Be Excellent To Each Other

I'd like to rip all of our CDs onto a hard drive. As we are moving away taking an external HDD full of tunes is much more appealing than shifting boxes and boxes of CDs. I reckon we have 700+ so it could take quite a while.

What ripping software do cool-cats use nowadays? I don't want to be caught out and exposed as a square, man.

MP3 will be the format of choice so I can use it on my iphone and Lady T's Creative Zen.

Things that I am looking for the software to be/do:

Not shit
Fast
Pretty much automated so I can just check in disc after disc
Handle tags decently
Organise the files into sensible directories
Handling album artwork automagically would be really nice.

Is there anything that you kind folk would care to recommend?

I still use CDEx, with MP3Tag on backup to rename stuff afterward if CDEx can't get them.

iTunes does all of that, but let's not turn this into another "iTunes is shit"/"no it isn't" thread.

CDEx: http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/
MP3Tag: http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

Or Windows Media Player, of course.

I'm going to throw in another vote for the lazy option: iTunes.
YMMV on the "not shit" aspect.

iTunes for me.

iTunes

I used windows media player, but now I use iTunes..

Well, I was thinking of iTunes, as I have it installed and have used it a lot before but I wanted to find out about other options too.

But does it get bogged down with large music collections? I tried to use it with a very large 'borrowed' mp3 collection (over 200gig) and it went a bit funny, so I switched to media monkey...

Also, can I pitch that you rip these in some lossless format, archive that file, and then convert into mp3, and use that? What you don't want to do is go through this again in a few years if you want higher quality files and mp3 is the worst format you could pick for this operation, quality wise.

Mine's not as big as Grim...'s ( ), but I use iTunes with my collection (currently 639gb, as mentioned in that other thread), and it's fine.

That idea does have merit, ignoring everything else it is the most high quality solution and I did briefly wonder about doing something like that when I was considering 'ripping quality'; but I'm just not sure it suits me at the moment. I don't think I fancy an extra step like that (especially if it could end up messing up tags if I something went awry), and although HDDs are fairly cheap I have already just had to buy one for this 'project'. Plus I don't know if I can be bothered.

Cheers for the suggestion though.

It's extremely easy. Ripping to lossless is exactly the same as ripping to mp3, and en masse batch converting from lossless to mp3 is one step that will preserve metadata. 700 CDs will be about a quarter of a terabtye, so not all that big actually.

You'll thank me later!

Am I the only bugger who uses Winamp then?

Yes.

I'll be doing this. I'll also be using 1x rate with error correction as well - I've got several albums that cause my Touch to skip. What is this, 1983? Then again, it was being massively laggy and unresponsive, and the album artwork was all fucked - yet another 'total restore as a new iPod' seems to have fixed both of those for now. Bag of shit.

I just need to get round to starting this task. Apple should sell a device that checks iTunes has what you put in, queues it to download then microwaves the disc. It should also be able to detect a genuine CD, obv.

This man speaketh much sense. Also, iTunes.

Ive started archiving my CD's using MediaMonkey, ok its not as accurate as EAC, but for me being fairly computer illiterate, it was the easier choice.

If anyone else here uses MM, do you have a batch artwork finder thingy...I tried to download a script but couldnt get it to work.

I use 'abcde' (A Better CD Encoder) & Rubyripper if I'm having problems ripping scratched CDs.

Dunno if either are available in Windaes or Aipple but you asked what we used & didn't say what kind of machine you want them for

EDIT: Fucksocks, you asked what the cool kids used & I know I'm cool, but I'm not sure about Linux

I use EAC as i think it's by far the best. But if you want something simpler, CDex does the job, even though it hasn't been updated in ages.

EAC & LAME.

Talking of which, my desktop PC's DVD-/+RW drive completely fails to recognise the last CD I bought as an audio CD. I thought I'd been beaten by some fiendish anti-copying voodoo, but my laptop's BD-R drive reads it fine. Odd.

EAC and Lame here, too.

I use Winamp for listening, but CDeX for ripping.

Hmmm, I am giving more and more consideration to ripping in a lossless format first.

What's a good batch converter? I used to use dbpoweramp a while back.

Currently ripping CDs with itunes, using apple lossless. Will then convert (probably using itunes again) to MP3.

It's going to take quite a long time to get through all of these, though. It's something I should really have started on sooner.

You have configured iTunes to rip on insert and eject when done? That speeds things up a bit.

Absolutely, first thing I did in fact, so I can sit on the sofa with piles of CDa on the floor near the PC and swap them over like a mindless automaton. It's still going to take a while though.

Not got a younger family member who'd do it for £30 or so?

How many CD's are there? I'd do it for £30 (plus expenses)

Which are better: WAVs or AIFFs?

No difference. But you should probably be choosing a lossless compression format over either.

Yeah, I've done my collection in ALAC, but am suddenly intrigued about these 1411 bitrate basts.

I swear my (accidental) WAVs sound better than my ALACs, but maybe that's just The Great Southern Trendkill sounding awesome anyway.

I have yet to rip the same album using different methods and compare.

They don't. They can't. ALAC is lossless. You can take a WAV file, tell iTunes to convert it to ALAC, then tell it to convert it back to WAV, and your start and ending files will be identical.