Can You Digitize Your CD Collection Without Spending Hours Ripping?

[DaveC426913]

Doesn't ripping CDs take a long time? Is there any way to get my CD collection digitized in a reasonable time?

 

[varygoode]

Haha, not really. You need a faster CD-Drive, essentially. With a typical 52x, let's say, you're still looking at about 5-15 minutes for a typical 80-minute CD.

 

[DaveC426913]

Is there a bulk way of doing it? Or a service?

 

[Chi Meson]

copying CDs? Long time? I put a CD in my Mac, and it practically begs me to copy it into iTunes. It takes about 2 minutes for an entire CD to be turned into mp3 format. Other formats are available, but I haven't tried them.

Digitizing my LPs, now that takes a long time.

 

[Mk]

Ripping CDs is easy and fast. Use iTunes because it's organizationally superior!

 

[DaveC426913]

So, varygoode sez 5-15 minutes. Ch sez 2 minutes.

 

[Mk]

How big is your collection? I wouldn't do it all at the same time if it's big.

 

[DaveC426913]

Wow, this sounds really useful:

"If you want to copy a large number of CDs to your hard drive and sort the songs out later, use the Import CD and Eject feature. Again, in the Edit > Preferences > Advanced (tab) > Importing (sub-tab) menu, select Import CD and Eject from the On CD Insert drop-down menu. This setting will keep you from having to sit at your PC and confirm each rip; each time you insert a music CD while iTunes is running, it will rip the entire CD, add the songs to your library, and eject the disc automatically. "

http://pocketpccentral.net/mp3c/howto/itunescdmp3.htm

 

[DaveC426913]

How big is your collection? I wouldn't do it all at the same time if it's big.

Well, you know, maybe a 100 CDs. I might only care to do them a couple dozen at a time.

 

[JasonRox]

Why not do 1 before work, 1 after work, 1 before diner, 1 after diner, and 1 before bed. That's 5 a day without spending a minute waiting.

 

[Moonbear]

So, varygoode sez 5-15 minutes. Ch sez 2 minutes.

It depends on what format you're saving it as. If you're saving it as a small mp3 file to play on a portal mp3 player, you can copy them very quickly. If you're saving them as a higher quality, larger file, so you can burn it to another CD as backup to play on your high quality stereo system, it's going to take longer.

When I started copying my CDs into iTunes, I'd just keep a stack of CDs by the computer, and whenever I was on the computer doing something else, I'd pop CDs in and let them load in the background. In iTunes, you can tell it to automatically copy the contents of a CD to the library whenever a new one is inserted, and since I've gotten similar prompts when inserting CDs into my PC, it seems you can probably do the same with any computer (I haven't tried it on the PC, because I don't always want it to automatically do anything).

 

[Chi Meson]

So, varygoode sez 5-15 minutes. Ch sez 2 minutes.

I win

 

[russ_watters]

So, varygoode sez 5-15 minutes. Ch sez 2 minutes.

The math is pretty simple. If you have an 80 minute cd and your cd burner rips at 52x speed...

They don't actually rip at their rated speed, but they do reasonably well these days: 20-40x read speed. And few music cds are 80min. Most are closer to half that. So my guestimate would be 2-3 minutes average rip time.

My only suggestion is to sit down in front of your tv for a nice football game with a stack of cds in front of you.

 

[Chi Meson]

The math is pretty simple. If you have an 80 minute cd and your cd burner rips at 52x speed...

They don't actually rip at their rated speed, but they do reasonably well these days: 20-40x read speed. And few music cds are 80min. Most are closer to half that. So my guestimate would be 2-3 minutes average rip time.

My only suggestion is to sit down in front of your tv for a nice football game with a stack of cds in front of you.

I'm not sure now, but I assumed Dave wanted to simply convert his CD's to a purely digital format (MP3, for example) to keep an iTunes (or similar) library. This process takes almost no time at all since burning is not required. And since most CD's have title information already embedded into the disk, you don't even need to raise an eyebrow to have the entire disk completely cataloged and ready for cross-reference.

And by "no time at all," and by "2 minutes only," what I actually mean is "about 10 minutes" for a 80 minute disk.

 

[B. Elliott]

When I started copying my CDs into iTunes, I'd just keep a stack of CDs by the computer, and whenever I was on the computer doing something else, I'd pop CDs in and let them load in the background. In iTunes, you can tell it to automatically copy the contents of a CD to the library whenever a new one is inserted, and since I've gotten similar prompts when inserting CDs into my PC, it seems you can probably do the same with any computer (I haven't tried it on the PC, because I don't always want it to automatically do anything).

x2. I had a collection of over 300+ CDs to import when I decided to digitally archive them. i can't remember exactly how long it took but I did it exactly as Moonbear stated. If I was at home doing laundry or cleaning up, I would also be importing CDs. Whenever i woke up in the morning to go to work I would grab a CD with fairly large content and let it start importing before I walked out the door. Prettymuich any time I was stuck at home, the computer would be importing something. Checking my e-mail... importing. Browsing through my favorite online forums... importing. Whenever I had to go take a shower I would make it a point to at least get one done.

