CD Ripping and Media Servers

[sredmyer]

Ok, first let me say that I originally had serious concerns about mentioning my business here. However after talking with a fellow member, who thought I should let folks here know what I am doing, I decided I would try to start a discussion which could both provide information as well as provide me the opportunity to mention (yes a shameless plug) my business.

My business is Ripit Digital (www.RipitDigital.com) and we are a small CD ripping service located in Louisville, KY. For a more detailed description of how I got into this business and what I am working on see my bio here on the forum or visit the website.http://www.ripitdigital.com/'>

There, with the not so shameless plug out of the way here is the discussion I would like to start.

How many here have converted their music collection to digital format and are employing some type of media streaming device to play that digital library on the home audio system?

How large is your collection?

What streaming devices do you use?

What file format do you prefer and why?

What metadata tagging is valuable to you and why (is it required for you streaming devices cataloging or does it just help you personally manage your library)?

What equipment, methods and software did you use to rip your collection?

How did you verify the accuracy of the audio extraction?

How did you tag the files with the metadata?

If you used automated software and an online service for tagging what measures did you employ to assure the accuracy and consistency of the data gathered.

While I admit that it is my hope that these questions will promote discussion which can help me to better understand and meet my customers’ needs, I also feel certain that I can provide help to those here wishing to take on their own ”DIY” ripping project.

So without further ado...let the discussions begin[]

Steve

[jamesV]

Wow great topic.

I just started doing my collection that is around 600 or so, to an external 1 TB HD. Currently I am just trying to get the collection to digital which I am using Exact Audio Copy, I am ripping them as .wav and uncompressed files. I don't know if this combination is the best or worse but it was free...

I haven't thought about streaming to my HT or 2-channel yet but I guess I can figure that out when I am done and have a little extra coin to spend on it. At the moment my buddy uses it for looking up songs and putting them on his I-Pod and I listen to some while at the computer.

I also would like to hear what others are doing.

James

[sredmyer]

Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is an excellent choice for ripping software. I do not use that app myself as it is not easily scripted for automated ripping so I can not speak specificaly about its configuration settings. However I do know that the app does employ the use of an online database of CRCs (trademarked AccurateRip) from ripped CDs. This database is used to validate the accuracy of the rip. Receiving an accuracy confidence level of 3 or greater back from this query is a fairly good indication that you have a completely accurate rip. From my research EAC also makes good use of C2 error pointers which is good for producing accurate audio extraction quickly.

As far as your choice in format, I usualy advise my customers in one of two ways depending on their equipment and technical savy. If someone has the equipment, software and technical savy, required to do conversion whenever required, I usualy advise them to go with a lossless compressed codec (ie. flac). This allows them to have fully accurate copies of their CDs without the huge space requirements of wav (which is uncompressed). Then if they have a need for a more compressed format (ie. mp3) for a personal media player (ie. an iPod) or for a car audio system, they can simply convert the tracks they want whenever the need arises. If on the other hand they are less savy I will suggest that they maintain a dual library (a lossless one and a lossy one).

Of coarse another important consideration in selecting a format is the player. Almost anything will play mp3s but again even the highest bit rate mp3 file has audio data removed (whether or not what is lost is perceivable or not is a source of constant debate). Many devices aimed at streaming media to home audio systems will support some type of lossless codec. Again I think flac is a good choice here as it does allow for some (about 2:1) compression.

What metadata providers does EAC use? Does it use more than one? Does it support use of paid metadata providers (ie. AMG, GD3, etc.) or does it only use free services (ie. FreeDB, MusicBranz, etc.)

Steve

[chrisinvermont]

Ok I will try and answer! I ripped all of my CD's a few years ago, initially to use on an MP3 Player.

The collection including my wife's and my CD's is about 600 CD's. We also subscribe to Napster and have downloaded a bunch of albums from them.

For streaming all music is located on an HP Media Vault and is streamed via a Sonos system.

Since I ripped everything several years ago it was in the MP3 format. I am planning on getting a new computer and now that there are a number of lossless formats I will probably re-rip everything. At the time storage space was an issue, both on the computer and on the MP3 player. Those concerns have lessened now.

For metadata I really only care about being able to find the songs, artist or album. I don't know what if anything is required for the sonos.

Everything was ripped on a Dell XPS with just windows media player.

