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Topic: Digitizing a radio station's 7,000 CD collection (Read 14460 times) previous topic - next topic
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Digitizing a radio station's 7,000 CD collection

Reply #25 –
Oh really, yeah that sounds about right. It wasn't too difficult IIRC.

Digitizing a radio station's 7,000 CD collection

Reply #26 –
Ok, so that powerfile looks like a great tool! The only thing I'm concerned about is that the ones you buy off ebay are likely to have a dead battery, according to the PowerFIle rep I talked to on the phone. But then again, if there's a picture of it turning on and the previous owner says it works and reads CDs and DVDs, then there shouldn't be a problem, right? Probably wrong, just because I don't know if this thing could handle doing another 4,500 CDs when it's expected battery life is only 5 years and the product came out in 2000.

Powerfile charges $1500 to get the battery replaced, but I'm sure you can just desolder and solder and new one back in, if you know where the battery is located. Also, there are warranty programs for the Powerfile out there, set up by these two companies that were just talked about as having made Ripping software specifically tailored to the Powerfile units. Check these sites out:

Mammoth Power Ripper: http://www.mammothi.com/

The Rip Monkey: http://www.theripmonkey.com/screenshots.shtml

The only problems are that with Rip Monkey, it only interfaces with iTunes (and thus could only directly do Apple Lossless for a lossless format), although it says on the website that:

"iTunes also supports additional importers via a plug-in system, so other file formats may be implemented by third party vendors. "

So what would these plug-ins/program attachments and their vendors names be? If I don't have such a plug-in, I would have to re-batch-encode the entire collection to FLAC from Apple Lossless, rather than getting it done with such a plug in at the time of ripping. Yeah, I know that's not so bad, but it would be a lot easier with that additional plug-in...
Both are absurdly expensive though ($999???), so I plan on getting them in other ways if possible..

And regarding Mammoth, the problem is that their stuff is only for Windows XP, which we don't plan on using...although they do ogg as well (still no flac though) using its own encoding/ripping program rather than that of something like itunes...so Mammoth is pretty much not an option, though Rip Monkey is still a viable one.

Another possibility with the Powerfile is that the drives might not be overly accurate. Now, I know nothing about this stuff, but the unit doesn't look like it has a premium drive in it like these Plextors (could anyone briefly PM me and tell me what makes these Plextors so much better than all other drives, or at least send me a link to a forum thread that discusses this?)

But that's only if I don't decide to go the Professional Ripping Service route. Going pro seems better and better every time i look at the amount of work this will take, and the Pro services had "Data Grooming" so that when you have 10 different CDs with the same artist/composer you won't get 5 or so different artist titles, you'll only get one.

Example of data grooming: getting only "Bach" rather than "J.S. Bach" "Bach, J.S.", "Johann Sebastian Bach", etc.

I've been seeing some really good prices from these companies, and I'll know that they can reduce their cost about 60 percent for such a large amount of CDs, expecially since they dont have to waste 150 DVD-Rs and they can put the files on a SATA RAID that I mail them instead...

And I only recently learned that the "I" stands for "inexpensive." Sorry about that, I'm a total noob!

We want to have these archived for playlist formats, especially for when a large number of DJs might not be able to do their shows and we need to set up a giant playlist or "fake show". It would also be for our DJs' pure listening enjoyment.

CDs compressed in FLAC usually end up between 250-300MB, Lets just keep that range and not fret over such a trivial matter of size. We'll be buying over 2.5TB of drives anyway, for expansion's sake.

Thanks everyone for the responses so far!

-Mitch

Digitizing a radio station's 7,000 CD collection

Reply #27 –
Quote
Both are absurdly expensive though ($999???), so I plan on getting them in other ways if possible..

This is just shameless.
Quote
...or at least send me a link to a forum thread that discusses this?

At least? You could at least search.

Digitizing a radio station's 7,000 CD collection

Reply #28 –
Also,

I've been looking at the features that some pro CD-Ripping Services offer, and only some do ogg-wrapped FLACs while others only do native FLAC, but probably most would be willing to "extend" their capabilities or conduct a "pilot program" for ogg-FLAC.

So that's another thing to consider: What are the benefits of an ogg-wrapped FLAC in comparsion to a native FLAC.

Also, what is the difference between "bit-perfect" ripping vs. EAC.

Some pro ripping companies use those metadata "grooming" datafix programs I talked about in the last email, while here's something I read while considering the company Riptopia:

"Riptopia is the only company partnered with Gracenote and
Muze, and currently has the largest collection of clean metadata with over
55,000,000 unique songs in 80 languages and cover art for over 300,000
albums. (Cottage industry CD ripping services use amateur free internet
databases that must be filtered with dataperfect or datafix programs). Riptopia is the only data processing company that can identify and
tag them with almost 100% accuracy. (Did you know there are 450 different
versions of Norah Jones' Come Away With Me ?)."

I know Riptopia is trying to advertise itself erll, so can anyone give me an honest opinion (from practical experience) of how much better these Gracenote and Muze programs are compared to FreeDB?

Another thing someone told me to consider is whether the drive format would be HFS+ (Mac), NTFS (Windows), or FAT32 or something else...? I have no idea which would be best, so if people could recommend a format that's best for audio archiving and would at least show up on both Mac and Windows (The only format I know of that does this is FAT32, are there others) in case we need to use windows in the future.

This doesnt encompass everything i wanted to mention, but I'm running short on time at this hour...

Thanks!

