Need to digitize a CD collection, help me choose the right path

I realize there's a gazillion threads about the "best" way to digitize, but they're a lot to sort through so I figured I'd try a shortcut and start my own. I've just acquired my late uncle's CD collection (drove from NYC to Elkins Park to get them--a most worthwhile road trip). There are 500 discs or so, and I'm already full up with my own CD collection. My plan is to digitize most of the discs, then donate them to a school or library. I'd like to copy them in a lossless format and do it quickly. As far as I can tell, here are my options:

-use my iMac and burn the files to an external drive, then use my Squeezebox to listen through the main system. Two drawbacks here: the Squeezebox doesn't sound very good even through my very good DAC (granted, I could upgrade to a better streamer) and I'd need to get a decent CD drive for the Mac.

--get a dedicated music server with a built-in disc reader, which strikes me as faster and simpler but also expensive and not very versatile

Please note that my DAC doesn't have a USB input. Also, I live in an apartment and don't want to add any more space-consuming devices like a music-only computer.

Thanks for any guidance you can offer.

 

There are a few right ways to do this, and a lot of wrong ones that will ultimately be a waste of time and effort. If you have access to a Windows PC, use EAC. Rip to FLAC with log/cue for each disc. Backup, backup, backup.

 

Yeah, that! Especially if any of those CDs have scratches on them. EAC is the most likely tool able to overcome most scratches and other blemishes on the disc surface. Also, invest in an external hard drive or two to use exclusively as backups for all those FLACs.

 

Thanks for the advice, but what should I use for ripping if I only have a Mac? Is it worth getting a Windows laptop and hard drive for this project?

 

Alac in iTunes works just fine.

Just my 2 cents, but If there are CDs you know you will never listen to, don't bother downloading them. It'll save you days of burning...

 

Does your DAC have a coax RCA SPDIF input? If your DAC has a coax digital input you could get something like a Schiit Eitr USB to SPDIF converter and be able to connect your DAC to the Mac using a USB cable.

As for ripping. Any CD ripping software that is able to verify the rips using AccurateRip is going to be OK. As long as the rip is verified by AccurateRip the rip is good. I don't use a Mac. I don't know what specific ripping software to recommend for the Mac. But I do know that there are several option for the Mac that use AccurateRip to verify rips. Use one of those options. iTunes is not one of those options. Rip to a lossless format like ALAC. Make sure the tags are good.

And also make sure that you add the label and catalog number for each CD in the tags. The comment tag field is a good place to put the label and catalog number. If you don't record the label and catalog number you'll be forever wondering what specific mastering and version of the CD was ripped. If you hang out on this forum that is info that you will want to know.

 

Use XLD for Mac for ripping.

 

I settled on dbpoweramp. I use the basic recommended FLAC settings. Dead easy but you have to buy it. Uses AccurateRip. PC or Mac versions. Good call on adding label info! This is the forum that I came to when I realized not all CD's and LP's sound the same.

 

Use XLD for Mac, a freeware, open-source app. Rip to AIFF, a lossless, uncompressed universal format that is supported on all platforms: Mac, PC, and standalone players, and works with all major computer playback software, including iTunes, HQPlayer, Audirvana, JRiver, etc. If you want to imbed cover art, search albumartexchange.com, or Google images.

 

Second the Mac recommendation for XLD but would suggest ripping into either FLAC or ALAC. Preferably FLAC.


ALAC maintains compatibility with iTunes and other Apple-developed software and that's really the only reason anybody would want to use it, as it is an inferior format to FLAC in several ways - not in terms of quality but rather convenience, efficiency and security. There are some indications that later this year they'll finally be opening up FLAC support, at which point there'd be little point in storing a music library in ALAC and doing so would be inadvisable.

 

To rip the entire collection to flac, or digitize it if you want to call it that is one step one needs to perfect before you think about playback software or hardware.

Think about some USB hard drives and the folders created to store these tips coming off of your computers. If you are smart you will set up three computers on a desk and have all three going at once to plow through them all quickly.

But you cannot really get moving fast until you decide on tagging formats.

The Beatles or Beatles, The
Bob Dylan or Dylan, Bob

These above are just two areas you need to decide on, there are others.

These below are one way to do "Before The Flood'

ALBUM ARTIST: Bob Dylan
ARTIST: Bob Dylan and The Band

If you decide to just accept the tags as they appear (no fixing errors) - you will still have a working searchable library, but it will never be a slick organized library. But I know folks who do not care about slick libraries and just want the music to play when the album is selected.

 

This is what I did and it worked a treat.

 

If it were 20-50 CDs or so I would go along with the XLD or EAC recommendations. At that volume I would recommend buying dbpowerAmp for Mac since that's what you're using and you don't want to add another computer.

