Ripping Ye Olde CD Collection -Updated LAME question.

Corvus

As I mentioned earlier today in D&D Chat, I need to finally rip my CD collection to MP3's, and before I do too much I want to seek the advice of the forums. I'm a bit of a Luddite when it comes to this whole thing.

A few points:

* I probably have around 200 CDs, which isn't a huge collection compared to some folks I guess.

* I don't use Itunes

* I'm not an audiophile, so I'm guessing a moderate bitrate like 128 would be ok? I don't know?

* Software wise, I just use WMP 11 to play my existing MP3's. Is there any reason to grab anything else for this task? It seems to have ripping set up already. I'm not adverse to downloading something else as long its both free and there's a good rationale as to why I should use it. I run Vista, so any software would have to play nicely with Vista.

* I don't know a damn thing about tagging MP3's really.

Edit: See downthread for ? about LAME.

illig

WMP does it pretty easily... when you pop in a CD it gives you the option to RIP, and finds all the album info and art online for you automatically

in the olden days I used to do it with LAME and EAC, but that was a pain to set up and to use, and i really don't think i can tell the difference in quality (though supposedly this is the best way)

clsCorwin

CDex has always worked great for me.

shutz

I always recommend EAC. Even though you're not an audiophile, it offers some nice options to:
a) pick certain ripping options that may be faster than WMP
b) detect ripping glitches, which will prevent pops and clicks, especially on particularly scratched CDs
c) in the unfortunate case where you have a scratched CD, if the data layer is still intact, you can try ripping it with some special options, where it will rip a particularly glitchy section many times and pick the values that come up the most often, so it may be able to rip some otherwise unrippable CDs.

If you're encoding to 128 kbps, make sure you turn on VBR. Your file sizes will vary a little more, but you'll get a lot more quality for about the same disk space. Even at 160 kbps, which is what I rip at, VBR is definitely worth it.

Use the external LAME encoder. It's pretty easy to configure within EAC, and if you have a multi-core CPU, encoding will be much faster because multiple encoding jobs can run simultaneously, at full speed.

One last reason to use EAC or most of the other rippers is that WMP will use Microsoft's CD info database, which is not quite as complete or exhaustive as FreeDB, which is what EAC and the others will connect to (except for iTunes, because Apple also have their own DB, I believe.) Just keep an eye on the results you get from FreeDB, to make sure you're not getting one of those stupid entries where the track number is in the song title, or the song title includes the artist name or vice-versa (happens often with various artists compilations) and make sure all the info wasn't filled out in ALL CAPS.

Also, if you're careful about the music categories and styles, you'll later be able to listen to your collection by selecting the proper categories or styles.

Oh, one last thing: make sure that all discs by the same artist/band have their name spelled/written exactly the same. For instance, I have all of the Beatles CDs. Some would return "The Beatles", some would return "Beatles" and some would be "Beatles, The" Since I set up my own folders on my hard drive, I wanted my Beatles folder to show up as a B in the alphabetical order, but the band name is "The Beatles", so I made sure they were all saved as "Beatles, The". Now, when I go into my music collection on my 360, I know that all the Beatles music is under "Beatles, The".

Hope all this helps. Yes, it's a bit more work (I must have over 400 CDs, and I've had to rip my whole collection twice, already) but once you get a nice beat going, it works well, and you can easily do 15-20 CDs per evening (assuming you work or go to school during the day) and get through your collection in a manageable amount of time.

Also, it's a good idea to wait a couple of minutes between CDs, especially if you're using EAC and the external LAME encoder, just to let your drive cool down. Ripping causes the drive to work at very high speeds, and ripping constantly for hours on end could damage your drive. If you're using my method, ripping the CDs will only take a few minutes per CD, but it'll take a little longer to then compress the ripped WAV files, so giving a chance for the encoding to catch up to the ripping means you're not damaging your drive, and you're still ripping as fast as you can.

RedDawn

clsCorwin wrote: »

CDex has always worked great for me.

I love this program. I've been using it for years.

RandomEngy

If you're not an audiophile, I'd recommend a setting of VBR 2 for MP3s, which is around 190 kbps. If you get a chance to put bitrate limits on it, don't. VBR means quality-based, so it will compress simple parts (like silence) very well, while devoting more space to the complex parts of the song.

urahonky

RedDawn wrote: »

clsCorwin wrote: »

CDex has always worked great for me.