Digitizing a radio station's 7,000 CD collection

Reply #29 –
patsoe, what is shameless, the price they are charging for the software or my desire to get it by other means...?

Also, sorry about not searching for such a thread. I'm just short on time. Trying to pull of a 4.0GPA while balancing all this isn't too easy, especially with being a signed musician with a band and several recording projects on the side.

-mitch

Digitizing a radio station's 7,000 CD collection

Reply #30 –
Quote
Also, what is the difference between "bit-perfect" ripping vs. EAC.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=360001"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Bit-perfect ripping is a pleonasm. To rip means to make a bit-perfect copy.
EAC can do secure ripping. It means that you get a warning when you are trying to rip a scratched CD. Otherwise, everything seems fine, but you get a file that skips when you listen to it.

Digitizing a radio station's 7,000 CD collection

Reply #31 –
Quote
Also, sorry about not searching for such a thread. I'm just short on time. Trying to pull of a 4.0GPA while balancing all this isn't too easy, especially with being a signed musician with a band and several recording projects on the side.
If you are so pressed for time that you cannot observe the common forum courtesy of searching before asking, then it seems you have yourself spread a bit too thin, and perhaps should not have added this extra-curricular radio station project to your burden in the first place.

Regards,
Madrigal

Digitizing a radio station's 7,000 CD collection

Reply #32 –
Quote
Quote
Also, sorry about not searching for such a thread. I'm just short on time. Trying to pull of a 4.0GPA while balancing all this isn't too easy, especially with being a signed musician with a band and several recording projects on the side.
If you are so pressed for time that you cannot observe the common forum courtesy of searching before asking, then it seems you have yourself spread a bit too thin, and perhaps should not have added this extra-curricular radio station project to your burden in the first place.

Regards,
Madrigal
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=360062"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Maybe MitchM just likes the attention
we was young an' full of beans

Digitizing a radio station's 7,000 CD collection

Reply #33 –
Quote
patsoe, what is shameless, the price they are charging for the software or my desire to get it by other means...?
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

The guys who wrote that software think their time's worth a 1000 dollars, and they have every right to think so. I think that for these purposes, there are plenty of easy/free solutions - see most earlier posts. With so many people suggesting interesting things to you, why would you need to steal something?

As to the other thing that irritated me: Madrigal wrote it down (in a way that I do not sufficiently master English for).

Anyway, I'm in a better mood today

I don't have any experience with gracenote, but they do have an impressive resume at [a href="http://www.gracenote.com/partners/]http://www.gracenote.com/partners/[/url] - on the other hand, I did a search in their database for "robbie williams swing" and found multiple entries, some of which seem to be rubbish (there's one with label "Capitol" and there's another with "Capital" which contains further typing errors too). Doesn't convince me much....

If you're still going to do this thing (see posts #32 and #22), I would think that it's better to separate your storage from the radio workstation. With such a big file system; you're better off putting it on something like a simple Debian machine, and mount it through NFS. Then you're free to pick any robust file system you like, can optimize it for large files perhaps, and don't have to worry about portability. An extra plus is that it is slightly more safe from user error (even the pro's at storagereview once by accident deleted all their content when they wanted to do a backup!).

Digitizing a radio station's 7,000 CD collection

Reply #34 –
Quote
I have recently been appointed director of my college radio station’s project to digitize all of our 7,000+ CDs.

...

Please let me know your suggestions for such a program and codec.

...

Thanks,
Mitch
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=358677"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Mitch,

I digitized a ~400 disc collection a couple years back, to WMA (gasp!) using WMP and some custom scripts.

I'm about to do it again to FLAC, using tools posted regarding here for PC.  I'm currently testing some custom scripts that use EAC, FLAC, FLAC tools, AccurateRip, MySQL, and WMP (primarily for metadata).

Anyway, the real info I had for you: I used (and will again) a 200-disc Escient PowerFile DVD/CD changer that I picked up some 6 years back.  It has Mac support too.  I see others have mentioned it here, and it served me well.

I've found that even though the hardware rips a little slower, it saves me a BUNDLE of time loading up 200 discs and walking away, coming back only to correct problems.  Hopefully EAC won't ruin my hardware if I leave it running unattended, I guess I'll post about that.


Shannon

Digitizing a radio station's 7,000 CD collection

Reply #35 –
Can you post a report in a new thread with how it worked out? If you wouldn't mind sharing methodology, scripts, etc. that would be great.

I have 400-500 cds and am weighing paying that musicshifter place to do it, or going through some extreme pain of my own. The hardware idea appeals to me a lot

Quote
Mitch,

I digitized a ~400 disc collection a couple years back, to WMA (gasp!) using WMP and some custom scripts.

I'm about to do it again to FLAC, using tools posted regarding here for PC.  I'm currently testing some custom scripts that use EAC, FLAC, FLAC tools, AccurateRip, MySQL, and WMP (primarily for metadata).

Anyway, the real info I had for you: I used (and will again) a 200-disc Escient PowerFile DVD/CD changer that I picked up some 6 years back.  It has Mac support too.  I see others have mentioned it here, and it served me well.

I've found that even though the hardware rips a little slower, it saves me a BUNDLE of time loading up 200 discs and walking away, coming back only to correct problems.  Hopefully EAC won't ruin my hardware if I leave it running unattended, I guess I'll post about that.


Shannon
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=361816"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]
Guinness for strength!

Digitizing a radio station's 7,000 CD collection

Reply #36 –
I'm curious as well how this worked out, as I have ~6000CDs to do here.

-brendan