I ripped on both Windows and OS X platforms using EAC and XLD and getting everything right was taking forever. Once I started using dbpowerAmp my workflow improved dramatically. It's not just the ripping speed, it's also the "Perfect Meta" tagging and artwork support that save you immense amounts of time. Yes, you can manually edit tags in both EAC and XLD for those erroneous FreeDB entries, but it is time intensive.

 

I use XLD on a MacBook and I'm quite happy with it. Please make sure to rip to a lossless format (flac, alac, wav, aiff) – check what your DAC is able to play.

Think about backing up your music files and store one copy offsite.

You need an external CD drive and I think any USB model will do. But search the forum and you'll probably find people preferring very specific drives.

Please note that some early disc have pre-emphasis and you need to configure XLD to show this in the cue file. You need to manually check the cue file for the PRE flags and if they pop up you need to post process the audio files to de-emphasis the audio. I use SoX for that, running from the command prompt. If you don't de-emphasise these files, they will sound harsh and very trebly.

If you find any RCA David Bowie discs please donate them to me.

 

Bit of a dumb question here, but doesn't the Mac have a CD/DVD drive in it already? If so, you're good to go. If not, you're probably best off renting a Windows laptop for a month or so for this project.

Everyone says use FLAC but if you're using a Mac go for Apple Lossless. Rip to WAV in EAC then convert the WAV to Apple Lossless (ALAC) via iTunes. It takes seconds per song. But you will have to "sort" each song/album manually (the file names will be OK but ID3 tags will be an issue. "Tag&Rename" can help but it costs a bit of money, like $20 or $30, I forget which).

If we were both in the same country, I'd say "Send them to me and I'll do them all for you!"

 

Worth doing some research on this - error rates vary considerably between drives, from 1 in 2000 rips for the best to 1 in 50 for the worst.

 

OP: you do not need to acquire an entire separate computer.

All unclear.

Have you ripped ANY discs yet?
How old is your iMac? Which OSX?
Is there no CD drive onboard the iMac?
How important is it to spend ZERO dollars?

Cheap USB>Toslink adapter: Amazon.com: BEHRINGER U-CONTROL UCA202: Musical Instruments

Less-cheap Schiit (yes, I know) DAC: Schiit Audio, Headphone amps and DACs made in USA.

You can use iTunes to rip, but it's not regarded as a perfectly accurate ripping tool. However, it's free on your Mac. If you do use it, enable "Use Error Correction". I've never had any audible problems ripping iTunes, but I've seen odd-looking waveforms (square edges etc).

Better to use a 3rd party ripper. I like dbPoweramp for Mac. $40 or $50, but worth it. It would be sleazy, but they do offer a 30-day free trial. If you had the time you could easily rip 6-700 CDs in a month.

You're on Mac, rip to ALAC. Who knows when then they'll ever really enable FLAC on Mac.

Everything I've ever read says otherwise; FLAC and ALAC perform identically. At least as far as I know. Not one issue on this Mac system.

Once done, you can playback in iTunes, assuming your collection is no more elaborate than Redbook CD ripped files. If you've got SACDs or DSD files, you'll need a 3rd-party software player.

Store on an external hard drive. NOT in your normal internal Music folder.

Get two HDDs; they're cheap insurance.
.

 

Not in my opinion. I'll go against the flow and say get an optical drive and the external hard drive and rip the CDs to AIFF using iTunes.

 

Highly recommend you use XLD with Accuraterip enabled to verify accurate rips. Rip to a lossless format ALAC or FLAC and convert to what you need from there, but archive the perfect lossless rips.

Do NOT use iTunes as there is no way to verify that the rip was accurate. Sometimes an Accuraterip failure can be corrected with a little disc scratch removal.

 

I had luck with a cheap tray-loading blu-ray/dvd/cd burner and XLD. Dig into the XLD settings to make sure you're getting what you want out of the files.

 

Me too. Rip to Apple Lossless with XLD, move files to master iTunes library, point Plex to the iTunes music folder. Done.

 

I used to think that ripping to AIFF was a waste, but with massive hard drives being so cheap I don't think it's much of an issue. I still use Apple Lossless, because it's a smaller file size, supports all of my tags, and it's (as the name says) lossless.

 

It's still worth economizing on space to maximise the size of library that can fit in your pocket.

 

My gut feeling is that AIFF is the most platform-independent and future-proof format. If he's giving away the CDs when he's done, this might make a difference, too.

 

I can stream anything from my home media server using plex. I can also remotely download and transcode on the fly. I used to maintain two separate libraries for music, one lossy and one Lossless. Now I only have one Lossless library.