@QuickSticks Have you setup accurip? That’s the most import thing, guaranteeing your rip is bit accurate against a public database of “known good” rips. This helps if you have damaged/dirty CD which introduce ripping errors.
When ripping our collection we had a lot of CD which didn’t pass accurip. So we got warm water and kitchen roll and washed/dried them gently. Post wash 99% of our dirty CDs ripped perfectly.
Modern CD drives are very fault tolerant. Most CD should rip first time no issue. Hold the CD up to the light - any large marks simply swipe off with a micro fibre cloth remembering to drag the cloth outwards from centre hole and never round the CD.
We had a lot of CD which had been used in cars - covered in grubby fingerprints, greasy marks and light scratches from rough roads. Those were the problematic ones.
A very few CD wouldn’t pass accurip on the cheap USB CD we were using, they needed ripped on another higher quality drive (we’re talking <10 CD from 1000’s).
I’ll be using my Apple SuperDive, which has been pretty reliable in the past. I first started this process using Apple Music, but my dealer told me to stop, drop the ALAC files and start again with DBpoweramp, which is where we are today🫤
Fortunately, I’d only done about 40 the Apple way…
Yeah, they are brilliant. They are one of the two dealers I use, as this is where my Dynaudio’s and Fraim came from along with my Exdemo NAPSC.
Mike put my entire system together, including building my Fraim, a few weeks ago.
Great bunch of “HiFi Nerds”…
If you use the paid version of DbPowerAmp, you can use multiple CD drives (if you have them). I had two CD drives linked up to a laptop (with an inbuilt drive) so was able to rip 3 CDs at a time - which significantly reduced time.
I can definitely say that its worthwhile being able to do something else at the same time. My 1000 CDs took 2 or 3 weeks to do (from memory, it was a few years ago). Each CD took around 3 to 7 minutes (maybe a bit more) - so it does drive you a bit crazy! So being able to watch tv, listen to music or read at the same time is necessary
Note once you have copied them all, you can do a batch conversion/copy of the whole library to Mp3 (at whatever resolution) - which is quite useful if you want to also have on your phone or other portable without taking up to much memory. Wait until you’ve done all your CDs to Flac, and then do the conversion “overnight” - and it’ll be ready for you in the morning.
Only if your CDs are dirty! I’ve ripped hundreds and have never washed one in my life. I guess I don’t throw them around and they are kept in their case when not in use.
In fairness the 4 I did this afternoon were 75% good. 1 however just error, error, error and it didn’t look any different to the other 3🤷🏻♂️
Cleaning didn’t help, but then there wasn’t even a fingerprint on it. Lots of fine scratches though, which is probably the problem.
It’s one of Mrs Q’s and lived in her car for years I think. Might be beyond use…
Warm water and kitchen roll, dried with micro fibre cloth - fingerprints, smears
Mr Muscle glass cleaner - more stubborn marks, light scratches
Baking soda toothpaste - the 10 CD we had covered in scratches
Selection 1 enabled 90% with errors to be ripped, Glass cleaner fixed the other 10% and abrasive treatment was only required on 10 or so CD which were quite badly damaged.
The ones which required surface abrasion didn’t work on our USB CD drive even after polishing but worked in another DVD drive.
Now and then, despite my best cleaning efforts, I just cannot get dBpoweramp to do an accurate rip and fall back on the following nugget that I found on a forum many moons ago:
Q. No matter how much I tweaked the ripping and encoding settings, I couldn’t get a proper lossless copy.
A. You might try using iTunes to rip to AIFF with error correction turned on, then convert from AIFF.
Health warning: high risk of the green eyed monster making you desperately wish that you could use that Apple database as a Meta-Source.