I didn't verify the accuracy of the audio extraction. At the time I was only focused on the MP3 player where quality isn't as big of an issue. This is another reason I was thinking of re-ripping now that I have the sonos.

I let Windows Media Player tag the files except for a couple of rare CD's that were not in the database.

I didn't do anything to ensure the accuracy and I have lived with the errors. For instance I now that the Pixies Surfer Rosa/Come on Pilgrim have most of the tracks mis-labled but I am too lazy to fix!

I would look forward to any help you can provide in re-ripping everything! It took a few weeks the first time and going lossless will take even longer. Luckily after selling all of my old heavy metal albums in college I no longer sell any of my music! I know several people that ripped their CD's at a relatively low quality and then sold them all.

Chris

[Mallette]

I built my first media server, MBS-5, in 2002 and it is still on line. It's fanless and has only one moving part, the HDD. I've built a couple of more since, more as DAW's/location recorders, but my latest server is MBS-7, which has no moving parts (CFDOM as system disc) and VESA mounts on the back of the monitor and runs on 12vdc.

I've been ripping with EAC since day one. I use .wav, though I'd use flac (it compresses the files more, the the music is lossless) except that it is not unviversal enough and you have to convert to wav to burn audio discs. However, since space is not an issue anymore it really doesn't matter.

I don't know anything about tagging. I've found all the media players I've tried to be too much hassle and too proprietary to go through the trouble of building libraries and such. I just file by m3u playlists and use a browser to locate what I want to hear.

I also have a recently acquired Kenwood NV8100 digital reciever with networking built in. Very cool...

I've never found any audible differences between a rip and the original and I would be very surprised to find any.

I "rip" analog to 1 bit, 2.8mhz DFS files. These transcode transparently to any PCM format as the divisor of 2.8mhz is so many decimal places it is functionally even, like 44.1 and 88.2 in PCM. My ears tell me this is, indeed, transparent and I've gotten to where I store many high res digital files this way as well so I don't have to worry about downsampling.

Dave

[Deang]

However after talking with a fellow member, who thought I should let folks here know what I am doing,

It's O.K. to blame me -- I'm used to the heat.

I've heard a lot of people say and I've read in a lot of places that ripping a CD can result in better sound. I've never understood that -- how does that happen?

[Coytee]

Having only ripped my cd's and the sountrack of my dvd's to my Itunes so I could populate my Ipod for a 3 week trip to europe... I'm pretty dumb on this stuff.

Is it possible for me to somehow rip the audio track off a blueray disk? I've got one or two I'd like to add to my Itunes/Ipod.

Otherwise, I'm not sure what you guys are doing.... you are ripping your stuff to a hard drive and this hard drive is then plumbed into your stereo?

If accurate, then have always simply pulled the disk I want to play and put it into my cd or dvd player. I guess I'm a simpleton []

[Mallette]

However after talking with a fellow member, who thought I should let folks here know what I am doing,

It's O.K. to blame me -- I'm used to the heat.

I've heard a lot of people say and I've read in a lot of places that ripping a CD can result in better sound. I've never understood that -- how does that happen?

Only if your PC DAC is better than your CD player. The source can never get better than it started. However, a great card like Card Deluxe will sound better than anything but a top of the line CD player. In my case, I've never heard a CD player any better.

Dave

[jwc]

All Cd''s ripped into Apple Lossless format. Love it. Digital out to a seperate DAC.

jc

[sredmyer]

I've heard a lot of people say and I've read in a lot of places that ripping a CD can result in better sound. I've never understood that -- how does that happen?

Dean,

When we spoke today and you asked me about this I was refering to the fact that after running a disc through my service the results can indeed be better than the input. However this is not because the audio extracted is somehow improved. Rather it is because I inspect all discs and polish scratched and dirty discs (which might skip when played) in a specialized disc polishing machine. I then said that it is possible to end up with lossless files from DAE from vinyl which can indeed sound better than a CD of the same material.

Sorry if I confused you.

Steve

[sredmyer]

Ok I will try and answer! I ripped all of my CD's a few years ago, initially to use on an MP3 Player.

The collection including my wife's and my CD's is about 600 CD's. We also subscribe to Napster and have downloaded a bunch of albums from them.

