Anyone digitizing their CD music collection?

[MIOM]

Hello to all....

Anyone "digitizing" their CD collection? As a music collector I have amassed over 2,700 music CD's since they became available. Also have a vinyl collection but that's nowhere as large (about 900).

Anyway, I'm about to embark on this journey of ripping all these CD's to an external hard drive. Over the years I've ripped something like 600 thus far, but I was being selective. This time everything gets ripped. Also doing this to free up physical space around the house as 2,700 CD's take up a lot of space....







Will be encoding in uncompressed flac using dBpoweramp as I have a lot of "audiophile edition" CD's as well.

Anyone else? Thoughts?

 

[raghupb]

Whoa!! That's a lot of CDs and neatly arranged too. Nice.

FLAC is a storage format. It allows for different levels of compression based on capacity of storage media.
Usually most rippers use level 5 or something.
There is no difference in SQ after decompressing FLACs whatever the level of compression.
Higher levels of compression means encoding time will be longer, but it is one time only.

Cheers,
Raghu

 

[arj]

Hello to all....

Anyone "digitizing" their CD collection? As a music collector I have amassed over 2,700 music CD's since they became available. Also have a vinyl collection but that's nowhere as large (about 900).

Anyway, I'm about to embark on this journey of ripping all these CD's to an external hard drive. Over the years I've ripped something like 600 thus far, but I was being selective. This time everything gets ripped. Also doing this to free up physical space around the house as 2,700 CD's take up a lot of space....



Will be encoding in uncompressed flac using dBpoweramp as I have a lot of "audiophile edition" CD's as well.

Anyone else? Thoughts?

That is a lot of CDs..while doing it yourselves using dBp is the best one despute being time consuming, 2 alternate options for considerations could be
1. invest in a cd ripper hardware..its like load the cd and let it do everything. I think Astel and kern and Naim had some models. not sure now.
2. one time cd ripping service eg digidraw or anyone else to whom you either drop off or ship your collection and who would do the service for you. am sure there are others locally ( maybe cheaper is to pay a college student "intern" !)

 

[Sean de Silva]

Hello to all....

Anyone "digitizing" their CD collection? As a music collector I have amassed over 2,700 music CD's since they became available. Also have a vinyl collection but that's nowhere as large (about 900).

Anyway, I'm about to embark on this journey of ripping all these CD's to an external hard drive. Over the years I've ripped something like 600 thus far, but I was being selective. This time everything gets ripped. Also doing this to free up physical space around the house as 2,700 CD's take up a lot of space....

View attachment 65959

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Will be encoding in uncompressed flac using dBpoweramp as I have a lot of "audiophile edition" CD's as well.

Anyone else? Thoughts?

Welcome to hfv. Those cd racks are serious eye candy. Always a delight to behold a massive collection. I ripped my cds to wav using dBp(license). For those cds that couldn't be ripped using dBp, I used Express Rip(free).

 

[Kannan]

I have been planning for past 3 years though my collection is not as much. Hope this post motivates me

 

[Audio_Freek]

Stunning collection and preserved like honey, Appreciate the efforts in maintaining them and ripping them too.

Just make sure you have a backup of the HD atleast once in a month, to ensure the files are not lost. I did Rip some cds and HDD gave up suddenly :-(.I dint have any back up hence planned to start sometime later this year.

This activity its quite time consuming and for sure gonna brush up your memories.

All the best

 

[anirban420]

Hello to all....

Anyone "digitizing" their CD collection? As a music collector I have amassed over 2,700 music CD's since they became available. Also have a vinyl collection but that's nowhere as large (about 900).

Anyway, I'm about to embark on this journey of ripping all these CD's to an external hard drive. Over the years I've ripped something like 600 thus far, but I was being selective. This time everything gets ripped. Also doing this to free up physical space around the house as 2,700 CD's take up a lot of space....

View attachment 65959

View attachment 65962

View attachment 65963

Will be encoding in uncompressed flac using dBpoweramp as I have a lot of "audiophile edition" CD's as well.

Anyone else? Thoughts?

