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

[DaveF]

I’m being strident because this is a super easy thing that was figured out and automated for the masses a decade or two ago.

Honestly, the real answer in 2021 is, “Don’t bother. Just sign up for Spotify or Apple Music and enjoy music, and spend your free time on the stuff you enjoy doing (which is probably not ripping CDs)”

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I don’t think you’re wrong, FWIW.

I ripped the majority of my collection as 320kbps MP3s nearly two decades ago and those rips have sufficed. I may do them one more time now that I have a Plex server to get them all in either uncompressed or lossless, but it’s a low priority daydream. For the past couple years, when I’ve bought new CDs, I’ve switched to Apple Lossless since it’s supported by my Apple devices and Oppo but I haven’t done comparative listening to see if there’s a noticeable difference from the 320kbps files.

The Spotify thing doesn’t really hold any appeal to me. I’m just not that interested in nearly unlimited music that I may or may not like or have time to sift through. I just want the stuff I already like and listen to neatly organized. But that shouldn’t be a surprise on a forum where many of us still spend $20 on a la carte titles rather than $7 a month to subscribe to unlimited titles

 

[Thomas Newton]

Are you using a Mac or PC?

I use iTunes - which works on both platforms but I think Apple may have renamed it based on which device you’re using it on - and rip my discs using the Apple Lossless setting. You can have iTunes handle the organization of the files, which is basically:

I also use iTunes. In recent versions of macOS, Apple has done away with the monolithic version of iTunes, and split its functions among several applications. So music functions are now in the Music application, and in the Finder (syncing).

 

[Thomas Newton]

This scares me, Dave. When I performed my one test rip, it threw the dozen or so Krall songs from that one CD into a main folder. If I did four more rips right now, I'd have a single folder with a mish-mosh of disorganized songs. artists, etc.

In fact, the EAC software asked specifically how I wanted it to handle the file names. It gave me a jillion options involving the string of artist's name, song title, album name, etc.

This is why it is better to use a database-oriented program like iTunes/Music, than to directly manage music files using the Macintosh Finder, or Windows Explorer. A database-oriented program should make it easy to view music in several ways: by artist, by album, by song, by user-created playlist; without forcing you to climb through directory hierarchies every time that you want to do it.

EAC may be a good program for extracting music from your CDs, but it's only half of the solution. If you turn over the management of the files that EAC creates to a program that is good at organizing, instead of working with them directly in Windows Explorer, you may be happier.

 

[jcroy]

Honestly, the real answer in 2021 is, “Don’t bother. Just sign up for Spotify or Apple Music and enjoy music, and spend your free time on the stuff you enjoy doing (which is probably not ripping CDs)”

If somebody is really lazy and/or broke, there's always searching for the song/album on youtube.

 

[Thomas Newton]

I thought the car did WAV, I must I’ve missed where it didn’t. I don’t disagree with any of that, I was just interpreting the parameters of the assignment differently. I think EAC is fine enough but I really think whatever they’re calling iTunes these days is the gold standard for this sort of thing.

iTunes is probably the gold standard, or close to it, for the organization – but it may not be the gold standard for extracting bit-perfect audio from the CDs themselves.

In another forum, there was someone claiming that iTunes often did not extract audio in bit-perfect ways - and that it was easy to tell by extracting the same songs twice, and comparing the output files. His preferred solution was to extract audio using some other application that extracted audio over and over again, until it got two copies that were identical.

 

[jcroy]

In another forum, there was someone claiming that iTunes often did not extract audio in bit-perfect ways - and that it was easy to tell by extracting the same songs twice, and comparing the output files. His preferred solution was to extract audio using some other application that extracted audio over and over again, until it got two copies that were identical.

(From an historical perspective).

Back in the day, I wrote my own computer code to extract blocks of cd sectors and put them together into *.wav files. Large blocks would be read two or more times in different ways (ie. to force a reread for the latter), and compare the two+ re-reads blocks if they are identical or not to the first read (via md5 hashes).

At the time, this was the only way to determine whether the audio cd data extraction was accurate or not on computer cdrom drives. (Assuming c1 error correction was done correctly).

 

[Scott Merryfield]

I ripped my CD collection many years ago when I purchased my first iPod -- a model with a 40GB hard drive sold through Hewlett-Packard. So, it was quite awhile ago when I started, and I still use the same general process today. Back then, MP3 was the universal playback format, so I selected that with a high bit rate compression. To this day, I am still satisfied with the results of my earliest rips. I only listen to the files in "mobile" situations, though -- either via ear phones from a portable device, sending to a bluetooth speaker from a portable device, or in my car via a USB thumb drive. In those situations, you are not going to be able to tell the difference between a high bit rate MP3 and a lossless FLAC file.

