Burning CD's to Hard Drive

I don't have a CD player in my Hi-Fi, so if I buy a CD, it gets ripped to FLAC for listening on my phone/computer anyway. I always use the absolute highest compression setting. When you have the amount of data to store that I do, RAID arrays with multiple TB fill up fast.

 

So many options but since I'll likely always have a Mac I'll likely just rip them all into iTunes, get a separate HD to back up files and call it a day.I'm not planning to get rid of the actual CD's so if something gets messed up I can re-rip it. There have been a few where I've had to enter all of the data, but not a lot so far. I have to say, after listening to music this way for several hours last night, it was nice to be able to queue up music without getting up and down, looking through my physical library.

 

You can do better than iTunes, buddy. For your sake, at least use a ripping software program that will provide AccurateRips.
AccurateRip

 

So it's not necessarily a sound quality issue but error correction? What would be the benefit if Apple is already providing a lossless file?

 

A lossless fil with NO errors.
Apple can give you a lossless file, but it may contain skips or missing bits. Apple won't tell you that.

 

Seriously, spend a bit of time reading the ripping guide I linked to above. AccurateRip is supported by XLD (which is free) and dBPoweramp and is well worth using as if your rip matches others in the database it pretty much guarantees a perfect rip. As far as drives go, I use an LG external DVD writer for ripping which has survived well over a thousand CD rips and multiple DVD rips. Occasionally one encounters a CD that won't rip on one drive, so it is useful having access to different drives just in case a CD that won't rip on one works on another.

iTunes will give you a lossless file, but gives no indication of the accuracy of the rip as nobody outside Apple knows what sort of error correction it uses.

Nothing to stop you from putting files ripped with an alternative ripper into iTunes. I rip with dBPoweramp, put my ALAC files in a folder on one hard drive with one folder per album (each folder named "Artist - Album") and then add the folders to iTunes. I would change the iTunes preferences as follows: Uncheck the option to copy your files into your iTunes folder and uncheck the option for iTunes to manage your music library. The latter option results in iTunes moving files around and changing metadata in a manner that infuriates me. I know I said that in a previous post but if you are fastidious about getting your metadata and artwork correct it is really annoying if iTunes changes it.

It is worth doing a bit of homework and maybe doing a trial run of your ripping workflow before committing to ripping a big collection. Like a lot of people I ripped all my CDs first time round using iTunes as AAC 192K files, only to end up doing it all again in lossless.

 

I rip CD's to FLAC using the linux package K3b. It appears to work fine for me.

 

Rip your CD's with XLD to AIFF. Hard drives are so cheap now that there is no point in mastering your library in a compressed format. AIFF is a universal format playable on all Mac and PC platforms, and supported by virtually all music player apps out there right now.
Nothing inherently wrong with ALAC or FLAC, except not all music players support both codecs. Apple does not read FLAC, so no it will not work with iTunes, iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
HQPlayer, arguably the best music player app for Mac, does not currently support ALAC.

 

Thanks wwaldmanfan for the info. I was wondering if there was a format that could be played across both Apple and Windows, and yes sacrificing that to save a bit of space is probably not a good trade-off. I'll be reading through all this and posted links over the weekend. I'm beginning to think I should see if my community college has a course on all this!

 

My main reason for joining this forum is to learn about the digital age of music. I'm well versed in analog.

Is there anything wrong with ripping two CD's at the same time providing you have the drives?
I haven't noticed any problems ripping CD's this way. It sure cuts down on time.

 

I've not tried that, but my Mac Pro does have two drives so I'll need to try that.