Are You Ripped Out?

[mwheelerk]

Holy Cow! I don't envy those who are just beginning or still in the midst of ripping your CD collection to complete you library for your music server. Normally I have one or two CDs to add to my collection and of course that's not any big deal to add the artwork, check and add metadata and rip the CDs. But today I had 15 titles to do two of which were double CDs and save for a couple of phone call interruptions I have been at it four hours and have one CD left. In all honesty I'm sick of doing it today. That brought to mind 2008 when I ripped about 1000 CDs (I've done about 800 more since) but that was really grueling or at least extremely tedious work. I'm tired of doing it. I am ripped out and ripped off!

[realhifi]

Holy Cow! I don't envy those who are just beginning or still in the midst of ripping your CD collection to complete you library for your music server. Normally I have one or two CDs to add to my collection and of course that's not any big deal to add the artwork, check and add metadata and rip the CDs. But today I had 15 titles to do two of which were double CDs and save for a couple of phone call interruptions I have been at it four hours and have one CD left. In all honesty I'm sick of doing it today. That brought to mind 2008 when I ripped about 1000 CDs (I've done about 800 more since) but that was really grueling or at least extremely tedious work. I'm tired of doing it. I am ripped out and ripped off!

 

Lot of work. 1800 CDs is one heck of a collection! At around $12 a disk that comes to $21,000. That is serious money for anyone to have a personal library of music. Good for you.

 

PS. I was sick of it after a few hundred. The jury is out for me whether I will get my whole collection ripped or not.

[davidl10]

A few years ago we had the entire family for the holidays and paid my nieces and nephews $20 a piece to rip my entire 600 CD collection using 6 laptops. Best $120 ever spent. Let the kids do it. If you don't have any kids use your friends and family's kids

[bobflood]

I was sick of it after 300. I ripped the ones I thought I would listen to the most and the rest are peacefully gathering dust. Now that I have Qobuz with full CD resolution streaming, I hardly ever even listen to the 300 I ripped. For me,the future is in cloud based streaming not running an individual data center. The economics, skill set and effort required for home based large scale music storage will make it a hobby within a hobby.

[jtwrace]

Yes, I ripped thousands of Cd's myself. The thought of doing it again makes me sick....that's why I have multiple backups.

[mwheelerk]

I was sick of it after 300. I ripped the ones I thought I would listen to the most and the rest are peacefully gathering dust. Now that I have Qobuz with full CD resolution streaming, I hardly ever even listen to the 300 I ripped. For me,the future is in cloud based streaming not running an individual data center. The economics, skill set and effort required for home based large scale music storage will make it a hobby within a hobby.

I think your right that streaming is the future but for me the past, present and foreseeable future is in the library I created. I might sing a different song if I was just beginning. Today's experience reminded me of the effort and commitment. I have been enjoying the quality and access to my music these past six years that that part had faded a bit in memory.

[new_media]

I have all of my CDs ripped, or at least all of the ones I care about. There are so many in various boxes in closets and such that I may have missed some.

 

I have recently been ripping some of my DVD-As to high-res FLAC. I discovered that WinAmp will auto-tag even high-res FLAC. Still have some editing to do and adding in the cover art, but it beats completely tagging by hand.

[DaQi]

Yes, I remember doing this as well and don't relish the thought of having to do it again. At that point it was about 1000 CDs and took me several months. I set up my computer near the TV and would watch TV while feeding disks. At that point they all went into lossless ALAC files through iTunes. I am slowly replacing those with FLAC files using DBPoweramp but it is a slow process and not one that I am really working on other than the occasional re-rip when I think of it. The best thing that happened though was that I got rid of the hideous bookcases that I had to keep them all organized and now they are all stored in boxes in the garage. I do need to find something better though as I have found some corrupt files and finding the CDs to re-rip is not pleasant. I didn't have the foresight to organize my boxes other than to dump CDs in them.

 

I like the idea of paying some kids to do the ripping. Once you show them how should be easy for them to do it.

[Skeptic]

Readers are super-cheap these days.

If you have a desktop PC, $100 will easily get you five drives.

 

Use software like dBpoweramp to automate the ripping process and guarantee secure rips.

Only swap discs when all drives are finished.

 

It's still a tedious process, but gets a lot less tedious this way - especially if you only do a handful of discs at once and aren't getting up to swap them all every five minutes.

 

 

I did all of my ripping years ago though, and have everything backed up several times so that I don't have to go through it again.

I only have to rip a handful of new CDs that are bought every month now. Fortunately lossless downloads are becoming more common.

[hifitubes]

I had an old PC that I put 5 drives. Like DBPower, JRMC let you rip from multiple drives, not at once, but sequentially.

 

You could do the same with USB externals.

Readers are super-cheap these days.

If you have a desktop PC, $100 will easily get you five drives.

 

Use software like dBpoweramp to automate the ripping process and guarantee secure rips.

Only swap discs when all drives are finished.

 

It's still a tedious process, but gets a lot less tedious this way - especially if you only do a handful of discs at once and aren't getting up to swap them all every five minutes.

 

 

I did all of my ripping years ago though, and have everything backed up several times so that I don't have to go through it again.

I only have to rip a handful of new CDs that are bought every month now. Fortunately lossless downloads are becoming more common.

