Dear All,
the question is mainly addressed to those who do NOT use “ad hoc” hi-fi products for ripping (for example the Naim Unitiserve or ripper from Innuos, Aurender …).
How do you rip or have you ripped your collection?
Through your computer’s cd-rom player (iMac, Macbook Windows etc…) or by purchasing a specific cd-rom player to connect to a computer or straight somewhere such a music server?
Which is the best way (or ways) and the most suitable products to rip CDs and catalog them on a nas or a music server?
I hope not to get confused.
Thanks for your information and clarifications
David
I rip my new purchase using dBpoweramp on my iMac.
I use the Apple Drive most of the time, but keep an old USB LG DVD drive which comes in useful for the occasional disc (usually Warner Brothers) which the Apple Drive fails on.
My usual procedure with a new CD is to Scan the Booklet to JPEG - this is for 2 reasons
The writing is so small that I can’t read it
I keep the CDs in the loft after ripping, so I can at least access the JPEGs to see who plays guitar etc.
The main thing is to get metadata correct for you personal tastes. I’m sure you will receive lots of comments on how to do it, and my way isn’t for everybody :
I change the Artist and Album Artist fields to show “Surname, 1st Name”. e.g Duane Eddy I change to Eddy, Duane. The other way seems wrong to me.
Classical Music I use the composer as the Artist, and the performer I add to the album title in brackets.
As I said - that is the way I prefer to do it, as it’s the same way that I file my LPs on the shelves!
Offers several online images for covers to choose from
Embeds the covers in the flac files which is convenient for UPnP servers, etc
Adapts to specific drives automatically
Compares checksums with a database of other peoples’ rips of the same CD, which pretty much ensures accurate ripping
Has a slow, secure ripping mode that re-reads, etc., for problematic CDs
Has a flexible configuration for folder and track names, etc. It’s a bit like Excel formulas and quite easy to figure out
They have a free trial version and the pay license is well worth it.
As a drive I use a simple USB-attachable Dell. dbPoweramp compares the checksums, so if they match (and they always do) I don’t know what the drive could do better
My plan was to use (and I purchased) Asset UPnP to serve the rips to the NDX2 (Asset and dbPoweramp come from the same company) but I ripped one (1) CD and then, for unrelated reasons, succumbed to Roon. But the dbPoweramp rips should work well with a Roon Core.
If you plan to use Roon and never something else, you can also attach a drive to the machine where the Roon Core runs and let it rip into Roon. Less work and these rips are fine for Roon but not great if you want to use them outside of Roon. E.g., the filenames are basic and cannot be configured. It uses CD Paranoia as the ripping software, with high paranoia settings (making it slow, but it does not matter much as all you do is put the CD into the tray and wait) but does not use checksum verification.
I started with EAC (Exact Audio Copy) but switched to native Naim (Uniti Star) to avoid album art post processing. EAC does a very thorough verification job.
Reason: in week 1 of the 2020 March lockdown I started ripping, in week 3 I decided to buy the Star
I’ve always gone free. EAC (Exact Audio Copy) when I was on Windows, Max now on iMac, using the build in drive. Also using XLD as recommended on this Forum which also seems good. I’m creating files Flac (for a USB for Car/Kitchen Roberts Radio/USB Stick for ND5) and MP3 files for iTunes, for syncing to iPhone. I use MP3tag and MusicBrainz Picard for Taking - the latter is a little more complex, so only used when really needed
Hi,
I use XLD and the internal CD/DVD drive inside my ancient Mac mini. Nice if you have of them lying around, but you probably don’t have one. XLD is fine, though.
I use a Windows laptop with integral CD/DVD drive. As several others above I use dbPoweramp as the ripping software, it works really well, it’s been well described above. That writes to a Synology NAS, which mirrors to another Synology NAS.
Win10 and windows media player. One rip to full flac for nas, one rip to 128 mp3 for the phone/car and upload to cloud for playing on the ipad when travelling.
Via my PC, using ITunes to ALAC then stored on my NAS.
Tried other software to rip to FLAC. But using ITunes conserves artwork. Files are reasonable sizes. Sound is good, very good. Piped to my ndx2, they sound better than my cd5si playing the original CD.
Unless you have plenty of time, this has to be the best bang for your buck way of ripping.
Started with a Buffalo external drive EAC and played with dBpoweramp on a windows pcs to Qnap HS 251+ with Samsung 2tb ssds on a linear power supply, moved to a Melco N10 (Wireworld usb cable) Melco D100 (Sbooster powersuply) combo with the benifit of SongKong.
Dear All,
So many replies, thank you!
I see that most rip via the computer’s internal cd-rom (I thought it was a more sensitive and relevant element actually), while there are several ways and various places to save files (nas, hd connected to a computer , music server with or without streamer functionality …).
Laptop with external DVD-ROM drive using dBPoweramp using AccurateRip verification. Format is FLAC with Level 5 compression.
Metadata and album artwork is then added using mp3tag.
Files are upload to main NAS (RAID1), scanned by Roon Core on ROCK & Asset UPnP server on RPi. Roon is main playback to NDS, with Asset as backup.
The files are then backed up to secondary NAS (RAID1) during daily rsync backup job. So data is now on 4 disks.
Every 3-6 months a backup is made to a stand-alone RAID0 enclosure.
Annually a back up is made to a set of disks, kept in fire proof boxes (was stored off-site, but have been WAH since March).
I too use DBpoweramp on a Mac then to a fanless QNAP NAS running Asset.
The chances are that you will have some that simply refuse to rip, often cleaning helps but for a few I had to use a different USB CDROM drive so if possible have one available, the older the better as older ones seem to be less fussy. I only had one that failed completely and that was a Michael Buble (the bosses not mine, honest) so considered it a blessing.
