Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Best method to rip entire music collection (Read 13365 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

Best method to rip entire music collection

I've got a little over 300 CD's and have decided I want to rip them all to a new 160 GB hard drive.  Used to have a 300 cd changer and I just feel this is a cool way to go, hopefully coupled with a unit like the Audiotron.  I'm looking for some suggestions as to the best way to do this.  I definitely want to only rip these once - with a lossless codec such as Flac.  I've heard this is the one to use, with EAC.  My goal is to just get all of these ripped,  and then I'll have the flexibility to convert the songs into whatever formats I want later - for my iPod or Rio portable.

Anyways, does this sound reasonable?  I was told Flac was the way to go because I can save tag information in the rip?  Reason I thought I wanted to do that is if I rip 300 cd's to WAV, there won't be any CD info in those files.  Although I hear there are programs that will tag mp3's later?  I also want to organize my directories similar to the way Itunes does it - and I see EAC can do this.  My big thing is the FreeDB - it seems inconsistent with the entries??  I guess being user managed that is to be expected.  Any suggestions/thoughts would be appreciated!!

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #1 –
Your thoughts are exactly right regarding the easiest route for the long term.  You don't want to have to rerip your albums in the future, so the best bet is to rip now to a lossless codec (like FLAC), store the files somewhere (like a large HD), and then convert the archive to a lossy codec (like Ogg Vorbis or MP3) for use on a DAP or other small HD device down the road.

This is actually exactly what I do.  I have a 250gb Western Digital Caviar drive with my FLAC archive on the network at home that I use to play files at home to my stereo and over my network.  I converted the archive to Ogg Vorbis at 192kbps for use on my Karma when I'm on the go.

As for your lossless codec choice, I like FLAC over the other options.  Yes, some other lossless codecs compress better, and yes some other codecs encode faster.  However, FLAC is open-source (meaning no one is going to DRM your files or lock you in in terms of usage), FLAC is streamable (as far as I know APE, Shorten, etc. are not), FLAC decodes MUCH faster than the competition (its made for this specifically, meaning almost no delays or pauses to play a file), FLAC is gapless, etc.  Here's the "sales" page:

http://flac.sourceforge.net/features.html

You can use a variety of programs to encode to FLAC.  EAC is a very good option lots of people on HA like.  I personally don't really like the command line and overly complicated interface employed by EAC very much (I'm a GUI guy), but EAC will do a very good job in secure mode since it resamples the same spot to try to inusre it gets the right data.  You can also use a program like Easy CD-DA Extractor (http://www.poikosoft.com), a GUI program that ripped my albums perfectly from what I can tell (the waves on sample files I looked at were identical when ripped by EAC and ECDDA).  One nice thing about ECDDA is that it rips straight to FLAC... EAC rips to WAV and then converts to FLAC, taking more time to complete each disc.

My only recommendation would be that you encode in FLAC at max compression (level 8) to save space.  It doesn't affect decode time at all and it takes just a little longer to encode at level 8 than it does at level 5 or 4, meaning it makes sense to squeeze out the extra file space the first time and not worry about it later.

Good luck,
rt

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #2 –
I'm in the same boat as chaddc33.  I want to start a lossless backup of my CD collection, and I realize that FLAC and EAC are arguably the best "way to go," but I'm simply not sure what the best process is.

For example, should I use EAC to rip to a cue sheet + one large image and compress the image?  If so, will I be able to store track data in the image?  Or should I just compress each track indivdually?  What are the advantages and disadvantages of either process? 

This is a rather large undertaking, so I want to make sure I'm going to go about this in a way that will minimize headaches down the road.
I just discovered Opus. Holy mackerel!

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #3 –
Thanks for the great info!  I really do like that Easy CD-DA program.  I might just go with that - it seems a lot easier than EAC.  I'm a GUI guy too  One question - what players will play back the Flac format?  I see that the Easy CD-DA converts to other formats just great - looks perfect.  My big plan is to eventually get something like the Audiotron to be able to play the music in my living room.  I have to do some more research since that unit doesn't appear to do AAC (yet).

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #4 –
I've been using dbPowerAmp to play and handle flac files.  I liked the free player so well that I paid for the burner and utilities packages.  It's very good stuff.

Organizing your music collection with this software is quirky so I stick to building playlists but I may not have worked very hard at learning the database organization.  Maybe later.

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #5 –
I would recommend the godfather for getting correct tags.  Start off in the cd ripper by getting the FreeDB info as search parameters.  Then, use the godfather to retrieve allmusicguide.com information (professionally entered). Very easy to use.
be different like everyone else

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #6 –
ECDDA is actually pretty good on the organization front.  It provides a bunch of premade options for strcuture using variables like <album>, <artists>, etc.  You can also make your own as needed.  As for data, it downloads album information from FreeDB (free music album database), builds the ID3 metadata on the file from that, and can use it to build the directories and file names as well.

