CD Ripping and Media Servers

[Mallette]

>Is this belief false?

No. It is correct. In fact, even in the CD player world the transport is relevant only as to whether it delivers the data to the DAC properly. In the digital world, it is ALL about the ADAC. End of story.

Dave

[sredmyer]

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.

What is an MBS-5 / 7? I have googled it but found nothing. I know you said you built it yourself but did you also design it? If so what (aside from silent components) is in it?

I do not yet stream my music (still waiting to fully grasp the Squeezebox duet I bought). Right now I use a simple file server (an old Dell WS 470 Workstation) running Windows Server 2003 R2 that lives in the storage room in the basement. The server has 2TB of storage via a SATA connected 4 bay drive enclosure. This SATA enclosure actually contains 4 X 750GB drives configured for RAID5. Additionaly I have a Lacie 4TB NAS on my network which is used only for backups. Although the WS 470 is not exactly silent (though it is not terribly loud) it is a complete non-issue in my system as it is physically located so far away and on a different floor.

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

Using EAC should just about guarantee there is no difference between the rip and the CD. Providing, of coarse, you are encoding to a lossless format.

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.

I am not familiar with that format (DFS). What is the primary use for the format? What players are capable of decoding it? What software do you use for these analog rips?

Steve

[chrisinvermont]

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

I am just finishing up a new office space for myself. Once I build the cabinets and desk I will get a new computer and then work to get everything re-ripped. I would consider sending out the discs to be ripped but I don't think I could part with my precious!!!! I will contact you when the time comes and at least get some tips for redoing everything.

Chris

[Frzninvt]

When you figure it out Chris let me know I have 1100 CD's from all genre's that I can rip and share. I have thought about getting a terabyte drive or two and doing it that way but it seemed cumbersome. Hard drives will eventually fail so perhaps I should wait until they get solid state drives in the terabyte range affordable which may be a couple of years.

[sredmyer]

I am just finishing up a new office space for myself. Once I build the cabinets and desk I will get a new computer and then work to get everything re-ripped. I would consider sending out the discs to be ripped but I don't think I could part with my precious!!!! I will contact you when the time comes and at least get some tips for redoing everything.

Chris

No problem Chris...just give me a shout when you are ready.

Although I use specialized equipment (and software for managing it) that I designed myself, I do use readily available software to do the actual ripping. I use the "Batch Ripper" application from dbPoweramp. This software is extremely affordable and has some really superb features to ensure accurate audio extraction and high quality, consistent metadata.

I understand what you are saying about parting with your collection. When I first started doing this (as a business) I wondered how much of a problem that would be. I do offer to insure the shipment for customers but that adds to the cost and still does not replace what you had. I don't know about your collection but I imagine I have quite a few CDs in my own collection which would be difficult (possibly impossible) to replace at any cost.

If you have enough friends in your area who might be interested in the service I could be convinced to do a pickup and delivery if the number of discs (and therefore money) would make it worthwhile.[]

Steve

[chrisinvermont]

Frzin,

Good to see you around. You will have to swing by and check out the house. It is all still in a constant state of renovation but the KG .5's are up and mounted. Once I get moved into the new office and upgrade the computers we can talk about CD's. I will probably need to upgrade my media server. I share your concerns about hard drives. My media server is RAID I so I have redundancy there. Also my MP3 player can hold 30 gigs and the wife's is 60 gigs. We are at about 35 gigs worth of music so far so I figure the media server has redundancy and each MP3 player hold most or all of the songs and that is another level of redundancy.

Chris

[eq_shadimar]

Okies I will bite. Here are my answers:

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?

I have done this

How large is your collection?

Around 50,000 songs

What streaming devices do you use?

Xbox 360, Popcorn Hour (NMT Device), a couple of notebooks, a couple of desktops, Verizon Media Manager to Verizon FiOS Cable Box, Kenwood VRS-N8100

What file format do you prefer and why?

