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Ripping CD Collection

3K views 13 replies 9 participants last post by  Zoot Horn 
#1 · (Edited)
Hello,
I'm currently playing with the idea of ripping my entire CD collection (around 540 or so) to a hard drive, but I have a couple questions:

1.) My collection is ever-expanding, so I don't want to run out of room. How much space would I need for, say, 600 (for starters) cds, assuming the "High Quality" setting in iTunes (see below)?

2.) iTunes lets you choose your sampling and bit rates. The "High Quality" setting is 128 kbps and 44.100 kHz. I know it would make the file sizes larger, but would bumping those numbers up (196 and 48.0) make any difference in sound quality for CD-R, computer, or iPod listening? What are the standard CD rates?

Thanks
 
#2 ·
I use the Windows Media Player to rip my CDs and use the "highest quality" setting which equates to 320 kbps at 44100khz. I find the quality to be very good at that rate. My CD collection would probably be similar in size to yours and takes up around 18 gb on my hard drive.
 
#3 ·
If you're ripping a CD, which is 44.1kHz, there is no sense in changing that parameter, you would be "upsampling," introducing digitial artifacts, and gaining nothing other than a larger file size. Changing the sample rate to 320kbps however, would increase the fidelity of the resultant mp3 files.
 
#4 ·
Thanks Cleger! I'm just wondering if the rates make a significant impact on sound quality at such high rates. I'm also playing with the idea of backing everything up by burning it to a CD-R, and want equal quality without overdoing it. Is the quality the same between mp3 and aac (iTunes) files?

And thanks Bill! How much would increasing the sample rate affect file size?
 
#5 ·
I use Music Match Juke Box to rip all my CDs to MP3. The quality is great and the size is about 1mb per min. So at 600CDs at say 70 mins apiece you are looking at needing 42,000K or 42 GIGs unless you compress the file (reduces the quality) Again this is only if the CD contains 70 Mins of music.
 
#8 ·
To get the best quality with the least space, I'd reccomend getting a ripping program that lets you use VBR (variable bit rate). It takes a little longer to rip, however it saves space. What VBR does is looks at what's going on at any given point in the recording and adjusts the bit rate accordingly. I don't reccomend this for any rock/pop CD's, as the volume and whatnot is fairly constant. Classical and jazz work pretty well. Example: If I'm going to rip 'The Rite of Spring' there are parts that are quieter (i.e. less data) than others, lots of silence. If I'm using CBR (Constant Bit Rate) then it's using the same amount of space for parts where not as much is going on. If I'm using VBR, during the sections where there's lots of activity, it might be encoding at 320, and when there's less activity, it might drop to 96 or something. You get high quality without using as much space.

I use Easy CDDA Extractor, which charges a license fee, but I've found it to be very useful because I can tweak how I rip my CD's at any time.

As for space.... I have an 80 GB Western Digital USB external hard drive, and have probably 1000 albums on it, and it's not full (I also use it for storing other digital media, video, pictures etc.) The thing with extra hard drives is.... you can always buy another one.

Also, backing up to CDR is a good idea, though I prefer to backup to DVD (if you've got a DVD writer, this is the way to go, IMHO). I have my entire digital music collection backed up on about 12 DVD's. To do this on CDR would take probably 9 or 10 times that many.

Best,
Chris S
 
#10 ·
Okay, I've started ripping my collection to my local hard drive. A new drive will come after I finally find a job and start being able to pay for things. In the meantime, is there any way for me to download the liner notes for all of my albums?
 
#14 ·
You're a musician. You will pay attention to fidelity. On the equipment you have today, you might not hear the difference, but you may someday have equipment where you can hear the difference. So you will make very large mp3 files (make sure you're using either the Lame of Frauenhoffer codecs). Be careful -- most rippers (and burners) are designed to work fast instead of work well. Don't use the default settings. A song is often 10 mb. Including all the mp3 files I collected with lower bit depth, I had 6,000 mp3 files taking up 100 gb. The biggest operating problem was backing everything up, the disk finally crashed and I lost a lot of music. After 2 years of screwing with this, I now believe that it is even more important that you study your equipment for the weakest link than it was back in the days of analog stereo. Windows Media Player 10 is a really powerful juke box/database that uses the Frauenhoffer codec. If you invest this much time, make sure you get a motherboard that supports RAID (redundent and inexpensive drives). This will eliminate drop outs and solve the backing up problem. The best recorders and editors are Total Recorder (for wave) and mp3Direct Cut (IMO). The best internet radio ripper is Station Ripper - a real miracle. There's a ton of stuff written out there, just Google around. But nothing will replace what you learn by experimenting.

Fianlly, if someone tells you something is best, there's no reason to believe them. It's too easy to do your own side by side comparison. People decide that software is good or bad for very personal reasons.
 
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