I ripped all my albums to individual flac files.  Whether this is the best approach or not I don't know... I can see the advantage to having whole "albums" in one file.  However, I like having the individual files for easy transcoding to lossy codecs, management, etc.  I also think it might be easier to deal with down the road as solo files (and to play in more players), but like I said I don't know alot about using single files with cue sheets.

As for players, theres a bunch of options available.

1. Winamp, http://www.winamp.com
- plug-in available
- everyone knows it, some people love it.  works well  as far as I've been able to tell, thoughh it might get unstable with HUGE catalogs.  Note that the best way to install the plug-in is to install Winamp 5.02 than install the Flac Installer which will automatically install the plug-in as well as Flac Front-end.

2. Apollo, http://koti.welho.com/hylinen/apollo/
- plug-in available on site
- great little player developed by a guy in Finland (I think?).  Basically he needed a player that did what he wanted, built Apollo, and extends it as he needs to.  I like it a lot.

3. Quintessential, http://www.quinnware.com/
- plug-in available on site
- yet another player, I haven't used this one much but it looks good.

4.  Foobar2000, http://www.foobar2000.org/
- native flac support, no need for plug-in
- basic player supported by HA I think.  Seems to work really well, very fast and very stable from my experience.

There's more options coming along every day, so its just a question of keeping an eye on boards to see when plug-ins get made and posted for a specific player.

good luck,
rt

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #7 –
Quote
One question - what players will play back the Flac format?  I see that the Easy CD-DA converts to other formats just great - looks perfect.  My big plan is to eventually get something like the Audiotron to be able to play the music in my living room.  I have to do some more research since that unit doesn't appear to do AAC (yet).

The PhatNoise Nome Digital Media Player plays MP3, FLAC, WMA and Ogg Vorbis.  It has a USB port for connecting to a LAN access point/router, and also accepts the DMS (digital media storage) hard drive cartridges that go into the PhatBox and Kenwood Music Keg car digital audio players.  I currently have a Music Keg in my car, and will be buying the Home Player in April.  I also have a 60 GB DMS full of FLAC files (about 170 album's worth).

Once I network it to my PC, I can play the FLACs comprising my entire collection from my external (Firewire/USB 2.0) 250 GB hard drive.  The PhatNoise Home Player has very high-quality components and outstanding audio specifications, as does the PhatBox/Music Keg.

The Rio Karma is a portable player that plays FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and WMA.  It comes in 20 GB and 40 GB varieties.

Just to note, FLAC is the only compressed lossless format with hardware support at the moment.

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #8 –
Trolling in boredom I suddenly thought I should note a technology development I've been following lately that may be pertinent to this thread.

As we all know having a network file server is a lovely thing, and having a full blown server with OS is the peak of geekdom.  However, this can be a bit much in terms of a simple file server, and can be a little bit of a drag if you want to make your FLAC server "mobile" (mini-itx anyone?).

Ethernet HD cases are generally slow (ethernet only) and expensive.  USB 2.0 cases are cheap, but you have to have the drive right there... or do you?

It seems two companies - Linksys and Keyspan - are FINALLY broaching the USB peripheral device to ethernet divide.  What does this mean?  It means you can connect a USB drive to the device and connect it directly to your network frm any point in the house.  For faster transfers you can then jack it in to your mchine with the USB cable directly.

So sweeeeet.  Anyway, thought this might be useful information to the people just starting out.  A USB 2.0 case ($20-40), a Western Digital Caviar 250gb PATA drive (n sale for $130), and this USB server (about $120, it can also be used for scanners, god knows how it dices teh communications on THAT one) makes a CHEAP NAS drive.

In a major letdown the Keyspan USB server has multiple USB ports but they are all apparently 1.1.  The Linksys unit has one USB 2.0 port, but I don't know if you can use a USB 2.0 hub with the server...

Keyspan USB Server
Linksys Storage Link NSLU2 (shopping.com listing, limited info out there)

-rt

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #9 –
Also troll'n:

Building my Music Jukebox this week: Upgrading the cpu (which lives in the entertainment center) with the WD 160GB (on sale last week for $70).  It is LAN attached Win'98 p-p server.  Slow at 466MHZ, but cost a total of $140 after this drive, so expecting to be sufficient for this purpose.

(Newbs 1st HA input, mooooo  )

The easy way to get the music on there? Sit on a friends LAN to transfer titles (that you already own:).

If the cpu Jukebox is not near the stereo there are many devices to stream into the entertainment center:  SlimDevices SliMP3; HP Media Center ($40); Linksys.  These are Ethernet appliances which organize music from all connected computers and displays selection menu & jpeg photos (video) on the TV or dedicated display.
EAC095pb5, LAME3.98, freedb, flac 1.2.1, fb2k 0.9.5

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #10 –
I'm going to go the Flac route by individual songs I think too - it seems like a great approach.  One thing I noticed in Winamp with playing back a Flac song is that the KBPS keeps changing - with a WAV it's at 1140 constantly, but Flac it fluctuates.  I assume this is normal due to the compression?  I created a WAV from the Flac and it seemed to be perfect. 