FLAC because it is losses, MP3 VBR@128 because it is compatible with everything. I burn to FLAC and then have the software side convert or transcode to MP3. This gives me a complete FLAC and MP3 library that I store in separate directories (Y:\FLAC and Y:\MP3 believe it or not [] )

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)?

Genre, Artist, Album Title, and Album Art. All the rest, recorded date, history, etc is nice to have but I never sort the music using that stuff

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

Windows XP Professional using MediaMonkey Pro to my 4TB Promise 4300 NAS

How did you verify the accuracy of the audio extraction?

I didn't. If it ripped fine with no errors and I could hear it, I assumed all was good.

How did you tag the files with the metadata?

MediaMonkey script functions and automatic lookup using the various online services (Amazon, FreeDB, Gracenote). If setup correctly MediaMonkey queries several of these sources and I can chose what I want to use.

For Dave (Mallette) Kenwood NV8100 digital reciever with networking built in.

Dave did you mean the Kenwood VRS-N8100? If so that is a nice piece with some limitations. I have had one for several years and it is a solid performer. I enjoy the sound and it has a mind boggling amount of features. If you ask nice I will tell you how to interface nice banana plugs to the little speaker output clips []

Laters,

Jeff

[Mallette]

Mr. Shadimar, sir, you have a PM...

Dave

[sredmyer]

>Is this belief false?

No. It is correct. In fact, even in the CD player world the transport is relevant only as to whether it delivers the data to the DAC properly. In the digital world, it is ALL about the ADAC. End of story.

Dave

Dave,

You seem to really know what your talking about in this area. In another thread here some have talked about jitter and timing issues with audio playback from digital sources. Can you explain what this issue is and what we can do to minimize it's effects.

Thanks,

Steve

[Mallette]

Steve, you will get some opposing opinions about this, but mine is that I've never heard either jitter or timing issues. They exist, but IMHO are inaudible or at best must be learned to hear.

I've been recording and playing back digital now for over 20 years and I've not heard any issues that are related to jitter or timing. I've hear a lot about them, but not the thing itself.

Your milage, and ears, may vary.

Dave

[toddvj]

First two things I do when I buy a new CD are, make a copy for the car, and rip to my hard drive. I use EAC/LAME, rip to mp3 for best compatibility. I originally ripped all my CDs to 128kbps when a 80GB hard drive was considered large. Then I got a 60GB iPod and re-ripped the entire collection to 192kbps VBR. I have since gone back and ripped my favorites to 320kbps, and left my "catalog" CDs at 192 VBR. I also have a few "favorite favorites" in Apple lossless but also kept the 320 version, again for compatability. I can stream my music via my HTPC, my TiVo, and my iPod dock (I have 160GB ipod now - almost full).

For tagging, EAC does the job for me. Only thing that I've found is that sometimes the genres are strange, so I've changed them in iTunes. I also have a program called media monkey that works great for tagging.

[JohnnyS]

Hi all, what a great forum, I am a long time Klipsch owner and I did not even know this forum existed until now.

I appologize for dragging up an old thread but I just found it (and the forum) while searching for information on how to get my CD collection converted to computer files so I can setup a media server/player for my home theater. I also do not want to hijack the OPs thread but he did say he would provide help/insight to those wanting to do it on their own. []

I am hoping to get some pointers on doing it. Specificaly I need some advice on the hardware and software and process I should use to achieve the best results. I have around 1800 CDs and am not really looking forward to the idea of spending countless hours feeding discs into my PC so I want to make sure I do it right the first time.

In researching for this project I have read that EAC (Exact Audio Copy) is a good choice for software. Supposedly it is somehow able to fix scratched CDs so there are no skips in the resulting computer files. Also I have read that some CD drives are better than others when it comes to extracting audio. I was hoping that somebody here could suggest a make and model. Lastly, my collection has many classical CDs and I am told that to get the most from a media server/player setup tagging will be very important and that the automatic tagging done by most software is spotty at best. I can not imagine entering song titles, performer, composer and such for each track manually for 1800 CDs. Surely there are automated solutions available that at least lessen the manual effort.