For streaming all music is located on an HP Media Vault and is streamed via a Sonos system.

Since I ripped everything several years ago it was in the MP3 format. I am planning on getting a new computer and now that there are a number of lossless formats I will probably re-rip everything. At the time storage space was an issue, both on the computer and on the MP3 player. Those concerns have lessened now.

For metadata I really only care about being able to find the songs, artist or album. I don't know what if anything is required for the sonos.

Everything was ripped on a Dell XPS with just windows media player.

I didn't verify the accuracy of the audio extraction. At the time I was only focused on the MP3 player where quality isn't as big of an issue. This is another reason I was thinking of re-ripping now that I have the sonos.

I let Windows Media Player tag the files except for a couple of rare CD's that were not in the database.

I didn't do anything to ensure the accuracy and I have lived with the errors. For instance I now that the Pixies Surfer Rosa/Come on Pilgrim have most of the tracks mis-labled but I am too lazy to fix!

I would look forward to any help you can provide in re-ripping everything! It took a few weeks the first time and going lossless will take even longer. Luckily after selling all of my old heavy metal albums in college I no longer sell any of my music! I know several people that ripped their CD's at a relatively low quality and then sold them all.

Chris

This story is very similar to how I got into this.

I ripped my entire collection (about 2000 CDs) several years ago manualy using Windows Media Player (WMP). Like you I ripped my CDs to a low bitrate lossy format and would occasionaly notice here and there a few tracks (and sometimes even entire CDs) which were tagged incorrectly. However the biggest problem I found was that there were some tracks (don't think I ever really found out how many) which were ripped realy badly. Some would only play halfway through, some would play but sounded horrible (full of pops and clicks) and some bore no resemblance at all to the source. The problem (I later learned) was that WMP simple did what is called a burst rip. A burst rip is a single pass audio extraction with zero error checking. This means that one would have no way of knowing whether the audio files were accurate or not without listening to every single track of every CD ripped. Obviously this was not pratical for a 2000 disc collection.

When I decided to re-rip my collection I decided I needed to find a way to accomplish the following

1. automate the disc changing process
2. verify the accuracy of the extracted audio
3. rip to a lossless format
4. pull highly accurate metadata

My searching for these capabilities ended with me buying the CD ripping service company that I now opperate. I have since ripped many collections both for paying customers as well as my own and learned much about the process.

When you are ready, I will be happy to help you with your project. If you would like to do it yourself I will gladly share any knowledge I have gained which might help. Obviously I would also be more than happy to convert your collection for you.

Steve

[Tag 1.7]

I use my ipod as a high end music server. All music is ripped in Apple Lossless format and my dac is a McIntosh MDA1000. The ipod sits in a Wadia 170 iTransport which extracts the digital signal from the ipod and bypasses the cheap ipod dac. Couldn't be happier.[]

[Frank1938]

If accurate, then have always simply pulled the disk I want to play and put it into my cd or dvd player. I guess I'm a simpleton

Whenever I want to make a cd or two of mixed songs, I rip the selected songs to wav files and burn the cd's. I converted many of my vinyl records to wav files using Cool Edit Pro many years ago. As you can imagine, I had several external hard drives storing the material.

[jwc]

I use my ipod as a high end music server. All music is ripped in Apple Lossless format and my dac is a McIntosh MDA1000. The ipod sits in a Wadia 170 iTransport which extracts the digital signal from the ipod and bypasses the cheap ipod dac. Couldn't be happier.

I use the MDA1000 form the digital out of my sound card.

So you are ripping apple lossless with itunes on your computer then downloading to the Ipod? What about hard drive space/capacity?

jc

[Tag 1.7]

Hi jc

I have a 120g iPod Classic which can hold about 4000 songs in Apple lossless, more than enough to keep me going indefinately. I rip my music into iTunes and find this simple for a low tech guy such as myself! What I have done is only rip my favourite songs from my collection and to keep my listening less predictable, I select shuffle on the iPod, in effect turning my system into a 4000 song digital jukebox with only my favourite tunes coming up. Being able to make up custom playlists is also another great feature of iTunes. When I want to hear an album in its entirety, I just play the cd.

