Ripping Yarns

[twelvebears]

Mine was a CDRW drive, but if you can find a cheap CDR only drive then that's fine as if you're like me, you'll not use it for writing discs anyway.

The iMac drive only reads CDs at x24 while most CDR drives now do over x40 with CDs. As a modern iMac can encode to lossless at x40+ realtime, the internal drive is really holding things back.

The reason the internal drive is limited to x24 is so it doesn't make the wizzing noise a drive running flat-out does and spoil the lovely Mac silence!!

[sastusbulbas]

I have tried just about every ripping program and playback software that is available free or for trial.

These days I just stick to PC with Windows 7 and Media Player 12 for playback. I rip CD's with WMP12 as WAV, after uploading the album data.

I also use iTunes for some stuff such as the iPod and cheap downloads, and I still have MediaMonkey which is set up for my Hi res Flac Library only though WMP12 plays my Flac, each has it's own collection of music at a seperate location, with WMP12 being my primary with my primary 1.5TB library drive.

If I have a problem CD, and I like it, I buy a new copy. I have found EAC to be no better than iTunes or WMP and others for bit accurate rips.

Some time back I did some comparison ripping of damaged CD's to see what I could salvage for replay, EAC proved problematic, WMP would let me rip a damaged disc to WAV with less deterioration during PC playback than I would get with standard CD replay in a CD player. This at least allows me to have teh album, if I notice a problem I can flag it as something to buy, delete the damaged copy, bin the damaged CD, rip the new CD and store the disc.

[webby]

I posted this in another thread but hope it might work better on it's own.

Basically, I wonder what ripping strategies you may have. What do you consider when ripping your library?

Do you rip everything losslessly? I know that, ultimately, hard drive space is the only limitation.

Do you selectively rip to high bit rate lossy formats for those less essential albums?

Do you decide that you never want to hear certain CDs again and choose to not rip those discs, or is it a case of 'you've got it, so why not rip it'?

I'd be interested to hear your tactics and methods.

I refer back to the original post in this thread as the ripping questions have been answered but the 'what do you rip' question hasn't.

I know it's down to personal preference but as I'm working through my archive of around 800 cds I'm wondering whether to rip everything or whether to make a decision on the spot and choose to discard a cd into the 'happy to not hear again' pile. How does one make that decision? I'm finding it a little difficult

[The Grand Wazoo]

....... make a decision on the spot and choose to discard a cd into the 'happy to not hear again' pile. How does one make that decision? I'm finding it a little difficult

Never get rid of any recording unless:
a) you don't like it & never have, or
b) you've got duplicated copies

Whenever I've trangressed those 2 rules I've ended up regretting it. You never know when you might get a hankering to hear it again.

[Alex_UK]

Never get rid of any recording unless:
a) you don't like it & never have, or
b) you've got duplicated copies

Whenever I've trangressed those 2 rules I've ended up regretting it. You never know when you might get a hankering to hear it again.

+1 (and huge hard drives are so cheap these days you may as well...)

[Themis]

I know it's down to personal preference but as I'm working through my archive of around 800 cds I'm wondering whether to rip everything or whether to make a decision on the spot and choose to discard a cd into the 'happy to not hear again' pile. How does one make that decision? I'm finding it a little difficult

I used to do it this way, but eventually decided that it was not worth having two piles of CDs.

As I use Squeezebox, I simply use a plugin that "separates" the albums in several categories. This is also useful, because some albums only appeal to only one of my family members...

[webby]

Update: I'm making headway into my library. My Lossless tracks now equal 3602, consisting of 287 separate discs, taking up 89.47GB. That's roughly 40 tracks per GB.

It's slow, but I kind of enjoy it and I'm sure it'll be well worth it. I add good quality artwork as I go.

[webby]

I add good quality artwork as I go.

On that note, my god, Neil Young's album artwork is awful isn't it? Apart from Sleeps With Angels, which I like, the rest* are shocking. They could've been done by a 6 year old!

* Admittedly, I don't have ALL his albums.

[webby]

Hi peeps,

I've not been here so much recently, life's been getting in the way. Still job hunting and have also started a web design course with the OU.

Anyway, I'm still ploughing through my cd collection, ripping to lossless. At this moment I'm at 4104 songs at 102.79GB. That's roughly 330 discs!

I've just been reading Graham's (Gbeer7?) adventures with his 8000m's.

[dave2010]

I've not ripped many of my CDs, and it's a daunting prospect as I have several thousand. Indeed it's got to the point where I sometimes simply use Spotify or Napster or something else to stream pieces, even if I have them already on CD, as tracking down the CD might take longer. I don't normally do that though. If I have a CD I will prefer to play that first. I know the quality isn't as good, but sometimes I just want to listen, and the SQ is OK-ish [sometimes really good!].

I have wondered about using something like a Brennan JB7 to do the job. That way I'd play each CD once, when I wanted to, and it'd be backed up to a disc at the same time. Trouble is that unit only does WAV (plus some lossy compressed format), so I'd need to use another run to convert to FLAC, but that could probably be done in batches overnight with a couple of external hard drives. There could be other downsides to that approach as well, as the SQ of the Brennan might not be as good as my CD player, and also I don't know how well it rips. If it does a good job though, then future playback would most likely be via my Squeezebox + Caiman combination.

One other issue about ripping - which doesn't affect too many CDs, is the need for gapless playback for some music. It can be a real pain if the tracks are separated, and then can't be played continuously and contiguously. Not quite sure how this will work - it may be hardware dependent. To be honest I don't know if it happens, but I'm sure it can, and would depend on the playback system. It certainly happens with MP3s.

Do CDs contain information relating to the gaps between tracks, either in a table of contents, or in each track itself? Most CD players seem to manage to play continuous music spread over several tracks seamlessly well enough.

Comments and advice would be welcomed. I really don't want to spend hours on the ripping process - which if I did a minimum of 6 per hour would take several weeks flat out. I'm probably not going to use a paying service either.