Welcome to HFV. Your collection of CDs looks very soothing to the eye. I am very curious to know what kind of music(s) do you listen?

Regarding your question about "DIGITIZING" - I keep my CDs backed up on my computer by creating image files through Nero.

 

[MIOM]

@raghupb, yeah, that's a lot over my years of collecting. Now, I rarely touch them except for ripping. Anyway, I've been ripping for a while so it's not new to me. I was also encoding in APE (Monkey's Audio) but found some older music streaming devices don't handle APE files, so flac it is.

@arj, you bring up a good point about getting a CD ripper, and if funds weren't an issue, I might have gotten one. But that's not in the cards so manual it is. And because I'm OCD at times, I trust this to no one but me.

Anyway, being I know this will be a time-consuming project, I've given myself 6 months (June) to complete it. That equates to about 12 CD's a day (already ripped about 600 so that leave roughly 2100 CD's / 180 days = 11.6). For the last week I've been doing about 20-30 so...

As for dBpoweramp, I've used it in the past and like it, though I also use JRiver Media Center to rip as well. Anyway, the reason for dB is more to do with the fact I don't want everything showing up in my JRiver library just yet.

 

[Bloom@83]

Some serious eye candy !

 

[souravin]

Nice thread and collection @MIOM . Appreciate the passion you have. I have a decent collection of bollywood oldies Made in UK, US EMI CDs and also Made in India releases. I am digitizing and tagging them meticulously, hence taking much longer than I expected. Using EAC for ripping and mp3 tag for tagging. Output format is both FLAC (Level 8) and mp3. Random and regular listen via DAC on weekdays is also smooth and peaceful. I do not disregard the fact of holding physical media - a weekend is better suited for CDs .

 

[MIOM]

@Sean de Silva; thanks. I've had those racks for years. In the first image I bought those two racks on the right while I was stationed in the Netherlands in the 90's. The other rack in the first image came in the later when I was back in the states in the mid 90's, and the other came as my collection grew. BTW, I also used to do wave files, but once I discovered flac (uncompressed), that was just as good (to me)

@Audio_Freek, I'm OCD about my music collection and the only ones that touch my albums or CD's is me. Period

@anirban420, I have an eclectic taste in music and listen to everything from rock to country to jazz to R&B to EDM depending on mood. My fav genre though is early 70's rock, Jazz, and R&B. That's probably half my collection.

And yeah, I already have a large collection of my music ripped to my PC. I also stream from Plex through my NAS box

 

[MIOM]

Nice thread and collection @MIOM . Appreciate the passion you have. I have a decent collection of bollywood oldies Made in UK, US EMI CDs and also Made in India releases. I am digitizing and tagging them meticulously, hence taking much longer than I expected. Using EAC for ripping and mp3 tag for tagging. Output format is both FLAC (Level 8) and mp3. Random and regular listen via DAC on weekdays is also smooth and peaceful. I do not disregard the fact of holding physical media - a weekend is better suited for CDs .

Yeah, I love physical media as well... until I'm reminded how much space a large collection takes up. I've not even shown the other rack of CD's or my vinyl collection

I did have a nice home stereo system untill the speakers died, so I just packed everything away, since I rarely played it anyway, and opted to add an audiophile system to my PC with this DAC, and powered speakers (audioengine A5+ speakers and S8 sub). Here's the DAC...



Teac UD-503 with a pair of Sennheiser HD700 phones. Conncected to desktop PC via USB and digital (optical) cable.

Anyway, thanks for chiming in folks (folks as to not offend anyone). Finally good to be at a forum where "music" is the topic. I'm usially in some PC or photography forum.

 

[jls001]

Invest in larger capacity hard disk and rip the CDs to wav, not flac.

Besides dBPoweramp, do also try the free EAC. There are those who can hear superior/inferior sound of rips using these two rippers. dBP has one clear advantage - metadata can be saved even if one saves the rips to wav.

 

[RRR]

Invest in larger capacity hard disk and rip the CDs to wav, not flac.

Besides dBPoweramp, do also try the free EAC. There are those who can hear superior/inferior sound of rips using these two rippers. dBP has one clear advantage - metadata can be saved even if one saves the rips to wav.