I usually use Exact Audio Copy (EAC) for the ripping / compression, and then import the files into iTunes (Windows version) for organization and final tagging. That tagging is important to me -- I want the artist, album and song information correct, and also to have the proper album cover. I have used iTunes for the ripping / compression at times, though, and it does a decent job.

The above process works great for me for CDs or hybrid SACDs. For concerts on DVD or BD -- or DVD-Audio discs -- my process is more time consuming, as I need to get the music into a format that I can compress. I use Audacity to record a WAV file during playback of the disc on my PC, then use Wave Editor to separate the one long WAV file into individual files for each song track. I can then compress those WAV files to MP3 using EAC, import the MP3s into iTunes and then properly tag the music.

 

[jcroy]

(Another historical context).

The big reason why getting bit-for-bit accuracy was difficult for computer cdrom drives in extracting audio cd data, was that there was not a formal "force unit access" mode for reading sectors from a red book audio cd disc.

Even today, many current computer cdr/cdrom drives will cache the read data, even if it is the "wrong" data (ie. due to jitter). If you immediately issue a read command to re-read the same audio data sectors, it will just "read" the data from the cache and not re-read the actual cd disc.

So older cd ripper programs worked around this "cache" problem, such that the drive is tricked into doing a "force unit access" (ie. re-read the cd disc and not the cache) due to the data sectors being asked is already gone from the cache.

(In contrast, dvd discs don't have this immediate jitter problem in practice. The spec for reading dvd or bluray discs, has a standard "force unit access" mode from the very start).

 

[jcroy]

The above process works great for me for CDs or hybrid SACDs.

For such hybrid sacd discs, are you just extracting the cd layer?

Or are you extracting the actual hi-res sacd layer? (IIRC, this can done by a very tedious hack on a sony playstation 3).

 

[Scott Merryfield]

For such hybrid sacd discs, are you just extracting the cd layer?

Or are you extracting the actual hi-res sacd layer? (IIRC, this can done by a very tedious hack on a sony playstation 3).

I am just extracting the CD layer. I do not have any way of getting to the SACD layer with the tools I possess. Since I am playing back the resulting high bit rate MP3 files either via my smart phone (I have a microSD card containing all my music installed in the phone) to ear plugs / bluetooth speaker or via USB thumb drive in my car, the hi-res SACD layer isn't really necessary anyway. If I am listening on my main HT system, I just play the actual discs on my old Oppo 980H DVD player or Sony UHD player.

The downside is I have no way to rip / compress SACD discs that lack a CD layer. Fortunately, I do not own very many of those.

BTW, I used to own an iPod Nano until a year or two ago, and it was a great portable device for when we traveled -- it fit in the case for my Etymotic ear plugs I was using. Unfortunately, after we returned home from a trip awhile back, I accidentally ran the iPod and ear plugs through the washing machine. The ear plugs survived, but the Nano was toast. Since Apple no longer sells the Nano, I just bought a microSD card for my Android phone, and that works fine -- plus, I can fit my entire music collection on the microSD card, where the Nano was only either 8GB or 16GB (can't remember which).

 

[Traveling Matt]

If you rip lossless, then you need to separately compress to MP3 or AAC. And you need to then manage two separate libraries and integrate that into your audio listening and music management and ratings process. Everytime you rate music, you have to rate it twice. Everytime you search for album art, you have to apply it twice.

• I think we might need more info to determine how big of a hassle this whole thing would be for him. Maybe it's worth maintaining two entirely separate workflows for car vs everything else? Maybe it's worth the investment for a new car receiver that supports FLAC? Because, yes, two sets of files may be unavoidable otherwise.
• 128kbps AAC on his HT won't sound great to be honest, and if he loves hi-rez music he's not going to be happy with 128 anything.
• It seems there might be some confusion over WAV vs FLAC. WAV is uncompressed audio and does not support tagging, such as album art and other metadata. FLAC is lossless, which is compression ("lossless compression), and does support tagging, hence just the one library would suffice if his car supported FLAC. "Uncompressed" and "lossless" are often used interchangeably, but they're not the same thing and could lead to some confusion as discussed here. Including for the OP as he determines whether his car supports WAV.

 

[Mike Frezon]

as he determines whether his car supports WAV.

I HOPE to be able to do that tomorrow.

 

[Bartman]

My 2005 Focus was the first car with an CD/MP3 player. I used a free MP3 ripper on my PC to create MP3 CDRs. I listened to MP3s on my daily commute, with on average one CDR a month but ripping was tedious. What's worse I didn't have Grace Notes for internet lookup of album/artist/track info, I'd advise to only use rippers that provide that info. That info is not important in a car (as you should be concentrating on driving) but elsewhere the lack of info is a real nuisance.

