Thoughts on ripping a CD collection into digital format
John Walkenbach started with the idea of having a commercial service rip his CD collection for him but has since given up on that idea:
After doing some more research, I decided to abandon the idea of using a company to convert my CDs. As it turns out, the total number of CDs is closer to 1,000, and I failed to take shipping costs into account. All told, this project would cost about $1,000 — definitely not worth it. Plus, the idea of removing all of those CDs from their jewel boxes, shipping them, and then returning them to the correct jewel box is not at all appealing.
Wise decision. Actually, I did a similar project last fall (800 CDs) and it took less than two weeks. I used Windows Media Player 10 and configured it to rip automatically as soon as it recognized a CD. (You can choose WMA or MP3 format in bit rates as high as 320MB.) It was able to identify and correctly tag well over 95% of the tracks, downloading the album art in the process, and each CD took no more than a couple minutes. Anything that wasn’t immediately recognized I put on a stack for later handling. I did a couple of marathon sessions over one weekend, doing a few hundred CDs each day as I watched baseball games and dumb movies that required little concentration. Mostly, though, I just got in the habit of keeping a stack of CDs by my desk. I’d stick a CD in and (ahem) let ’er rip. I didn’t really need to do much more than pop out the old CD and insert a new one, and I was able to continue working on other projects throughout. All in all, it turned out to be pretty simple.
The more tedious part came later, when I went in to review tags. There were a fair number of errors and omissions that I wanted to fix. I found the eMusic Tag Editor indispensable for this task.
If you plan to do a similar project, I recommend you get two external hard drives and keep a duplicate copy of your music collection on the second drive. Don’t believe me? Just imagine the feeling in the pit of your stomach if that first drive grinds to a halt someday and you have to go through the process of ripping and tagging all over again.
Update: Based on some interesting questions from Ken in the comments, I’ve posted some follow-up thoughts in a separate post: What’s the point of digital media?
22 Responses to Thoughts on ripping a CD collection into digital format
I am backing up a 1000 cd collection and I am using a friends computer, i couldnt move the named music files from his library in wmp to my external drive, so I moved them from his documents and therefore I have hundreds of files that are unknown, my question is, do these tagging programs go through and name all those files for me automatically? I just want to know the best rout for this, i dont want to wast time without asking questions. Is there a program that does this for me or am I going about this the wrong way?any advice is great I’m not that savy to this
Have you actually listened to all the tracks you’ve ripped? I’m asking because I, too, am using WMP 10 to rip my 800+ CD collection (EAC took wayyyy took long, although it produces perfect copies) and have found than it at least one out every ten discs, there are significant skips and glitches. Don’t know what I can do to fix this, but it may just be the price I pay for speedy rips. Has anyone else had this problem?