Thanks for your input as i was curious about the same 2 things which you have mentioned above -

1. Would ripping to Wav be more superior to Flac even if it consumes more space ?
2. Which of the two is more user friendly when having to rip a huge collection EAC or dbPower ?

Hello MIOM and welcome to HFV.
Nice to see such a huge collection of Cds neatly arranged and well maintained. It sure is worth the time and effort put in over the years.
You may be aware already...that you can catalogue your entire collection on Discogs by scanning the cds before or while ripping them.
Cheers

 

[IndianEars]

Invest in larger capacity hard disk and rip the CDs to wav, not flac.

Besides dBPoweramp, do also try the free EAC. There are those who can hear superior/inferior sound of rips using these two rippers. dBP has one clear advantage - metadata can be saved even if one saves the rips to wav.

I COMPLETELY endorse what jls001 has said.

You clearly have a FANTASTIC CD collection, and your current emphasis appears to be the music, rather than the best possible reproduction of that music. Should your interest expand in future, it would be a pity if you reaslise that your music collection is not ripped to the best possible level.

Without stirring a hornet's nest, my personal observations & suggestions are:

1. Please ONLY rip in wav. The Sound quality is superior.

2. Spend some time, maybe even a couple of days exploring the sound differences between dbPower Amp and EAC (Exact Audio Copy, a freeware program). In my setup and to my ears EAC rips sound more fluid, they flow better. dBPA rips have more Start & stop, maybe more PRAT. Once you have selected your ripping software, you will have to live with the results.

3. You can rip into a cue file + wav file or individual tracks as separate wav files. Both sound the same, but some programs like Roon will not play .cue files. JRiver will play both perfectly. On the other hand, if you burn the .cue + wav file to a CDR, it will always be recognised as the original CD.
Separate tracks ripped and burnt to a CDR will not be recognised as the original CD.

4. Ensure that you set up your dBPA or EAC for the best possible rip quality, and not the fastest rip time.

5. Ensure that the Album art and track names have been retrieved perfectly for each CD before you commence each rip.

6. Downloaded RIPs are no match for a local RIP of yr CD. If you have a choice, rip yr own and delete the download.

7. Always, absolutely ALWAYS have a 100% backup of all your rips on a separate, external HDD which you connect ONLY during back up

Ripping is a labour of love, Dont rush it

I have a collection of over 1,10,000 Tracks built up over the past decade.

 

[IndianEars]

Thanks for your input as i was curious about the same 2 things which you have mentioned above -

1. Would ripping to Wav be more superior to Flac even if it consumes more space ?
2. Which of the two is more user friendly when having to rip a huge collection EAC or dbPower ?

I am taking thge libery to respond to your 2 Queries:

1. Yes, Ripped to wav CDs sound better to my ears on my setup

2. Both are equally user friendly when I use JRiver for playback

 

[jls001]

Thanks for your input as i was curious about the same 2 things which you have mentioned above -

1. Would ripping to Wav be more superior to Flac even if it consumes more space ?
2. Which of the two is more user friendly when having to rip a huge collection EAC or dbPower ?

This is a bit of a minefield. There are those who swear by wav only rips. Then there are those who can't perceive a difference. Hearing acuity and system-room resolution may be at work here. I know someone who had deleted everything flac from his NAS and retained only the wav. Personally I rip to wav only. If you watch the destination folder of your rips while ripping is in progress, and assuming you have chosen to save to flac, the ripping application will save the file to wav when the rip is over, and then almost immediately convert the file to flac and save it. The native file format is wav. During playback too the native file format is wav. The player will first decompress the flac to wav and play it.

dBP has more user friendly UI but for the most optimal rips there are quite a few settings that MUST be configured.

 

[RRR]

Thanks @jls001 and @IndianEars for your feedback. I too will then rip to Wav considering that my ears pull up differences between original and copied cds in wav.

 

[balavignesh002]

Anyone "digitizing" their CD collection?

I use Plextor external CD drive to rip and burn. Excellent product it is, Get some good software like EAC and do the job..

 

[arj]

where did you get the plextor ? have been looking for one !