[finsup]

I seriously thought there was a Beginner's Circle here on AC but can't find so thought I would post here. 

I have a small collection of CDs, maybe 200-300.  I just bought a Sony Hap-Z1ES last weekend and I need to rip my CDs so I can transfer them to the HAP.   I know I could rip 'em with my current HP computer using Media Center but is there a better way? 

Bit-perfect/best ripping transfer solution (software or hardware) to a file without spending hundreds of dollars for something I'll use just this once and then only occasionally afterwards is the goal.  I have never bothered following discussions re media servers, storage, ripping, etc. so am totally and completely clueless.   

[FullRangeMan]

I no different from you, but at Empirical Audio site there is some tips:
http://www.empiricalaudio.com/computer-audio/

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?board=40.0

[ArthurDent]

I used the free MediaMonkey for a good while before spending the $50 for the Gold version. Gold simply gives more features.   http://www.mediamonkey.com/  A lot of folks like JRiver, http://www.jriver.com/download.html. They have a free trial period. As for how bit perfect either is I couldn't say, beyond my tech expertise, but MM has always worked well, and is pretty simple to use. Hope this helps. 

[Phil A]

I use dbPoweramp.  I find it easy to use.  Some use exact audio copy (EAC) and that's free.  I tried it once but I prefer dbPoweramp - https://www.dbpoweramp.com/cd-ripper.htm

[Vincent Kars]

By design bit perfect reading of a CD is not guaranteed. (It is possible but that’s CD-ROM).
In practice most ripping software does a good job but if you want to be sure, you need one supporting AccurateRip.
This allows you to verify if your rip matches those of others and hence is bit perfect.

Most media players don’t support AccurateRip.
MusicBee does.
My personal preference is dBpoweramp.
Not only because of AccurateRip but it’s very powerful meta data
Bit more about ripping: http://www.thewelltemperedcomputer.com/KB/Ripping.htm

[adydula]

DBpower amp is the way to go with Accurip...I have ripped to FLAC over a 1000 cd's...

I use Jriver its easy to set up to  run in WASPI mode and has a little blue light symbol that lights up when its running it "bitperfect" mode.....that is whats coming in is going out....

Also Foobar2000 is a great free player...a little more setup and learning curve but not that bad.

All the best
Alex

[Starchild]

I use dbPoweramp.  I find it easy to use.  Some use exact audio copy (EAC) and that's free.  I tried it once but I prefer dbPoweramp - https://www.dbpoweramp.com/cd-ripper.htm

I concur but if you need to burn a lot disks, a cd robot is the way to go.  I'm going to be putting mine up for sale in the next few weeks.  DbPoweramp has a batch version to run with robots.  The one I used is pictured below (not the actual unit but its the same model).





It has served me well.

[Phil A]

I concur but if you need to burn a lot disks, a cd robot is the way to go.  I'm going to be putting mine up for sale in the next few weeks.  DbPoweramp has a batch version to run with robots.  The one I used is pictured below (not the actual unit but its the same model).





It has served me well.

Now you tell me   https://www.dbpoweramp.com/batch-ripper.htm

I ripped about 1,000 CDs a few years back and now it is just whatever new ones I buy

[finsup]

DBpower amp is the way to go with Accurip...I have ripped to FLAC over a 1000 cd's...

I use Jriver its easy to set up to  run in WASPI mode and has a little blue light symbol that lights up when its running it "bitperfect" mode.....that is whats coming in is going out....

Alex, if I may ask, do you use DBpower amp to rip and Jriver both to rip?  If so, why?

FullRangeMan, ArthurDent, Phil A, and Vincent Kars - thanks for the suggestions. It looks like I have some very good options to research tonight.

Starchild, please send me a PM if you have a price in mind.  New retail, these things cost several hundreds of dollars.  I won’t wait too long before I begin ripping my CDs, but for the right price, I could see myself waiting until you are ready to sell.  I looked over my collection and it seems like I have closer to 525 CDs to rip when I add in my wife’s CDs and I pulled out the Christmas collection CD case and there are more in there than I remember. 

I am truly dreading this project but looking forward to getting the HAP set up in the system.

[Vincent Kars]

I use JRier for editing and playback
dBpoweramp I use for ripping
JRiver doesn’t support AccurateRip and its meta data is very limited.

[richidoo]

finsup, as others have mentioned dbPoweramp has a feature called AccurateRip. It is an external internet database of previous rips of a given CD. When you rip the same CD, dbpoweramp reports your checksum for the ripped tracks (.wav) to build the database. When there are a few rips in the database that were ripped without dbpoweramp sensing any ripping problems, then a consensus of what the correct checksum should be and future rips can be compared to that to verify their accuracy.

So if you rip some weird new classical CD there may not be any matches in the database yet, so AccurateRip doesn't work, but when you submit your ripping results the database for that CD is started for others' benefit.

If you rip Adele or Beyonce there will be thousands of samples in the database, and very good consensus of what's the correct cheksum for each track.

AccurateRip allows you to use the fastest ripping method called "Burst" mode, which doesn't check for errors, it just rips as fast as possible. Then if the resulting wave file matches the checksum in the database, you know it's a perfect rip, even at fastest speed without error checking or multiple passes to verify same checksum yourself.

If there are no other samples of your track in the database then you can use error checking and multiple passes, etc, to get a probable good rip as far as not noting any problems. But if you do have errors, dbpoweramp can go back and resample each failed packet or whatever it's called until it is confident it got it correct. You can adjust all those settings to achieve whatever level of accuracy verification you want.

I have found that a CD that rips poorly on one CD-ROM drive will often rip perfectly fine on another one. An old plextor CD-RW drive from 25 years ago is the most reliable for ripping. My laptop is less reliable.