I consider the iPod great value when you think about what it can do so if I need to increase storage capacity then I would buy another iPod. But the true wonder product for me is the Wadia 170iTransport. This is the only product in the world that can extract the digital signal from the iPod, completely bypassing the cheap internal iPod dacs, so the iPod becomes nothing more than a server, with the sound quality being 100% dependent on the quality of your dac which as you would know with the MDA1000, is about the best there is! If it wasn't for the Wadia, true high end sound from an iPod wouldn't be possible.

[jwc]

That is great information...need to try that...

jc

[skonopa]

How large is your collection?

Don't know how many CDs I have (never bothered to count them), but the current digital file collection is over 8600 individual tracks consisting of some 700+ albums and over 300 artists.

What streaming devices do you use?

I use to have a Roku Soundbridge M1000, but it ended up going south on me (I am guessing a lightening strike while I was away on vacation). I know have a Elan Via!DJ music server. I also have a couple of iPods (a 160 gig "classic" and a 32 gig "touch"), as well a Creative Zen (8 gigs) that I primarily use at the gym while working out.

What file format do you prefer and why?

Nearly all of it is in 320kbps MP3. I know it is lossy, but I find it the best compromise between space and sound quality, plus it is pretty universal without going through the hassle of having to "downconvert" anytime I want to put it up on the music server or iPod. One of the downsides of that Elan Via!DJ is that it only has a 160 gig harddrive. If I want to listen to the full uncompressed copy, that is where my trusty ol' Denon 5-disk CD player come in. I guess I am not (never really was) that anal about the sound quality.

What metadata tagging is valuable to you and why (is it required for you streaming devices cataloging or does it just help you personally manage your library)?

Obviously, the name of the album, the name of the invidual track, and the artist that created it are important to me. I also like to include the album art, as it does help find something (quickly glancing through, I can often recognize the album art), plus it just addes that extra bit of eye candy for the display, especially on the iPods.

What equipment, methods and software did you use to rip your collection?

Trusty ol' EAC using a now, getting somewhat long in the tooth, eMachines computer. Works plenty fine and produces good files. I store them all on a file server containing something like about a terabyte of space that I have setup in one of the back rooms. I mainly rip CD's so I can put them on an iPod to listen to in the car. Also, quite a bit of my collection comes from services like eMusic (which comes in 256kbps variable rate MP3). However it is usually the eMusic downloads that get sent up to the Via!DJ music server so I can listen to them on my main rig. I don't mess around with any of the DRMed services though, especially, as I prefer to keep everything in a universal MP3 format that I know will work on any device that I plan on playing them on, including my Linux box.

How did you verify the accuracy of the audio extraction?

I guess that is why I use Exact Audio Copy, which is supposed to have ways to verify that a rip is good and went error free. Other than that, I'll have to trust it to eMusic that they didn't mess up a rip. Unfortunatly, I've encountered the occasional track that I've downloaded from them that turned out to be corrupted in one way or another. Pretty rare, but still annoying when it happens. I usually end up fussing back at them about and they usually credit me for the download.

How did you tag the files with the metadata?

I've just used the FreeDB that come along with EAC, as well as just
using trusty ol' iTunes to add the album art and other track info
manually. I know there are a number of good bulk taggers out there,
but just haven't gotten around to trying one out,. The files downloaded from eMusic are usually pre-tagged with most of the pertinant bits of info, such as track number and such.

If you used automated software and an online service for tagging what measures did you employ to assure the accuracy and consistency of the data gathered.

I typically just manually check something immediatly after ripping or downloading it and see how it displays in iTunes or WinAmp. If something is missing, I'll just manually go in and add it via iTunes.

While I admit that it is my hope that these questions will promote discussion which can help me to better understand and meet my customers’ needs, I also feel certain that I can provide help to those here wishing to take on their own ”DIY” ripping project.

So without further ado...let the discussions begin

Steve

I've just never found a real need myself for any of those paid CD ripping services. I am one that prefer to "do it myself" and typically only do it when I feel the need to rip a particular CD into my system. Not only that, I am just not comfortable in shipping all my valuable CDs of to "who know where" and pray that the parcel service does not end up losing or destorying them in the meantime, espeically as some of these CDs I have are not easy to replace, as a good many of them weren't ever released in the US and I had to import them overseas, including buying them directly from the band. Also, some of these are not even in print and are nigh impossible to replace, such as Eternity X, The Edge (seen copies of those go for over $60 on the second-hand market!). Also, most of the stuff I have is downloaded anyway through eMusic and such, with the occasional CD ripped in for convenience sake. Still cool that you are taking upon yourself to operate a CD ripping service, as I am certain that with the growing popularity of iPods and the like and people wanting to put all thier music on server for convenient access, there is a good market potential.

