Recommendation for CD ripping device

i ripped all my CDs with EAC and use a auralic aries for playback.
a relative told me that he is looking for similar solution, only for him the CD ripping process needs to be as easy as possible.
so ideally a dedicated unit where you only need to insert the disc and it automatically does the rest ( ripping, tagging, album art,.....)

is a device like this available ? or could one be built ?

any recommendations would be highly welcome.

 

A possibility, not a recommendation since I don't have one, is the Brennan B2.
B2 Home 2019

 

You can set up a used iMac/MacMini like that, like $50. That's what I still use, I have the preferences set so I insert the disc and it automatically loads it, rips it, spits it out. It doesn't get easier than that! Now, I don't use iTunes for playback, but just copy the files direct off the hard drive to little portables (or you can drag right onto an iPhone/iPad icon, without messing with iTunes).

Once in a while, you have to disintermediate between different discs. This is rare. AFAIK iTunes (and I suspect any other automatic setup) compares the TOC (Table Of Contents) to check how many songs and their length. Rarely, there will be different discs with exactly the same number of songs of the same length and you have to tell it which one is correct.

 

I've looked at the info and specs for the Brennan B2. The self contained ripping and playing and managing aspect of it is intriguing.

However, I don't think it's going to be very hand-off or idiot proof. It uses the FreeDB database for metadata (artist names, album names, track names). FreeDB is very inconsistent in naming conventions, especially for artists. If you ripped a Beatles collection you could end up with some of the CDs in "The Beatles", some in "Beatles", and some in "Beatles, The", or some other variation or a spelling mistake. So you're still going to have to manually organize and rename albums and artists after the rip.

The Brennan B2 also won't handle different masterings of the same album well. If you have three versions of "Dark Side Of The Moon" they're all going to get named the same. With the second version overwriting the first and the third overwriting the second. The solution that Brennan mentions in the documentation is to manually rename the first rip before ripping the second version of the album.

So it seems to me the Brennan B2 involves as much, or more, manual intervention to rename and organize and manage the ripping process as using a PC to rip.

 

Bluesound Vault 2i sounds like it does exactly what your relative is looking for.

Bluesound Vault 2i (Black) Streaming music player with 2TB drive, CD ripper, Apple® AirPlay® 2, and Bluetooth® at Crutchfield

 

Tell your friend to get a Mac if he wants something that "just works" out of the box.

 

The Bluesound Vault 2i does look neat. Anyone here familiar with using it for ripping CDs? How idiot proof and hands-off is it for ripping and getting good metadata?

The big question for any automated ripper is how does it handle different masterings of the same CD. What does it do if you rip six different masterings of "Dark Side Of The Moon"? Does it keep each version distinct and separate? Hopefully it doesn't overwrite other versions when ripping a new mastering of a CD. And how does it identify which version is which (which is the Capitol 1994 version, which is the MFSL version, which is the 2011 Discovery version, etc.)

Ideally an automated ripping solution would make sure that if there are name collisions for album name or any directory name that it creates a unique name by adding on a unique identifier or number. An automated system should never overwrite. If there already is an album named "Dark Side Of The Moon" and you rip another version it should name the next version something unique like "Dark Side Of The Moon [02]" or "Dark Side Of The Moon [unique disc ID number]" or something like that. If there is a directory name collision it should do something similar for creating a unique directory name by adding on a number or unique identifier.

I've seen automated ripping robot solutions that take a picture of each CD and save that picture in the same directory as the ripped files. That way you can look at the picture of the CD and figure out which version it is. You can look at the picture and figure out if the rip is the MFSL or black triangle or Discovery version.

Bluesound uses the GD3 database as a primary lookup for metadata. The GD3 database is commercial quality and curated so it is consistent in naming conventions. That helps a lot in getting consistent metadata. If the CD isn't found in the GD3 database it falls back to FreeDB as a source. The GD3 database is the database that many of the automated ripping robots use. It typically costs 10 cents to 25 cents per lookup (lower cost if you buy access in bulk). So Bluesound using the GD3 database is a nice perk for that device.

 

How much does he want to spend?

When I was at a local dealer's recently he was using some Melco device to do just what you are talking about (I can check which model, but think it costs around £1k). Still has some of the usual problems with "classical", which no-one seems to get completely right, in screwing up the art work of the Grumiaux Bach solo violin sonatas and partitas.

ETA: It was the D100, which is purely an optical drive with ripping capabilities, so storage would be needed, eg the companion N100, which is c £1.8k.

 

The Vault is great for well-known artists and albums. The more obscure the album is the more the chances are that the rip will either be saved as "Unknown CD" or as the wrong album and artist.

Also, as per previous posts, the artist, title etc. aren't always consistent or accurate. Howzabout "Never Had A Cream Come True" or "Happy" by Pharrell Williams being saved as "The Twelve Dogs Of Christmas" by Emma Kragen.

The Vault is also often guilty of overwriting one mastering with another. To get around this requires a long process of ripping one mastering, renaming the album in Windows and editing the track metadata to "move the album out of the way" before ripping another mastering. A real fag unless you have a lot of time and patience.

I ended up using a couple of PC-based ripping applications and a PC-based metadata editor to get around all of the above problems.

Would I get rid of the Vault? No.