John

[The Dude]

Welcome to the forum, nothing wrong with recycling. This has been an ongoing event around the forum, there recently has been one called pics of my media server. Its in my favorites, there are alot of options and opinions on this subject if you read between the lines you can come up with you own options. Good luck with your journey I am currently reading alot about this as I plan to build one for music this winter.

duder

[michael hurd]

Well... I started out with ripping my CD's to my laptop with Windows Media Player, and letting it get the Metadata. I didn't verify the rips, but they do sound decent, I selected .WMA as the type with the quality set to the highest it offered.

I usually make an exact copy ( including CD-R's that have enhanced features ) of a CD for use in the car when I buy a new one.

I recently bought a Western Digital WDTV unit, and a pair of 1TB hard drives. I found out that the .WMA information does not tag each file, rather stores the album art in the folder for the artist. This means that the album art shows up on the WDTV when you select the album from the 'artist' folder, but not each individual track. MP3's that have been tagged with ID3 will show up on each individual track. Not a super biggie for me.

Since there is no real standard across the board for all types of players in regards to tagging, etc, I would have to say that you should approach this from a case-by-case approach.

WDTV plays a whole host of file types, as well I have ripped my DVD collection ( currently both 1TB drives nearly full ) into .ISO's. Aftermarket firmware flashed to the WDTV means that I have USB hub support, and can keep expanding by adding more outboard HDD's.

If I do re-rip my music collection, it will most likely be to FLAC, with MP3's as well in seperate directory. ( support for more than one device type )

For my DVD collection, I downloaded the album art, resized it manually and attached it to the folder with the .ISO file.

ISO works in both the XBMC for windows ( on laptop ) as well as the WDTV. I chose .ISO for menu, subtitle support in XBMC. WDTV does not support this, other than subtitle.

There are other video file types that you can rip and convert to, they all have their good and bad points.

[sredmyer]

Hi all, what a great forum, I am a long time Klipsch owner and I did not even know this forum existed until now.

Welcome to the forum. I am sure if you stick around you will find the place friendly and informative.

I appologize for dragging up an old thread but I just found it (and the forum) while searching for information on how to get my CD collection converted to computer files so I can setup a media server/player for my home theater. I also do not want to hijack the OPs thread but he did say he would provide help/insight to those wanting to do it on their own.

Speaking only for myself (the OP) I am glad to see this thread come back to life.

I am hoping to get some pointers on doing it. Specificaly I need some advice on the hardware and software and process I should use to achieve the best results. I have around 1800 CDs and am not really looking forward to the idea of spending countless hours feeding discs into my PC so I want to make sure I do it right the first time.

WOW! that is indeed a large collection...not to make to fine a point of it but have you considered hiring a service to do the ripping for you? I do run a small ripping service ya know.

In researching for this project I have read that EAC (Exact Audio Copy) is a good choice for software. Supposedly it is somehow able to fix scratched CDs so there are no skips in the resulting computer files. Also I have read that some CD drives are better than others when it comes to extracting audio. I was hoping that somebody here could suggest a make and model. Lastly, my collection has many classical CDs and I am told that to get the most from a media server/player setup tagging will be very important and that the automatic tagging done by most software is spotty at best. I can not imagine entering song titles, performer, composer and such for each track manually for 1800 CDs. Surely there are automated solutions available that at least lessen the manual effort.

I wont talk about the media server as there are others here far more qualified than myself. However for the ripping task itself I do have some thoughts and suggestions.