It definitely takes a lot of time, but it's worth it. When importing them it's also a good idea to go ahead and organize them and fill in all the additional information while your doing it... going back and reorganizing 7,000+ songs is very daunting and boring. Now that feels like a complete waste of time. lol.

 

[Mk]

When importing them it's also a good idea to go ahead and organize them and fill in all the additional information while your doing it... going back and reorganizing 7,000+ songs is very daunting and boring. Now that feels like a complete waste of time. lol.

Some version of iTunes they added this information downloading feature where it labels your songs with their dates, titles, artists, and everything, that was pretty cool.

 

[DaveC426913]

... I did it exactly as Moonbear stated.

There you go, Bear, a man who will do exactly what you tell him to.

You're welcome.

 

[B. Elliott]

Some version of iTunes they added this information downloading feature where it labels your songs with their dates, titles, artists, and everything, that was pretty cool.

hold on... you mean if I just waited for the newer version I could have had iTunes do it for me automatically? Bah! I'll never get those two weeks of life back!

There you go, Bear, a man who will do exactly what you tell him to.

You're welcome.

Hey now, there are stipulations. Everything has a price!

 

[Donski]

Is there a bulk way of doing it? Or a service?

Yes there is, but it costs more than most people are willing to pay. It's better to do it yourself unless you're rich and your time is worth a lot.

It depends on what format you're saving it as. If you're saving it as a small mp3 file to play on a portal mp3 player, you can copy them very quickly. If you're saving them as a higher quality, larger file, so you can burn it to another CD as backup to play on your high quality stereo system, it's going to take longer.

You got that backward. It actually takes less time to rip to a higher quality bitrate because you need to compress it less.

And since most CD's have title information already embedded into the disk

That's just an illusion, most discs do not have the information on the disc but rather they go to an on line service like Gracenote or freedb to retrieve the information.




I prefer to use a program like http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/?q=download" for ripping, it's free and does a good job. You can choose multiple presets for the way it names the files and how it creates folders & subfolders. You can always have Itunes import them later. I would rip them as MP3 because it's become a universal format, Itunes likes to rip them using its own format.

I hate to see people spend all that time ripping their collection just to have to do it all over again because they weren't satisfied in the way they did it the first time. So far I have over 4000 CDs (over 57,000 MP3s) on my hard drive, I've been ripping CDs since 2000 and have come a long way in that time. I've learned to rip them at 320kbps bitrate because if I want to burn them to a CD later then it's still good quality. I keep them on a separate 500GB hard drive in one folder named music, then subfolders with the artist name, then subfolders with the album name. Each track is named using the format Artist - Album - Track - Title. With Various Artist discs I name them Album - Track - Artist - Title. I've seen far too often where people would keep their entire MP3 collection in a single folder. Do you know how long it takes to open a folder with 3000 files in it let alone 57,000? And to find individual tracks in that mess would be a joke. I'm just saying, have everything organized properly the way you want it and not the way some program's default setting has it done. Do it right the first time and don't let yourself get locked into using a program that may not be the best way to go in the future.

I don't care for Itunes and think that it caters to people that don't know any better. But if you're the type of person that doesn't care to think for himself, and prefers to have things done for him, then go ahead and buy into the hype and use Itunes because it's the easy way out. I'm just saying that you may regret it later.




I attached a Word file to help you configure http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/?q=download" if you wish to use it.

 

[DaveC426913]

DURRRRRRR!

THAT's what's great about my CD collection. It doesn't need to be managed! It doesn't need to be ripped or compressed or encrypted or labeled with metadata or backed up or archived or installed or reinstalled or upgraded or licensed.

I actually spend more time listening to my music than I do managing it!


I am such an old man...

 

[Chi Meson]

That's just an illusion, most discs do not have the information on the disc but rather they go to an on line service like Gracenote or freedb to retrieve the information.

Well that's neat. I just tried an experiment to check that and indeed, it just lists track numbers when the ethernet cable is pulled out. Plug it back in, and the bar flashes "accessing gracenote cddb" for about one second.

One other strange thing: I first tried an internal disconnect modem command which shut down my email/internet access, but it still was able to access gracenote. This leads me to wonder, how many things are still connected when you are "disconnected"?

 

[Donski]

One other strange thing: I first tried an internal disconnect modem command which shut down my email/internet access, but it still was able to access gracenote. This leads me to wonder, how many things are still connected when you are "disconnected"?

Again, just an illusion.

Whenever you insert a disc and it goes to Gracenote to download the info it will store that info in a local database on your computer. This means if you did an experiment where you disconnected the cable and placed a disc that you had in before then it would still find the info in your local database without having to go on line. This allows you to edit the names, and each time after that when you insert the disc it will come up with the edited names. The times it won't come up with any info is when you're not connected to the internet and you've never had that disc in before, or when nobody has uploaded the info for that disc yet.

All that information has been uploaded to Gracenote by regular people. Various programs allow you to upload those names. When a new release of a disc comes out there won't be any info for it yet, so somebody will type in all the names manually and upload it so everyone else has it. I've uploaded a few over the years.

 

[Chi Meson]

Again, just an illusion.

Well, how about that.