Is there anything more user-friendly that just slots into a hi fi system? I doubt it?

Does a Vault owner need to start learning about metadata editors etc.? Yes or find a helpful, technically minded friend with a fair amount of time on their hands.

Do the organisations that provide metadata need to learn the value of consistency and accuracy? Emphatically, YES!

 

NOVATRON
The X14 does everything (but you don't need to use the internal amp or dac, they can be bypassed). It uses Gracenote Db for tagging.
Somewhere between $600 and $800 I believe...

 

Bummer that the Bluesound Vault has all those problems/challenges with ripping. It looked like it had potential to be a good option for the OP as a hands-off easy to use ripping and automated file management setup. It demonstrates that this isn't an easy problem to solve.

My own ripping has always been more hands-on. I ripped the bulk of my CD collection about a decade ago using dBpoweramp. I used dBpoweramp's interactive mode rather than the more hands-off batch ripping mode. I was looking at the metadata for each CD and making corrections before doing the rip.

Now that my CD collection is ripped I take an even more hands-on approach when ripping newly acquired CDs. I usually use either EAC or CURRipper/CUETools now. But will still use dBpoweramp occasionally.

A solution that I've seen that look most promising for automated ripping was a robotic CD loader setup with a camera that took a picture of each CD and saved that picture in the folder of the ripped files. But that camera setup was after-market. Added by the user. Which requires that the user do some custom scripts and programming to get it to work. Not an off the shelf ready to go kind of setup. With the right software and scripting a setup like that could accomplish what I would consider a robust mostly hands-off way of doing bulk ripping. But only if the software does the right things for file management and tagging.

 

Take a peek at Innuos products. Either Zen mini mk3 / Zenith. ( Innuos.com. ). They start at under £1K & offer up to 2TB storage.

 

Correction...8Tb max.

 

And this is what I ended up doing in order to fix all of the problems associated with ripping around 2,000 CDs that range from seriously mainstream to seriously old and obscure.

To be honest, I suspect that this type of approach will stay with us until: -

1) We can be given access to reliable and consistent metadata services​

2) Someone develops a magic bullet to resolve the ongoing practical issues surrounding classical music metadata. (Who is the artist? The composer? The conductor? The orchestra? The artist? How do we deal with the very long credits that can prevent files being copied around in Windows? Etc.)​

Not a good situation, really, but probably unavoidable. I do suspect, however, that for someone 20 years younger and with mainly mainstream tastes the issues will be far less.

And, although I've shouted and screamed at my Vault 2 on occasions, a lot of the reasons for shouting and screaming weren't of the Vault's making. Instead, they've been related to metadata.

In the more general sense, I'd therefore still recommend the Vault 2i as something to at least partially replace the CD player in a hi fi rack. For most music, it's the ultimate "lazy boy" tool, and I can listen to any and all of my digital music in any sequence without getting up from my chair and without endlessly loading and unloading CDs into and out of my CD player.

 

My comments about the Bluesound Vault were strictly related to CD ripping. I'm sure it's quite good for streaming already ripped and tagged files. Reviews for the Bluesound gear as a streamer are good. In this thread I'm looking only at easy CD ripping.

I'm a software engineer. So I tend to look at and evaluate ripping in terms of software engineering and how to do the various tasks in various software solutions and designs.

It doesn't seem that it should be that difficult to do better than current solutions. But many projects have tried, and come up short. So it probably is a more difficult software engineering project than I suspect. Or maybe I just have higher expectations than the projects already trying to do this.

Metadata is a challenge. But there are various free and commercial CD and album metadata sources that can be used. On the free side there is MusicBrainz, Discogs, and others. On the commercial side there is GD3, AllMusic (Rovi), and others. There are also ways to identify songs and albums using acoustic fingerprints (like what Shazam does).

For file management the software engineering should be straight-forward. Basic things like not overwriting different masterings when ripping six different masterings of "Dark Side Of The Moon". I'd think that would be an obvious thing to handle properly in designing ripping software. But many projects fail at that. Why is that part so hard?

 

A Mac with iTunes and a reliable drive. Seriously. I see no need for a 1000 dollar ripper. 2 minutes per CD most of the time and iTunes is pretty good with artwork these days. No overwriting either. It will ask you if you want to overwrite or not. Any issues that come up are usually with the drive. My old 2010 macbook pro has the most reliable drive, so if my cheap external drive has issues I just get out the old mac. Sometimes I'll use XLD, but I've never gotten better results with it over iTunes to date. For additional metadata I go to Discogs.

 

Using iTunes to rip CDs is fraught with danger. The problem with iTunes is that it will happily rip just about any CD even if there are errors during the reading process and write those errors out.. When I discovered how bad iTunes was, I bought dBpoweramp and starting using AccurateRip. Fast, easy, and accurate even with a really inexpensive drive. Ripping nirvana!

 

Thanks for the recommendations so far. the zenmini and the vault sure look interesting.
Hopefully i can check them out locally to see which is the most easy to use ( which is high priority in this case)

 

Something that could be found online in a user-contributed tech support forum, perhaps?

 

Possibly. There are forums for the robotic ripping machines. I don't know how much user contributed code they share.

I really like the idea of the automated ripper taking a picture of the CD and saving that picture with the ripped files. Brilliant!