I love this program. I've been using it for years.

Yep, CDex or EAC are the best choices.

Xaquin

I suggest MediaMonkey

Monolithic_Dome

You should decide now whether or not you care about stuff like genres and album art. It's a biatch to add that shit later.

Mike Danger

Monolithic_Dome wrote: »

You should decide now whether or not you care about stuff like genres and album art. It's a biatch to add that shit later.

This right here.

Corvus

Thanks for all the responses guys.

I'm not too concerned about scratches, most of my CDs are in very good condition, I was pretty anal about taking care of them, and I didn't loan them out.

Would the people who recommended CDEx and Mediamonkey care to elaborate as to why they recommend them?

I do want to sort by genre, so I assume thats a tagging option I'll need to set up when ripping?

Album art I don't care that much about (I mean, these are CDs I own, I can look at the physical art any time I want), but I guess I might as well get it if it doesn't take up a lot of filespace.

Oh, I didn't mention that I have this:



plugged into my laptop. Does using this thing as an external sound card change things any?

clsCorwin

CDex is simple to use, and has an abundance of features. Once you have everything set to your liking, all you need to do is rn a CDDB check (menu option) and press f9.

shutz

EAC, when configured properly, will automatically grab the FreeDB (free version of CDDB) info for whatever disc is in your drive at that time. You just have to check to make sure the info is accurate (you may also have to choose between multiple entries, if your CD ever matches more than one entry in the DB.)

Your external sound card shouldn't affect anything, as you're ripping the data on your CDs digitally, not recording the analog audio output of a CD player. The only effect your external soundcard will have is when you play back your MP3s.

Even when you're careful (I certainly am) scratches will sometimes happen. I have a John Lennon album that was deeply (but not irreparably!) scratched because I was playing it in a portable CD player and tripped while running down some stairs with the CD playing. The CD vibrated enough that something inside the player scratched the disc.

About album art: the main situation where you might like to have album art is if your MP3 player can display it (like iPods, for instance, do.) It could also be used if you stream the music to other devices at home (XBox 360, PS3, Wii, Slingbox... those sorts of things...) and the device is capable of displaying the album art. Actually, I don't think the 360 displays album art, but that might change in the future...

Be vigilant with the ID3 tags as you're ripping: fixing the tags later will be a bigger hassle than doing it right initially.

Narian

BonkEnc for ripping. MP3Gain for cleaning up the audio. And MP3Tag for tagging and renaming all the files.

Corvus

Well, Shutz has convinced me to give EAC a try. I'll see how it goes.

Edit: Well, I'm confused already. Where do I go to get LAME? The LAME sourceforge site seems to indicate that its downloads aren't what I need, something about them only being tarballs? How do I know if I'm getting the right thing?

shutz

A quick Google search helped me find the page where I usually get the LAME.EXE file I need.

It comes with a .dll which you don't need right now, but which might come in handy with other software. There's actually a way to have EAC use the DLL instead of the EXE, but everything will actually be more efficient if you just use the EXE, and once you learn more about encoding, you'll be able to easily tweak the command-line options.

Once you get everything configured properly (EAC has a wizard that helps a bit) ripping and compressing a CD should be as simple as inserting it, waiting a few seconds for the disc to spin up and the FreeDB call to complete, then checking that the album and track info looks OK. Then you click the "CD to MP3" button on the left, and everything else happens automatically.

Thanatos

I tried, like, three or four different ripping programs. I ended up using iTunes, after hating all of the ones I tried. I fucking hate Apple, I despise iTunes, but for that in particular, it was the best program I could find. I'd recommend using it to rip your .mp3s, then uninstalling it. My primary considerations were wanting to do it quickly, not having to fuck with a bunch of settings for hours to get it to do what I want, and having everything named correctly. It handled all three just fine.

Ayulin

I found this guide (and the rest of the site, too) to be pretty helpful when it came to setting up EAC. Some of the site's guides are outdated (particularly the step-by-step guide for going through the EAC wizard), but the options have just been shuffled around the interface a bit.

So yeah, I use EAC with LAME (at the best VBR setting; probably pointless, but the irrational part of me feels happier with it :P) for ripping, with MP3Gain to level the volume.

