Fast ripping of CDs (and storage)

[dave2010]

Someone in our house (not me) keeps remarking on the piles of CDs, the boxes stored in cupboards, the new boxes which come in from Amazon and elsewhere. I guess many of us have similar conversations.

Occasionally I get comments such as "why don't we put all the CDs on a device ..." - (such as one of those Brennan thingies ...) and "then store all the CDs in a big box somewhere else" - typically mentions garage, shed, loft etc.

One of the reasons I don't particularly want to go this way is just the sheer time involved. With several thousand CDs, if each took 5 minutes (optimistic) to store, that'd be getting on for 200 hours non-stop. Then Sod's law would probably kick in anyway, and the drive or data storage device would get damaged or nicked, and the whole effort would be wasted.

I'm guessing that perhaps the most sensible approach, if I am to even think of going this way at all, is to select maybe the 200 or so most interesting CDs, and then rip them to a hard drive, and then play them back via my network and Squeezebox. That way my time involvement could perhaps be reduced to a few days, but at the end of it all, it'd only save the equivalent of approximately one IKEA CD rack.

I have looked at the specs of the Brennan JB7 - OK, but not too thrilling. If I remember it can only save to MP3 and WAV. WAV might not be too bad, and I think it can export to a hard drive.

Other devices which might also do similar things are from Olive (e.g 3HD recorder), and the XIVA musicm8. I did hear very good things about older CD recorders - such as a Yamaha model with a disc drive - but unfortunately I never quite got into CD recorders, and some which might have had suitably high audio quality, together with storage for quite a collection of CDs, passed me by.

A DIY solution might also be feasible - for example using a PC as a Linux box, and put in several CD drives for ripping. Anyone tried that?

[Macca]

As far as Brennan goes read this thread if you didn't already:

http://theartofsound.net/forum/showt...hlight=brennan

[Tim]

A DIY solution might also be feasible - for example using a PC as a Linux box, and put in several CD drives for ripping. Anyone tried that?

I haven't tried multiple rips, and I doubt your processor would cope with it, I'm just going to run a test and see what a drain it would be?

I recently ripped around 1,500 CD's and if they are in good condition, you can get them done in around 2 minutes each, if they are marked and you need to use error correction, that can take 5 minutes +, depending on how bad they are. But it's a ONCE only task and believe you me, if you ever do do it, you will be making regular backups for sure - I'm never doing that again . But for me the pluses are fantastic, I have my entire CD collection on a 2TB drive, I listen to far more music and it only takes a few mouse clicks to find anything.

I would build your own if you can, the sound quality you will achieve from a dedicated music player will outclass the units you have mentioned and cost a darn sight less, but you will need a good DAC. You should also get lot's of help from the file audio boys here, if you get stuck or need advice

And if you don't want to build one, get a Squeezebox.

[Tim]

OK, I just did a single rip using EAC for a FLAC file. This is on a fairly well sorted PC running Win7 x64 with nothing else running on it, apart from this web browser. It's using 1.7 GB RAM and the CPU was running at around 10%, but with regular peaks to 50~60% (Dual core 3.16GHz), so you would need a pretty beefy PC to run multiple rips IMO. Additionally, I reckon you would increase the risks of getting errors and may have to start again. Your rips would take considerably longer, so what you gained by doing multiples, would be cancelled out.

My advice would be a single rip at a time, using a good desktop PC with a good quality drive. A laptop is not good for long ripping sessions.



Intel E8500
8 GB RAM 1066MHz DDR2
Plextor PX-L890SA drive
Rickie Lee Jones - Pirates
EAC v0.99
FLAC file

EDIT: And +1 for Martins' post, avoid the Brennan.

[webby]

I went through the same process recently, actually I'm still part way through it. Ok, I don't have thousands of CDs, probably more like 600. I started selectively ripping to alac using xld and I've done around 300 I guess but I've got to the point where I'm now thinking to myself "do I want to rip the rest of these CDs? You've got your absolutely favourites, why not use spotify premium for the rest? It's lossy yes, but I doubt I'll be able to tell the difference".

So that's where I am right now. About 300 CDs stored nicely under the bed and the remainder waiting for me to make my mind up.

[Stratmangler]

I went through the same process recently, actually I'm still part way through it. Ok, I don't have thousands of CDs, probably more like 600. I started selectively ripping to alac using xld and I've done around 300 I guess but I've got to the point where I'm now thinking to myself "do I want to rip the rest of these CDs? You've got your absolutely favourites, why not use spotify premium for the rest? It's lossy yes, but I doubt I'll be able to tell the difference".

So that's where I am right now. About 300 CDs stored nicely under the bed and the remainder waiting for me to make my mind up.

Have you tested that statement ?
I've compared CDs to Spotify @ 320kbps and the difference is quality is very apparent - the CDs have much more detail and sound better as a result.

[webby]

No I haven't, but I do know that I don't have golden lugholes.

[Stratmangler]

No I haven't, but I do know that I don't have golden lugholes.

Neither have I
Golden ears that is.

[Tim]

Have you tested that statement ?
I've compared CDs to Spotify @ 320kbps and the difference is quality is very apparent - the CDs have much more detail and sound better as a result.

+1, quite a big difference even to my cloth ears - of course you need the right equipment to reveal that difference?

[webby]

One of the reasons I don't particularly want to go this way is just the sheer time involved.

Another alternative is to use a cd ripping service such as RipCaster, i-fi or ExactRip.