Those devices are very cool.  The LinkSys looks good, but only seems to do WMA and MP3?  Although the  SliMP seems to do a ton of the formats - especially Flac, as does the PhatBox.  That alone seems to be a big difference from the AudioTron.  Couldn't find much about the HP Media Center, though?

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #11 –
Quote
I'm going to go the Flac route by individual songs I think too - it seems like a great approach.  One thing I noticed in Winamp with playing back a Flac song is that the KBPS keeps changing - with a WAV it's at 1140 constantly, but Flac it fluctuates.  I assume this is normal due to the compression?  I created a WAV from the Flac and it seemed to be perfect.

FLAC is VBR, by nature.  The bitrate variance is normal after the encoding/compression process.

PCM WAV bitrate, when ripped from CD, is 1411kbps.  Winamp reports it as "14H" (in the Classic Skin, at least).

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #12 –
if flac is vbr by nature, is ape also vbr? how is it then that ape gets better compression ratios?

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #13 –
Quote
if flac is vbr by nature, is ape also vbr? how is it then that ape gets better compression ratios?

I believe all lossless codecs have variable bitrates when encoding.  Portions of a track that can be compressed at a higher rate without losing any of the audio data (based on amplitude and occurence of high-transients) result in a lower bitrate.  More complex passages result in a higher bitrate.

Different lossless formats use different compression models, meaning they compress music by different methods.  This results in a slight variance in average compression ratios between different lossless codecs for the same music.

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #14 –
lol... of course lossless is vbr

unless the entire sample is one frame size

the variations of "vbr" are due to different approaches in encoding, just like any lossy encoder differences would yield


later

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #15 –
Quote
...However, I like having the individual files for easy transcoding to lossy codecs, management, etc.  I also think it might be easier to deal with down the road as solo files (and to play in more players), but like I said I don't know alot about using single files with cue sheets. ...

Transcoding the single file to individual files is easily done from foobar2000. Just make sure you keep the cue sheet (separately or within the flac file).

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #16 –
why flac and not ape?

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #17 –
Checking in here... this is my goal and I've been getting closer to success. A few things learned:

1) Confirming: Flac is good. Lossless allows me to retrieve original WAV or re-encode without trouble. Efficient playback and multi-platform (APE has neither). With a small linux box you can playback FLAC direct to an AudioTron.
2) Confirming: Audiotron is good. It can pull in music from every shared filesystem on your network, no special server software needed (unlike Slimp3).
3) Important: Use EAC, ideally with AccurateRip if you can. Don't settle for CDDA or other "quick and easy" ripping tools if you only want to do this once. There's a BIG hidden gotcha: you will have no idea whether your rips were actually done properly!  EAC auto-retries to fix most rip problems, notices others (and lets you remove the 'pop'). With the AcccurateRip DB, you get (a) confirmation that your drive offset is properly set, and (b) a bit-level CRC confirmation of correctness, if anyone else has ever ripped the track. [as more people add to the DB, this part will become more valuable.]
4) Suggestion: file-per-track is more reliable and simpler. Yes, Foobar2000 can break a single-cd-file apart, but (a) you can't store tags for all tracks that way, and (b) few other tools understand single-cd-files. Tags like file-per-track.

--pete

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #18 –
Quote
4) Suggestion: file-per-track is more reliable and simpler. Yes, Foobar2000 can break a single-cd-file apart, but (a) you can't store tags for all tracks that way, and (b) few other tools understand single-cd-files. Tags like file-per-track.

matroska container allows that nicely already, as well as attaching cover JPGs to the same file .....

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #19 –
There is a lot of interest in the Squeezebox community about FLAC and the total replacement of a CD player. The Squeezebox creators are also interested in adding native FLAC decoding support to the hardware and new features are being added at a rapid rate - the most recent being support for single album FLAC+cuesheet playback (using an external cuesheet for tags and seekpoints).

--jth

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #20 –
I'm just about to use EAC with Flac.  I have the Flac.exe and it's working from EAC.  I saw another post using these options:

-8 -T "title=%t" -T "artist=%a" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m"  %s

Is there anything else I should do before I start my massive rip of CD's???

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #21 –
only -V to verify while encoding.

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #22 –
Oh .. hmm ..

Josh - I've just done about 120 of my 750 or so cd's without the -V ... should I rerip those and use the -V or is there a way I could check them without doing 'em over?

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #23 –
I thought EAC wouldn't check the exit code from flac.exe if the verify failed?

Edit: More info about the problem here and here.

Best method to rip entire music collection

Reply #24 –
Latest version of EAC supports checking encoder return value.

As far as using -V on encode, I've never had an encode fail (or, at least I don't think so) and neither has anyone else, short of having problems with CPU/memory/motherboard/etc.  Before you worry about -V, make sure you're ripping your CDs with the correct read offset - that'll have a much more noticable impact.