I used to use MediaMonkey for tagging and reorganizing, but I've been giving TagScanner a shot. The only complaint I have with it is it doesn't seem intuitive to me, and it lacks the ability to organize files and create directories based on Tag info that MediaMonkey has. (Apologies for the phrasing of that last sentence...)

Corvus

Oh lordy, naming schemes. I have no idea what to run with here. I've got LAME now and I'm digging into the options.

Do you guys use this AccurateRip setting? I'm not sure I should really care about it.

Trentus

I know it's probably a little pointless now that OP has made their choice, but I'm going to throw another vote for CDex. It's very simple to set up (really, you should be ripping within a few minutes of installation), it's never failed to correctly tag a CD and the results have always been superb. I'm not sure if has automatic FreeDB lookup, but it really doesn't take much to hit a button.

Probably the only thing wrong with it is that development is slow (has stopped?). I'm using a beta from back in 06 (the last stable release was from 03) and while I haven't had an issues with it, I would like to see a stable release in the near future.

Ayulin

Corvus wrote: »

Oh lordy, naming schemes. I have no idea what to run with here. I've got LAME now and I'm digging into the options.

Do you guys use this AccurateRip setting? I'm not sure I should really care about it.

I used it, although "use" to me means "clicked Yes on the dialog box and inserted a CD, then didn't worry about it ever again" :P

Corvus

Trentus wrote: »

I know it's probably a little pointless now that OP has made their choice, but I'm going to throw another vote for CDex. It's very simple to set up (really, you should be ripping within a few minutes of installation), it's never failed to correctly tag a CD and the results have always been superb. I'm not sure if has automatic FreeDB lookup, but it really doesn't take much to hit a button.

Probably the only thing wrong with it is that development is slow (has stopped?). I'm using a beta from back in 06 (the last stable release was from 03) and while I haven't had an issues with it, I would like to see a stable release in the near future.

Well, I may try CDex as well. EAC seems alright so far, but it is a little complex.

Unknown

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Corvus

shutz wrote: »

Be vigilant with the ID3 tags as you're ripping: fixing the tags later will be a bigger hassle than doing it right initially.

Just looking over the thread again, this stood out. What do people recommend for tagging?

Sorry to ask so many questions, but google has been terribly unhelpful when searching for guides to walk me through this whole process.

Ayulin

MediaMonkey's pretty good, IMO. It's meant to be a library-management program like iTunes, but it works really well as a tagger. I love how it can also reorganize files and rename them based on the tag info (for instance, rename files by <Track #> - <Track Name>, and sort them into /Music/<Album Artist>/<Album Name>/)

I mentioned TagScanner earlier in this thread, but I think I'd stick with MediaMonkey; TagScanner lacks the folder re-organizing, but does have everything else (tagging and renaming.)

BlackbeardonGuitar

I'm not really an audiophile I usually run my sounds on any speakers I got lying around, but I will say I can easily tell a difference between 128 and 192. Past 192, not nearly as much. But if you have plenty of space, and all the songs on 200 cds wont be more than about 8-10 gigs on 192, I would rip em around VBR or straight up 192 if possible.

shutz

In general, I've found that LAME, at 160kbps VBR, with the highest quality setting, is practically indistinguishable from the original CD.

To the OP: here's the way I construct the filenames.

For regular albums, my naming scheme looks like this:

%D - %C\%N - %T - %A

which means it creates a directory with the CD's artist and CD title, and then places the files inside, with the Track Number, then the Track Title, and finally the Track Artist.

That's worked for me fairly well.

For "Various Artists" albums, my scheme looks like this:

Various - %C\%N - %A - %T

I just realized I've reversed the artist and track title from my normal naming scheme. Still, in that case, it makes more sense.

It's always a good idea to have the track number at the beginning of the filename so you can easily reconstruct the original track order, later on.

I find there's no need to have the album title in the filename, but you may find otherwise. Just keep in mind that, already with my current naming scheme, some filenames end up being too long to burn onto CD-R (as MP3 compilations) which causes some minor annoyances, once in a while. Add in the album title in the filename, and you'll face that problem a lot more often.

shutz

Also, to fix tags after the fact, I've been using MP3Tag. It works better when you already know what the missing info is, but it does do FreeDB lookups. I mostly use it to fix the tags from MP3s I download. I can't understand why so many people don't care more about the basic info in tags, it's so helpful later on when you're browsing the tracks on a portable media player...