[LBob]

This was a blast from the past. I spent many hours on the couch ripping CDs while watching football. It actually works pretty well though the wife did not approve. Happily I've ripped all of the 700 or so CDs that I think I want or will want to listen to now. You trusted your nieces/nephews david10? They actually got the meta-data and cover art? If so I'm impressed and more than a little jealous. I'm glad this is behind me. I don't buy CDs any more unless I absolutely can't find a download. My CDs are now resting comfortably in 8 3-ring binders.

[mav52]

I have all of my CDs ripped, or at least all of the ones I care about. .

 

That's exactly the same thing I did, only ripped the ones I cared about. If I'm interested in a group thats still on CD, I just rip it.

[Paul R]

Wow - I thought I was the only one that did not like to RIP those discs. We ripped everything, and it took about a week. I RIPed each CD, getting the metadata and conver art at RIP time, while doing other things. Reading, watching TV, listening to music, even doing some writing.

 

It was a boring and dull task, but once finished, seeing all our CD's when I want to play something is very rewarding. I just viewed it as one of things you *have* to do, so do it and get it done.

 

-Paul

[Vocalpoint]

I was sick of it after 300. For me,the future is in cloud based streaming not running an individual data center. The economics, skill set and effort required for home based large scale music storage will make it a hobby within a hobby.

 

Too bad that the "future" as of today - continues to be lossy, crappy sounding stuff that still can only be enjoyed if your internet connection is sound. I have tested on the fly streaming (at home and on the move) a LOT in the past year - and even here in tech heavy Calgary where 100-250MB connections are the norm - I still cannot stream anything to my phone or any other device for that matter in the city without a connection stopping, gapping or simply failing.

 

So - until 1GB "reliable" (The big word here) wireless is the rote norm - and everyone can enjoy at least SD streaming (FLAC at 16/44.1) - that future is years away.

 

As of now - nothing beats my high res home network and the 5400+ albums available on the server with no possibility of stoppage.

 

VP

[Audio_ELF]

It's not the ripping that's particularly tedious... It's the checking and correcting metadata!

[4est]

Very much agreed!

I felt it was somewhat painless to rip the first thousand. I set my iMac to automatically import and eject. I had a stack on both sides of the machine- to be ripped and already ripped. I would insert a new one whenever I went by the machine or while surfing and reading. Over the course of a month it was largely done.

It's not the ripping that's particularly tedious... It's the checking and correcting metadata!

[bluesman]

It's not the ripping that's particularly tedious... It's the checking and correcting metadata!

...and somehow, even after rechecking and re-editing a thousand times, there are still a few albums that only show up as individual songs. The first thing I plan to do on my first day of full retirement is to go through all those files and corral every stray.

 

It's still beyond comprehension that some current discs on major labels don't appear on MusicBrainz or FreeDB while old and obscure ones from the same artist are right there on the list. When all I used was Foobar for ripping and playing, everything I ripped showed up without incident. But an occasional album fails to show up on JR or MPD until I use Picard to "correct" tags that work in Foobar.

 

And then there's the amazing problem of foreign punctuation and accents. It took me over a week to get all of my Cyrille Aimée albums to show up because of the stupid aigu over the first e in her last name. When I figured it out and changed every one to an unadorned e, voilà (sorry, MPD - I meant voila)! They appeared like magic.

[robcentola]

What are CD's?

[jcbenten]

I ripped 2 full Slappa suitcases after a couple of years of my wife telling me to get rid of the cases. I was unemployed at the time so not a real big deal and took a couple of weeks. Next project is to digitize LPs...I have not bought in yet. Something about putting the needle down is calming.

[astrotoy]

I'm coming up to four years since starting my giant ripping project. I've completed about 6400 records and tapes (and 500 SACD's and 1500 CD's). The records and tapes are all in real time (plus about 1.5x real time for declicking records which goes in parallel to the ripping and all night). I average about 8 records a day, and have done up to 12 in a day. At 192-24 and DSD and 16-44 uncompressed FLAC for the CD's, I have about 23 TB of files. At my current rate, I will finish what I want to do in about 15 months. Fortunately I am retired.

 

Larry

[bluesman]

Next project is to digitize LPs

Doing one cured me of that dream.

[Paul R]

Next project is to digitize LPs...

 

Digitizing LPs and getting it *right* is *tough*. I think I am going to give up and try digitizing to DSD next.

 

-Paul

[Skeptic]

Digitizing LPs and getting it *right* is *tough*. I think I am going to give up and try digitizing to DSD next.

You probably want to rip to PCM, as you cannot edit DSD.

[Daudio]

I've ripped about 1500 CDs and misc. digital media in three years of effort. That doesn't sound like much compared to others (6400 !!), but then I am mostly doing "Rate and Rip" ! It takes a bit more time to listen through an album and rate the songs, but I am not into collecting, or having the biggest whatever, but rather finding the music that I really like from all the chaff.

 

This has some advantages in that while I was listening, I often looked up the artists and albums in Wikipedia, Amazon and/or Discogs to expand my knowledge of the music, recordings, other opinions, getting artwork, etc. Some metadata changes (Recording Date !!) happened in this period too, but really not that much (except for my classical naming scheme).

 

Last year was a concerted effort to find, purchase, and rip CD's to easily 'digitize' much of my non-classical vinyl. I now have a fairly small (~3 dozen) stack of (non-classical) records to digitize, making it a much more reasonable project (this summer ?).

 

All in all it has been a mostly fun, never too disagreeable task. And, I love having so much of my music library rated so I can just listen to my favorites in any particular area, or an entire album, or however I please !!

[realhifi]

Doing one cured me of that dream.

 

I'll second that. I did LPs too much to digitize them anyway.