One other thing you want to do is go through the calibration steps so the ripper can compensate for the "offset" and other calibration steps to get the best rip from your drive. Read the dbpoweramp startup info for mo info if you go that way.
Rich

[*Scotty*]

Another key thing to check before purchasing a DVD or Blu-ray drive for ripping is whether or not it has C2 error correction capability. The less expensive drives are frequently lacking this feature.
Scotty

[finsup]

Another key thing to check before purchasing a DVD or Blu-ray drive for ripping is whether or not it has C2 error correction capability. The less expensive drives are frequently lacking this feature.
Scotty

Now *Scotty*, c'mon.  As if I don't have enough to think about, now you're going and talking about DVD and Blu-ray.  OK, maybe I should have been thinking further ahead. 

finsup, as others have mentioned dbPoweramp has a feature called AccurateRip. It is an external internet database of previous rips of a given CD.

Rich, thanks for a very decent explanation of how dbPoweramp works.  I was just over on the website and I am getting a sense of what you are talking about.

I mentioned in my first post that I did not want to spend much money on hardware, but as I think about it, I am not too sure the CD-drive in my HP All-in-One is all that durable so I may need to go out and find a more purpose-built CD-ROM drive. 

Would anyone care to guesstimate how much storage I'll need for 525 CDs? I may need a USB NAS drive too.  Dang it.

[*Scotty*]

Most people's built-in drives are now DVD or Blu-ray and not CD-ROM drives, therefore I did not mention a basically obsolete type of drive in my post even though C2 error correction is also desirable in this type of drive as well. However, if one were ripping DVDs or Blu-ray discs you would also want this more advanced error correction capability.
Scotty

[Vincent Kars]

A CD is 2 channel audio in 16 bit word with a sample rate of 44100 Hz
This is
1411200   bits/sec
176400   byte/sec
635040000   byte/hour
0.591427088   Gb/h

Assuming each CD last 1 hour and you use WAV,    you need 300 GB for 500 CD
AS FLAC is a better option and assume a compression of 70% , 200 GB will do

[richidoo]

I mentioned in my first post that I did not want to spend much money on hardware, but as I think about it, I am not too sure the CD-drive in my HP All-in-One is all that durable so I may need to go out and find a more purpose-built CD-ROM drive.

Just use the HP drive for now. All consumer drives have similar reliability. If it breaks you can buy a replacement on Amazon if the All in One is still worth repairing. If the stock drive really sucks at ripping, then maybe invest in a nice USB drive that you can keep for ripping forever and ever.

Would anyone care to guesstimate how much storage I'll need for 525 CDs? I may need a USB NAS drive too.  Dang it.

Figure 10MB/minute for stereo wav file. So if the CD is 60 total minutes of music (74 minutes max for CD) you will need 600MB. But that's for uncompressed wav files. Many if not most people rip their CDs to lossless compressed format like FLAC or ALAC. It reduces the size by about 50%. So you'd need 300MB to store flac files of your CD.

Most albums are far short of 74 minutes. Newer CDs tend to be longer, but vinyl records holds only up to 50 minutes total, but typical LP length is ~40minutes total. So those stored as FLAC files would be 250MB or 200MB respectively, 4 or 5 albums per GB. Newer recordings from CD era will fit 3-4 CDs per GB. 

The other nice thing about flac files is that they support embedded metadata which wave files do not. So you can store all the artist, track name, alblum title, date, genre info, etc, even the album cover is stored inside the flac file itself. mp3 and other compressed formats can also store metadata.

A USB drive with a pair of 1TB drives in RAID1 is a good repository for your music. It has two identical harddrives with same data on each, so if one dies, you just stick in a new blank one and the redundancy is automatically restored to the new drive. You only need a NAS if you want to share the music or whatever files on there with the household network. It is handy if you stream movies to several TVs, or store a lot of media for multiple users. If it's just you and your music playing on one computer, a USB drive is adequate.

Sorry Vincent, I posted just after you.

[finsup]

Most people's built-in drives are now DVD or Blu-ray and not CD-ROM drives, therefore I did not mention a basically obsolete type of drive in my post even though C2 error correction is also desirable in this type of drive as well. However, if one were ripping DVDs or Blu-ray discs you would also want this more advanced error correction capability.
Scotty

Ripping DVD and Blu-rays is something I should do.  I have special needs twins and one guy loves his Disney movies and music videos.  He's pretty well trashed his Blu-ray Beauty and the Beast disc (I try and work with him but....).  That movie is now in the Disney Vault so I will need to wait for it to be re-released in a few years. Besides, I am not even sure if Disney allows copying of its discs but he has other discs too.  I'll revisit DVD/Blu-rays a bit later next year. 

I have about 325 GB of free space left so I think, based on Rich's and Vincent's estimate, I could rip most, if not all my CDs, to my HP for subsequent transfer to the HAP.  I definitely think I will want to then off-load those files to another external drive for safe-keeping.

[Vincent Kars]

I definitely think I will want to then off-load those files to another external drive for safe-keeping.

Of course, the HAP is a computer with a HD and one day it will go.

[finsup]

Of course, the HAP is a computer with a HD and one day it will go.

As will the Sony transport some day in my Raysonic CD 128 CD player.  I really like the Raysonic but concerns over future failure and a desire to make music listening easier (meaning not having to change the CD every 35 - 70 minutes) are the prime motivations behind this move for me.  I don't make changes very often in my system.  I'll also be able to retire the big, bulky CD cases to some place other than the family room - real eye sores.

[Nalor]

I've looked into using dbPowerAmp myself for ripping. One really nice feature is that it can handle HDCD, and do improved FLAC encoding for them. Not all ripping software will actually detect and use the better decode algorithm supported by HDCD. There is a surprising amount of HDCD's out there.

Currently I use MAX, but that's because I've been ripping on a MAC.