After getting an iPhone 3 I started using iTunes (for Windows) for ripping (with info). That worked well for many years and I used old iPhones as music players with both headphones and Bluetooth speakers etc. However, be aware that many of the today's inexpensive MP3 players do not decode AAC and the files will need to be converted to MP3.

I now use Linux Ubuntu on an old PC with the Asunder ripper. I use FRE:AC for AAC and other conversions. Both programs work well and have excellent online support (if you run into problems). FRE:AC is also available for Windows.

Wherever you store your music files (especially an HDD) make they are backed up!

 

[PopBodhi]

I am getting to the point of maximum saturation in terms of media.

So I am contemplating a big project to rip my CD collection onto HDD storage. This also seems like it would be the easiest way to make my music available in my living room HT and in my car. I still buy CDs and I believe this would increase the likelihood of me actually listening more often to the music I purchase.

I have an old laptop(s) I could use for this (with optical drives). And I have empty external HDDs onto which I could organize the music.

My questions fall in these categories.

1.) How best to organize the CDs on the HDD? Should I use folders based on artist? Just assign each disc to its own folder? Genre folders? [I always find genres difficult to classify.]

2.) Software? Just use Windows Media player? I have a program called "Express Ripper." Or is there something that's WAY better and perfectly developed for this task (that you recommend)?

It's daunting. I've got hundreds and hundreds of CDs. And it's going to take a while. That's why I want to do it right from the beginning and not have to go back and do it all over.

I am looking for any and all suggestions of how to achieve the end result of porting all my music over to HDD.

I use JRiver Media Center. Ripping discs is relatively easy and you can organize however you like. I have created playlists that range from jazz to my favorite dance music and I send albums to those destinations. One thing, be sure you are ripping your CDs in the highest resolution possible. You don’t want to rip all of that music in MP3. My file type of choice is FLAC.

 

[JWC1969]

I am getting to the point of maximum saturation in terms of media.

So I am contemplating a big project to rip my CD collection onto HDD storage. This also seems like it would be the easiest way to make my music available in my living room HT and in my car. I still buy CDs and I believe this would increase the likelihood of me actually listening more often to the music I purchase.

I have an old laptop(s) I could use for this (with optical drives). And I have empty external HDDs onto which I could organize the music.

My questions fall in these categories.

1.) How best to organize the CDs on the HDD? Should I use folders based on artist? Just assign each disc to its own folder? Genre folders? [I always find genres difficult to classify.]

2.) Software? Just use Windows Media player? I have a program called "Express Ripper." Or is there something that's WAY better and perfectly developed for this task (that you recommend)?

It's daunting. I've got hundreds and hundreds of CDs. And it's going to take a while. That's why I want to do it right from the beginning and not have to go back and do it all over.

I am looking for any and all suggestions of how to achieve the end result of porting all my music over to HDD.

I ripped my expansive CD collection using Apple Lossless on my computer and then saved everything to a 128GB thumb drive. I then put the thumb drive into the back of the Bluesound Node2i I'd purchased, which connects to my AVR via RCA cables. The Bluesound app then lets you access all the music on the thumb drive, organized properly and automatically and with artwork. Incredible to think 400ish CD are now lossless in a thumb drive. Technology. Only issue with this solution is one has to buy a Node 2i. But worth every penny considering its better DAC than my Denon AVR, ability to fully unfold Tidal MQA, etc. Good luck with the project!

 

[Mike Frezon]

**Important Frezon Car Update!**

My Diana Krall .wav files were not recognized by my 2013 Honda C-RV audio system.

Here's the appropriate manual page:

 

[Mike Frezon]

So...this is disappointing. I don't want to have to duplicate everything.

But I also don't want to only rip .mp3s for my two uses: listening on my HT and in my car.

I do not understand what AAC is. The above page indicates that it only will recognize iTunes AAC files.

Here is the pertinent page for my Denon X3600 AVR:

 

[jcroy]

What filesystem was your flash drive formatted to?

In my current car, it only knows how to read a FAT32 filesystem on a flash drive. Unfortnately my car stereo does not recognize other filesystems, such as NTFS and exFAT.

 

[David Weicker]

Another thing to be aware of (whether its important to Mike is up to him).

A lot of the online Metadata (song titles, performers, composers) was created by individuals uploading the information, not from an official source. So it may be incomplete (or wrong).

I own a lot of Broadway albums/Film soundtracks, and I can't tell you how many times the performer is listed as 'Original Cast', or the song title includes the show title in parentheses.

for example:
Album title "Pajama Game (songs from the original film soundtrack)"
Song title "Hey There (Pajama Game OST)"
Artist "Original Film Cast"


Fortunately, in iTunes I am able to edit these fields and have more acceptable values
Album title "The Pajama Game" - sort value "Pajama Game"
Song title "Hey There"
Artist "John Raitt"