EAC is indeed a good choice for getting the best possible audio from your discs. Although it does not "fix" scratched discs. What it does do is identify and attempt to recover from read errors (which may be caused by scratches). This recovery attempt is accomplished by simply reading the errant area over and over again until it gets an error free read or until there have been a number of matching reads. Possibly one of the best features of EAC is its use of the AccurateRip online database. This is a database of CRC values (like a digital fingerprint) of thousands of tracks. EAC will calculate a CRC for each track it rips and compare it with the matching track in the AR database. If they match you can be very confident that your rip is an accurate one. However, as good as EAC is at getting accurate rips, it (as far as I know) only uses FreeDB for metadata lookups. While this might be ok for some discs, for many the data will have errors or be completely wrong. Another short coming of EAC is that it does not have any way (that I know of) to run it in batch mode. Doing a collection the size of yours completely manually would be a real PIA.

I would suggest you look into dbPoweramp. Their software has a BatchRipper module which will automatically rip discs as you feed them in. Even better yet this software has drivers for many of the autoloaders out there which allows you to setup a "batch" of a few hundred discs, start the process and let the software do its thing. The folks at dbPoweramp are the developers of the AccurateRip DB and therefore their software also uses it. They also have a feature called PefectMeta which pulls tag data from 4 online providers. This data is then analyzed by the "PerfectMeta" algorithm which attempts to find and use the most accurate parts of each. Although still not perfect this feature is really nice. Lastly this software also has the ability to find and attempt to fix read errors (like EAC). This is the software I use in my business and I highly recommend it.

As far as CD drives choices go, I would suggest you try to find some of the older Plextor drives. Specificaly both the PX-708A and the PX-230A are very well thought of as a ripping drives. Both EAC and dbPoweramp software have special code for handling some of the audio extraction specific features of the Plextor drives. These drives can still be found as NOS on the auction sites.

You did not mention file format as one of your questions but I thought I would go ahead and offer my advice there as well. I suggest you go with a compressed lossless format such as flac (there are others but I like flac). Since this would create a lossless digital library of your CD collection you could be assured that (depending of coarse on your player) you were getting true CD quality audio. Further if in the future you decide you would like some mp3s for a portable player, you can simply convert the files you want from a lossless source no need to re-rip the discs.

To summarize, if I were in your shoes, I would get a couple of older Plextors and the dbPoweramp software. Play around with the settings in the software until you get like you want it, then just start ripping. It will take awhile but when your done (if you did it well) your done. Then you can pack the discs away in a closet or even sell them.

Of coarse you could always take the easy way and send the discs to me and let me do them (sorry couldn’t help myself).

Hope this helps,

[JohnA]

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?

Not me.

I have no experience with formats outside .mps and .wma. I can't stand the sound of mp3s on my home system and I can sometimes hear the errors in 320k mp3s in my truck. At anything less than 320k, I can hear the errors on my motorcycle. My biggest disappointment was "Black Water". All of the spacial information that locates the voices was choked out of the 320k mp3. I have used several programs to rip CDs, plus downloads, most Real Player.

[JohnnyS]

Thanks all, for the warm welcome.

I have pretty much decided on the Squeezebox Duet as my streaming device. The price is right and the features I want are there. Since the Squeezebox supports flac, I will likely use that file format. As far as the actual storage of the files I have an IOMEGA 4TB NAS on my network I intend to use.

Steve,
Thanks for the ripping advice. I will look into the software you mention. Could you please describe how the "BatchRipper" module you mentioned would make the process easier? I know I can setup WMP to rip discs automatically when they are inserted and to eject them when they are finished ripping but this does not seem like much of a savings in work/time. Is this the type of automation you are saying the BatchRipper software is capable of?

I appreciate that this is going to be a big, time consuming and tedious job and that it would indeed be easier to send the discs off and let somebody else do the drudge work. I even considered this option early on. After giving the idea some careful thought though, I decided to just do it myself and save some cash. That is not really the whole story. While saving cash is important to me, it was not the main reason I decided against using a service.

The main reasons were:
A) Even though it will be a pain, there is something about doing it myself that appeals to me.

If I do it myself I have the final control over the quality. Not some stranger (no offense).

And finally (and this was the biggy).
C) I can not imagine packing up my discs and shipping them across country. I have seen too many packages destroyed by this.

