
All of my MP3 players only shuffle within a folder. Recently a friend created a Python program to remove folders so that 30+ folders of Xmas tunes were shuffable! My wife was impressed.

 

[HawksFord]

On Sunday, I finished up my project to rip all of my CDs (about 1600 titles) to FLAC format and store them on a Plex server. I used dBpoweramp to do the ripping, and the files are stored on a Synology NAS and backed up. Aside from taking longer than I hoped, the process went fairly well. For some CDs, mostly local artists, I had to entered the data manually, and there were a few that were incorrectly matched requiring some correction. Some older CDs suffer from disc rot so there were tracks I could not accurately rip; depending on the album I will either replace it or not.

I took this as an opportunity to weed my collection. For this first pass through, I didn't get rid of many because I wasn't sure how well the process would work. Since I'm happy with the end result, I'll be either getting rid of or putting into storage more of my CDs. As a result of having my collection readily available on Plex, I find myself listening to music more often. Mostly I'm doing that through the Roku app on the TV, but I also use the Plexamp app on my personal computer and my phone.

I still have some work to do in improving the tagging, setting up collections, and possibly tweaking some metadata. I may even purge a few items from the collection. That will all happen over time.

 

[Bartman]

You guys are hard core. I started ripping my CDs to MP3 when I got a car with a CDR MP3 player in 2005. I created artist collections in chronological order, one per CDR. Each CDR would last about a month of commuting. Unfortunately, my 40+ CDRs are missing album and song titles. Not a problem when you're driving, as you don't want distractions but a nuisance now. However, generally I know the artists well enough to orientate myself.
Later I moved to ripping to iTunes and then Linux (ABCDE then Asunder) that have databases. I moved my CDRs to SD cards for use with my Fiio M3K Hi-Res player and Mibao M550 Bluetooth player. Many of the Chinese MP3 players will not play AAC but I found an AAC to MP3 conversion program. I spent last winter curating my MP3s for a consistent look on the players and remove inconsistent files (artwork etc).
All of my MP3 players only shuffle within a folder. Recently a friend created a Python program to remove folders so that 30+ folders of Xmas tunes were shuffable! My wife was impressed.

Does anyone know of an app that can interrogate databases and recreate album and song title data from number of tracks, track order and track duration data? Preferrably an app that can do this en masse rather an album at a time?
I don't need album artwork just titles.

 

[BobO'Link]

I’ve now been ripping my movie discs to my Plex server for over two years! This stuff takes time

I’d like to redo my CDs since my digital music collection is a hodgepodge of formats and qualities and I’d like to standardize it with one choice of a high quality format instead of mix and match but I think I’m years away from having that kind of time! On the plus side, the more time that passes from my original purchases and rips, the more I realize I’m never going to listen to certain things again. So when it comes time to overhaul all of that, I’m thinking it’ll be both a ripping and a purging product. Perhaps I don’t need multiple copies of albums I never liked that much in the first place

On Sunday, I finished up my project to rip all of my CDs (about 1600 titles) to FLAC format and store them on a Plex server. I used dBpoweramp to do the ripping, and the files are stored on a Synology NAS and backed up. Aside from taking longer than I hoped, the process went fairly well. For some CDs, mostly local artists, I had to entered the data manually, and there were a few that were incorrectly matched requiring some correction. Some older CDs suffer from disc rot so there were tracks I could not accurately rip; depending on the album I will either replace it or not.

I took this as an opportunity to weed my collection. For this first pass through, I didn't get rid of many because I wasn't sure how well the process would work. Since I'm happy with the end result, I'll be either getting rid of or putting into storage more of my CDs. As a result of having my collection readily available on Plex, I find myself listening to music more often. Mostly I'm doing that through the Roku app on the TV, but I also use the Plexamp app on my personal computer and my phone.

I still have some work to do in improving the tagging, setting up collections, and possibly tweaking some metadata. I may even purge a few items from the collection. That will all happen over time.

