Easy way to rip CDs?

Compared to a lot of people on this forum, I am a wimp with just a few hundred CD's. I am going to be living away from home for about six months, and am pretty sure my Legacy Aeris won't fit in my suitcase. So I am thinking about maybe a Pono and headphones. But ripping my collection one by one sounds like a major pain. Is there any easy way to do this while maintaining quality?

 

Lots of software out there. I use dBPoweramp

 

Look into TIDAL? Honestly, ripping CDs is for the birds these days.

 

I have a large classical collection. For example, I love the original Uchida Mozart piano concertos on Philips. How likely would it be for me to download music like that?

 

If you're ripping lots of classical you will want dBpoweramp. There is really no other choice to consider. dBpoweramp gets much better tagging data for classical than the other popular rippers (like Exact Audio Copy or CUERipper). dBpoweramp pulls tagging data from multiple sources and does an intelligent merging of the data from those multiple sources. It also has access to a classical music specific database for tagging data, along with AMG (AllMusic Guide) which also has good classical tagging data.

dBpoweramp costs money. But is very very worth it. It will save you lots of time. With EAC or CUERipper or others you will find that there are classical CDs that aren't in their database and you'll need to manually type in all of the track data (what a PITA). With dBpoweramp that happens far less often.

 

Classical selection is good, but you might not always get the exact recording you want, but IMO the vast selection (since it's all-you-can-eat, not pay per title) makes up for it.

I did just check and they have the Uchida concertos.

 

That depends on whether you're happy with the specific version of [insert album title here] the streaming service offers, and the sound quality at which they offer it. I'd wager a fairly significant percentage of the folks who populate this forum would happy with neither.

 

I used windows media player. Just be careful you go through all the settings and make sure it's what you want if you are ripping a large collection..... I ripped to wav as well, flac has much better id tagging if you care about that.....

 

Well, Tidal in Hifi mode is FLAC, so...

 

Easy CD-DA Extractor

 

Thanks for doing that. I tried to check, but it seemed you had to subscribe to see what they had.

 

just use iTunes like 95% of the population does.

it's as easy as it gets.

 

That's what I used as well. No matter what software you use, the initial work of churning through your selection will be a PITA. After that, it's pretty easy to stay caught up.

 

Do it once, do it right, back it up, never worry about it again. However you do it these are mandatory. EAC and lossless. You choose the rest, software that achieves those two objectives. The folks here suggesting Media player or ITunes are the ones that will be redoing it and complaining later. Or saying something bad about computer audio rips. It's not that difficult. Lot's of threads on this forum about it, do a search.

 

Do as Ham Sandwich and others told you. dBpoweramp
Don't try to reinvent the well. Do it once, do it right.

 

Unfortunately, it is a major pain and will take time.
And as ElvisCaprice said: "Do it once, do it right, back it up, never worry about it again."
Rip your collection to a lossless format like FLAC.
Don't rip to a lossy format like mp3.
And don't give away or sell your CD's once you have ripped them.
Keep your CD's as a backup just in case your hard drive fails sometime in the future.
I learnt the hard way.

 

Thanks for all of the advice. Just to be clear (this is a completely new area for me), dBpoweramp will retain all the data from the CD, which I can then transfer to the Pono? Would the quality of Tidal downloads be the same as from a ripped CD.

 

JRiver makes it super easy. Try it free for 30 days.

http://www.jriver.com

 

Tidal has a limited selection of titles. Go ahead and rip your CD's. Once done, you'll only have to worry about new acquisitions.
The great thing about dbpoweramp is you can rip to more than one audio codec at the same time. So you can create a lossless and a lossy library while ripping. Or you could even rip to FLAC and ALAC at the same time and have a FLAC library for you Pono and an ALAC library for itunes.

 

One more vote for dBpoweramp. By far the best ripper out there, especially for classical. It has a batch mode and also gives you the option of creating lossy files and lossless files in one rip if you have a portable device that can't do FLAC or ALAC.

 

I've been burning to WMA lossless format. Other than possible playback issues depending on the device, what's the downside here?

 

Just out of curiosity, what is wrong with Windows Media Player? I ripped over 4000 cd's and they all seem fine to me.

 

WMP, and itunes have little to no error correction and do not compare the results to known good rips (accuraterip database). So there's no guarantee your CD ripped without errors. Programs such as dbpoweramp (written by the person who created the accuraterip database), EAC, CueToolsRipper have built in error correction and accuraterip database comparisons.

 

Thanks. This is good to know.

 

I just finished helping a friend rip ~500 CDs. Please take the advice of those suggesting dBpoweramp. This turned a job that could have taken maybe a month, into a job that took about two weeks. Do it one time. Do it right.