My reasons for doing this project have nothing to do with ridding myself of the discs. Even once the project is done I will still keep and (proudly) display my collection. The reason for doing this is just for the convenience of use that a media server/player will offer.

Thanks again to all for the welcome and advice.
John

[sredmyer]

Not me.

I have no experience with formats outside .mps and .wma. I can't stand the sound of mp3s on my home system and I can sometimes hear the errors in 320k mp3s in my truck. At anything less than 320k, I can hear the errors on my motorcycle. My biggest disappointment was "Black Water". All of the spacial information that locates the voices was choked out of the 320k mp3. I have used several programs to rip CDs, plus downloads, most Real Player.

There are many lossless file formats (WMA provides one) which produce a bit for bit identical copy of the original audio data from the CD.

That said I am surprised to hear that you can hear any flaws with 320kbps mp3s. I personally am not blessed with hearing that will allow me to hear any but the most obvious differences (this however does not prevent me from realizing and believing that others are capable of hearing what I can not). I would have thought though, that the ambient noise which would certainly be present in a truck or on a motorcycle (engine noise, wind, traffic, etc.) would preclude any real critical listening

[sredmyer]

Steve,
Thanks for the ripping advice. I will look into the software you mention. Could you please describe how the "BatchRipper" module you mentioned would make the process easier? I know I can setup WMP to rip discs automatically when they are inserted and to eject them when they are finished ripping but this does not seem like much of a savings in work/time. Is this the type of automation you are saying the BatchRipper software is capable of?

Yes that is pretty much the same automation you would get from the BatchRipper. However, as mentioned, the BatchRipper utilizes AccurateRip and secure ripping (the re-reading of errors) to help ensure you get an accurate extraction of the audio WMP has no such features (that I am aware of). Also with the PerfectMeta tagging provided by the BatchRipper the tagging will be much more accurate and consistant than what WMP would provide making for much less manual rework.

I appreciate that this is going to be a big, time consuming and tedious job and that it would indeed be easier to send the discs off and let somebody else do the drudge work. I even considered this option early on. After giving the idea some careful thought though, I decided to just do it myself and save some cash. That is not really the whole story. While saving cash is important to me, it was not the main reason I decided against using a service.

The main reasons were:
A) Even though it will be a pain, there is something about doing it myself that appeals to me.

If I do it myself I have the final control over the quality. Not some stranger (no offense).

And finally (and this was the biggy).
C) I can not imagine packing up my discs and shipping them across country. I have seen too many packages destroyed by this.

My reasons for doing this project have nothing to do with ridding myself of the discs. Even once the project is done I will still keep and (proudly) display my collection. The reason for doing this is just for the convenience of use that a media server/player will offer.

Thanks again to all for the welcome and advice.
John

No offense taken, I completely understand all of those reasons and I have heard them before. In fact, I have been working on a solution to just those concerns. What I am trying to do is to build a stand-alone CD ripping robot. This would be a multi-drive, autoloading robot with an embedded PC running WinXP and the dbPoweramp BatchRipper software. My concept is that an individual, such as yourself, who prefers (for whatever reasons) to do the job themselves could simply rent the robot. Although the idea is still mostly in the conceptual stages here are some of the highlights of what I expect to offer. I expect to have multiple robots with differing numbers of Plextor drives. The software would be preconfigured to, what I consider, best practice settings for tagging and file naming. All the user would need to do would be to connect a keyboard, monitor and mouse, load the discs onto the input stack, start the PC then click the button labeled "Rip". He/she would then come back in several hours/days (depending on the number of discs) to find the job complete. While the idea is to have the software pre-configured with "opitmal" settings, the user would be free to fiddle with them to get what ever result he/she wanted.

Like I say this idea is still mostly in the conceptual phase (I do have a few robots I am experimenting with). I expect that it will likely be the first of next year before I actually have these robots available for rent.

[JohnA]

My ears have to be clean. []