Thus, in a nutshell, most of my digital library is downloaded via eMusic and such, played through a Via!DJ and/or iPod, and what few CDs I've gotten around to ripping, I did it through Exact Audio Copy and just used trusty ol' MP3 320kbps, as I prefer the univarsallity of it and don't feel like all the hassle of keeping a "lossless" library and have to reconvert. Not only that eMusic does not even offer lossless (kinda wish they did, though, as I'd be more inclined to use it)

[jacksonbart]

Olive Music Server

It has a terabyte and only has about 8000 tracks, some 900 albums, mostly FLAC, but there are some MP3s and WAVs.

I use the service that Olive provides, works very well, I would say about 8 or 9 disks have failed requiring me to manually enter the metadata, which isn't too bad since the server hosts its own intranet websit on your net work and you can use your laptop to enter the data. I have updated about 40 disks to tweek the metadata to be more accurate, including album artwork.

[Olorin]

I rip and encode with Max. Max contains a GUI front end to the cdparanoia library and seems to produce very good rips. It uses Musicbrainz for CDDB information, and I find MB to be spotty at best, so I use an Applescript to get iTunes' CDDB information from Gracenote and use it to populate the tags. Compression is Apple Lossless, again done by Max. iTunes is my library manager.

My music server is my MacPro tower with a 500 GB drive on it. I have about 400 CDs archived (all personally owned) and the disk is about 40% full. I share the iTunes library and my wife can listen on her Mac and I listen on my laptop, also through iTunes.

[sredmyer]

WOW. Alot of you guys seem to have really figured out the transport/player side of this. I must admit that although I have spent alot of time figuring out how to get the most acurate rips from my (and customers) CDs, I have not given a great deal of thought to the transport/player end of it.

When I started trying to find "the best" way to get my digital media to my home theater I just used a Dell small form factor destop PC (a GX270). Originaly I just used Windows Media Player and the onboard sound card. I simply sent the PCs analog audio to my Onkyo receiver. From an audio quality standpoint I believed this was fine, but I had to use the PC's keyboard and mouse to play and manange the library. This always bothered me so eventualy I wrote a Jukebox program with some features my wife and I really enjoyed and it included an app written for my PDA which acted as a wireless remote allowing us to see what track was playing (including Album art), what track was up next and to change tracks from the remote zone two (our outside system).

As my system improved to include a receiver with optical digital inputs, I eventually added an inexpensive sound card which also had optical digital output. I also worked to improve the video. This was accomplished by adding an inexpensive video card which allows for the creation of custom resolutions and timing settings. These custom settings were accomplished using a program call PowerStrip. I also added a transcoder to transcode the VGA output to component video. This allowed me to send the high def video along with the digital audio signal to the AVR to be processed and switched just like any other source.

This new setup has worked well and I still use it. However, I have recently bought the Logitec Squeezbox Duet. I bought this system because I lost the source code for my custom Jukebox application several years ago so I can not modify it without completely re-writing it and it was not originaly coded to play flac files. Since I have re-ripped my library to lossless (flac) files I needed a player which would play these files. I have not yet installed this new Squeezebox system but now that I have more time on my hands (due to my being recently downsized out of a job) I hope to get it setup soon. I chose this system because it has all the features of my existing app (including the wirless remote with LCD display including album art) and because it was inexpensive.

This brings me to the point I have been wanting to get to, I believe that if the transport mechanism used is digital, it (the transport) is sonicly transparent. In other words I had always believed that there was no value in an expensive transport if that that transport was digital. This is why I went with a cheapo sound card in the PC and why I chose the Squeezebox. You see, I believe that if the signal is digital all the way to the decoder (in my case the Harman Kardon AVR 7300) then that decoder is responsible for the D to A conversion. If this is the case and the transport is sonicly transparent I can not see any value in having an uber (or evenly moderately) expensive transport. This money is better spent on the DAC (again in my case the HK AVR).

Is this belief false?

Steve