I keep looking at setting up a Plex server - just can't bring myself to spend the money on the required equipment (server + NAS) - but it *would* greatly help with the "storage crisis" I have currently (you know... more media than room in which to store it). Honestly, it'd be quite easy to set up for my music as it's already ripped on on a drive which can be easily moved/replicated and I *do* have a computer available that'd work just fine as a basic server for music. A NAS, which absolutely would be required for the DVD/BR collection, is the bigger issue...

As I listen to things in the car I keep running across things that have metadata issues *or* need to be re-ripped to combine a few tracks (man... I really wish that car player would get an update to fix that without such a hassle being "needed"). I keep saying I'm going to go through it all and fix those but just never get to it... kind of like me saying I'm going to curate the Christmas music and create a single folder of "favorites" that has only the stuff we really like, the best versions of some, and *no* duplicates outside different artists doing the same song (and only on a few for that). I've been saying I'm going to do that for the past 3 Christmases but just haven't made the time...

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Does anyone know of an app that can interrogate databases and recreate album and song title data from number of tracks, track order and track duration data? Preferrably an app that can do this en masse rather an album at a time?
I don't need album artwork just titles.

That's probably impossible near as I can tell.

How would such an app do that w/out being able to id each album (and then look up the data) accurately... unless your ripping software retained some such id info (like UPC code), which I'm not aware any do?

_Man_

 

[Bartman]

That's probably impossible near as I can tell.

How would such an app do that w/out being able to id each album (and then look up the data) accurately... unless your ripping software retained some such id info (like UPC code), which I'm not aware any do?

_Man_

That's probably impossible near as I can tell.

How would such an app do that w/out being able to id each album (and then look up the data) accurately... unless your ripping software retained some such id info (like UPC code), which I'm not aware any do?

_Man_

Correlation algorithm of: number of tracks, track order, track duration versus correlation of albums in the database.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Just an FYI: Since I have more time on my hands these days, I re-purposed a 10-year old PC still running Win7 as a Plex PC (and JellyFin, because, why not?), and it was fairly painless installing the server software on the old PC, and the only thing I need to upgrade or add is storage space (hard drives), as I decide what I want it to serve for my entertainment purposes. I have some Win10 codes from my IT admin days, so if I need to, I can also upgrade it to Win10 later.

 

[jcroy]

That's probably impossible near as I can tell.

How would such an app do that w/out being able to id each album (and then look up the data) accurately... unless your ripping software retained some such id info (like UPC code), which I'm not aware any do?

The question is how exactly are particular databases interrogated.

If you know what the format of the "send string" is to a particular database.

 

[jcroy]

Does anyone know of an app that can interrogate databases and recreate album and song title data from number of tracks, track order and track duration data? Preferrably an app that can do this en masse rather an album at a time?
I don't need album artwork just titles.

There is the gnudb which appears to still be available. It uses the same interrogation disc id string format as the older cddb and freedb:

xxyyyyzz

xx = sum of starting times of all tracks (mod 255)
yyyy = length of disc
zz = number of tracks

(These digits are in hexadecimal).

CDDB - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

gnudb.org CD database

gnudb.org a new home the free CD database

gnudb.org

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

There is the gnudb which appears to still be available. It uses the same interrogation disc id string format as the older cddb and freedb:

xxyyyyzz

xx = sum of starting times of all tracks (mod 255)
yyyy = length of disc
zz = number of tracks

(These digits are in hexadecimal).

CDDB - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

gnudb.org CD database

gnudb.org a new home the free CD database

gnudb.org

I stand corrected then... although accuracy of translating/calculating the specific track info Bartman mentioned into such disc ID still could be a tad iffy near as I can tell -- I can easily see the (deduced) starting times checksum and/or aggregate disc length could easily be off by a bit from what's actually used by the DBs in practice. Maybe I should make a personal little project of this since I do have the time (and perhaps, interest and inclination) these days...

Too bad whatever's implemented in the iTunes for Windows software doesn't seem particularly good at retrieving album artwork, especially for classical music CDs, though -- the Groove Music player that comes w/ Windows 8 and higher seems modestly better at that, but still not that good... Yeah, that's specifically not what Bartman asked for...

Anyway, thanks!

_Man_