Getting started to digitilise my collection. Advice welcome!

[Hicham]

Hi all,

I have bought myself a 750GB hard drive (back up HD will follow soon) and now the only thing I need to do is fill it up. As this is quite an endeavor and I think very time consuming, I thought getting some help here might be a good idea.

I was planning to put my entire collection in a lossless format and had kind of settled on FLAC. Gear wise I will start saving some money to get me the Slim Devices Transporter (or get the Squeezebox and upgrade later).

-Which program to use?
So far I uses EAC to copy/backup CD. I make an image file which i then burn. How does this work for FLAC? I like the fact that EAC does miracles on scratched CDs.

- What do I need to do to make life easy for myself? I mean which program to use so I don't have to manually put information in (song name, artist, year,album,...)?

-Any advice on which software to use to browse and categorise my collection? Preferably free and non-Apple. (I dislike I-Tunes)


This should be enough to get the ball rolling I guess,

Thanks in advance!

Hicham

[royphil345]

I don't think you can beat EAC for a ripper. Sounds like all you have to do is rip to wav tracks instead of a disc image. Use FLAC Frontend and the FLAC codec to convert the tracks to FLAC.

I'm not too familier with the Squeezebox or Transporter. I do know they use particular software to organize your collection. Maybe you should start with the system you want to use later before you get too far.

[Feanor]

Hi all,

I have bought myself a 750GB hard drive (back up HD will follow soon) and now the only thing I need to do is fill it up. As this is quite an endeavor and I think very time consuming, I thought getting some help here might be a good idea.

I was planning to put my entire collection in a lossless format and had kind of settled on FLAC. Gear wise I will start saving some money to get me the Slim Devices Transporter (or get the Squeezebox and upgrade later).

-Which program to use?
So far I uses EAC to copy/backup CD. I make an image file which i then burn. How does this work for FLAC? I like the fact that EAC does miracles on scratched CDs.

- What do I need to do to make life easy for myself? I mean which program to use so I don't have to manually put information in (song name, artist, year,album,...)?

-Any advice on which software to use to browse and categorise my collection? Preferably free and non-Apple. (I dislike I-Tunes)

This should be enough to get the ball rolling I guess,

Thanks in advance!

Hicham

First, ripping is a big job. I strongly recommend you back up your entire collection. All hard disks eventually fail.

Secondly lossless is the only sensible way to go for an enthusiast/audiophile. Even with backup space, HD capacity is cheap enough to justify this. FLAC is a good choice by all accounts.

Thirdly, EAC is the purist's choice for burning. Remeber to configure it to take advantage of your specific source driver.

Fourthly, for playback no doubt the purist's player is Foobar2000. Ths freeware is highly configurable, both for interface and playback. If you're using WinXP or earlier Windows, you want to avoid the notorious "kmixer" component of the Windows audio stack. Foobar lets you select "kernel streaming" or ASIO if your sound card supports the latter.

Some useful Foobar references follow, (or just Google) ...

• http://www.foobar2000.org/
• http://photos.imageevent.com/cics/v0...rts%20v0.3.pdf
• http://www.teqnilogik.com/tutorials/...0_itunes.shtml

All this said, I personally started off with iTunes for zipping and playback and have stuck with it. All my collection is Apple Lossless (ALAC, which Foobar will play with the right addin component). I really can't say that I hear any difference between iTunes and the EAC/Foobar combination.

[noddin0ff]

All this said, I personally started off with iTunes for zipping and playback and have stuck with it. All my collection is Apple Lossless (ALAC, which Foobar will play with the right addin component). I really can't say that I hear any difference between iTunes and the EAC/Foobar combination.

Hey Feanor, I ripped around 900cds with iTunes Lossless. Not sure if it was the computer, the disks, or the program but a small yet significant number of CDs have pops.

I recently switched to using Max for ripping. It will interface directly with iTunes library and offers more error correction. Will convert to ALAC.
http://sbooth.org/Max/


And to all who wish to rip many CDs...BUY A BACK-UP HD!

[Hicham]

I hear you guys on the back up and as soon as I can (financially) I'll get me that extra hard drive.

I have been using Foobar for years now, but I have to say they don't make it easy for non tech heads to customise it. The options are incomprehensible tecno babble to me and I haven't found a non jargon guide for Foobar online.

Any options with Flac I should know of before I start the ripfest?

Anyone here on the forums tried the Transporter?


For me an extra incentive is that my CD-player is very picky. Half of the time it flat out refuses to play a copied cd, but sometimes it will play it just fine. As this severly cripples my choice, this has to end.

[Feanor]

Hey Feanor, I ripped around 900cds with iTunes Lossless. Not sure if it was the computer, the disks, or the program but a small yet significant number of CDs have pops.
...

I had pops too,noddin from iTunes, so I tried Foobar but still got some pops on my laptop. My solution was a dedicated music server. I got a used Pentium 4 with WinXP and stripped off unnecessary programs and Win services. Now I never get pops with either iTunes or Foobar.

[Feanor]

I hear you guys on the back up and as soon as I can (financially) I'll get me that extra hard drive.

I have been using Foobar for years now, but I have to say they don't make it easy for non tech heads to customise it. The options are incomprehensible tecno babble to me and I haven't found a non jargon guide for Foobar online.

....

I was intimidated by Foobar too, but I found the references mentioned above to be very helpful. My most recent fuss was getting Foobar to recognized the ASIO driver for my M-Audio Audiophile USB external sound card, but I got it working with some help from folks over at Audio Asylum's PC forum.