Ripping Yarns

[BigBen 0]

Having read through as many posts as I can find on the subject, I am about to embark on 'the big one'. Currently, I carry four cases and one Case Logic with me to EVERY gig - I have decided to get these onto hard disk over the summer.

 

From the posts I have read I have ascertained that I should rip at the maximum quality due to hard disk prices. Ideally WAV, maybe FLAC, 320kbps CBR MP3 or 256kbps VBR if disk space is tight, although VBR may present some problems to some applications/hardware.

 

Exact Audio Copy was muted as being 'the best' seemingly without argument. Would anyone care to suggest an alternate ripping program? Would you heartily recommend it?

 

Similarly, the Lame Encoder seems to be a worldwide standard. Again, does anyone want to expand their thoughts on other programs?

 

On a trial run ripping to WAV only, Now 62 Disc 1 took roughly 10 minutes on my Pentium PC loaded with 1.5GB RAM, 20+ minutes on an AMD with 512MB RAM and about 18 minutes on an Power Mac G5. With 750 CD's to rip is anyone able to rip at a faster rate than that?

 

I use Ots and WinAmp with two external (USB2) hard disks - 80gb and 150gb.

[YourBigEvent 0]

Why not just rip straight to a .ots file then ?

Saves space on the hard drive too

 

9000 songs about 35GB

[RichardP 0]

Well collated there, Ben sir.

 

Anyone who's gone through this exercise surely agrees that you only want to rip your collection once. Especially with over 700 discs to do...

 

On the last suggestion made , if you were to seriously consider OTS as the target format then in your shoes, additional questions I would be asking myself would include :

• Is the OTS format synonymously & losslessly interchangable with PCM/WAV?

  (i.e. if along the line you changed your mind and wanted to use say, Traktor or PCDJ, would you be able to transcode to WAV without loss of quality?)

• Does your intended ripping tool, eg. Exact Audio Copy (or equivalent program which hopefully should feature Accurate Rip technology) include the ability to transcode the CD-DA input stream to OTS format?
• Does the ripping to OTS format include automatic ID tagging (crucially: artist, track title, disc title, genre, year) from online databases such as freedb/gracenote? If later down the line you transcode to mp3/wav etc, would these tags be preserved?

If it wasn't yes to all of the above then I'd still advise ripping to FLAC as your primary target digital repository.

 

Tricky to estimate a true approximate capacity required for 750 discs (Q: what's the album/single ratio?) but IMHO an educated guess says you'd likely exceed your current hard drives ... 250-300Gb unit might ultimately be more appropriate. However with 250Gb units currently out for less than £90 (and falling), one of those would be recommended. (Maybe even a twin HDD RAID box, mainly for reliability.)

 

Inevitably there'll be song duplicates which you can audition & weed out along the way to conserve a bit of space and slim down player search results. (Also remember to spot check the naming/tagging, because there's always some goon out there who can't spell and/or hasn't bothered to include artist names on a compilation and/or hasn't used the CDDB submission properly).

 

Then afterwards (or even simultaneously), transcode to OTS/mp3 onto your other two USB hard drives - electing either one as the workhorse unit, sync'ing the other one as hotswap spare.

 

Not my specialist subject (corrections welcome) but as far as I know the other main hardware considerations for a longwinded project like this would be: top CD-ROM drive performance (consider Lite-On/TEAC as a potential slomo replacement); ensuring this unit is the only active ATAPI device on the IDE chain during ripping; CPU performance. Don't think the rip process uses that much RAM, so as long as other running apps/processes are kept to a sensible minimum, would have thought 512Mb upwards is fine.

 

Anyhow good luck with whatever you decide! http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html//emoticons/smile.gif

[Jimbo55 0]

I have gone through (and Still am) ripping my collection to MP3. I have used Music Match But the Tagging does not meet my needs However it was very fast taking about 7 minutes to rip an average now cd at 192 (AMD 64 3 ghz 1 meg ram). I have experimented ripping at 320 but could not hear a difference. I have A/B cd and the 192 bit rate with people of all age groups and not one person was to tell the difference in a Disco environment. It was noticable in headphones in about 15% of tracks . I have used PCDJ to rip but found that sometimes it produced a glitch on the track from time to time at 320. AT 192 it is OK. It will also hang on to a track and if left unattended it will keep ripping the same track. This is usually down to a scratched or dirty cd.

 

 

Jimbo

[BigBen 0]

Wow! Thanks Rich for that fabulous breakdown. In answer to your first point, and Ads' question, Ots is not the only application I intend to use the ripped music with, so ripping direct to Ots is not a consideration.

 

I do intend to rip to uncompressed format first then encode from there. Not sure whether to use WAV or FLAC though, maybe this topic, along with some more research, will help me make my mind up.

 

As for the album to single ratio...they're all albums!

 

I will have many, many duplicates, but there will also be a ton of trash tracks. I'm undecided whether to copy these or not, on the basis that I may get asked for them once in my career! I cite the example of a £300 wedding I did at a castle last year - even after meetings, emails and many telephone calls with the happy couple, I had no idea he liked Iron Maiden until 1am in the moring when he staggered over to ask for a track I have never even heard of. Amazingly, I had a live version on a £1.99 Woolies bargain basket CD. The groom, and a number of his heavy mates, were in heaven for the seven minutes it lasted. I could play YMCA a million times and never get a reaction like that.

 

Decisions, decisions decisions...

 

Excellent, excellent point about keeping IDE CD drives and hard disks on seperate channels. Performance will drop if they share the same chain.

 

Picking up on Jimbo's point, I want to use a program developed for ripping rather than a hastily prepared add-on to some other software package. I've used many in the past and all have been OK. This time, I want to use a tried, tested and recommended product so as I don't experience the glitches you did.

 

Thanks guys.

 

By the way Rich, do you have any links to these twin and 250gb drives?

[Gary 0]

QUOTE (BigBen @ Apr 25 2006, 10:00 PM)

On a trial run ripping to WAV only, Now 62 Disc 1 took roughly 10 minutes on my Pentium PC loaded with 1.5GB RAM, 20+ minutes on an AMD with 512MB RAM and about 18 minutes on an Power Mac G5. With 750 CD's to rip is anyone able to rip at a faster rate than that?

As it looks like you're going to need new hard drives anyway, have you considered simply playing WAV files, rather than ripping to MP3 at all.

 

With hard drives being unbelievably cheap nowaways, keeping premium quality, uncompressed file formats is more viable now than ever before.

[Jimbo55 0]

I should have added that PCDJ is performing well and quickly. (Still taking the happy pills) On my new Laptop. A typical now album ripped at 320 is 360 MB. 180 MB per CD

 

720 x 180MB = 129,600MB about 6 cds (ave cd) per gigabyte so a 250GB HD will hold about 1500 cd's

 

Jimbo

[Dukesy 0]

QUOTE (Jimbo55 @ Apr 26 2006, 08:16 AM)

I have used PCDJ to rip but found that sometimes it produced a glitch on the track from time to time at 320.

What version of the PCDJ software? Was it a fast rip or a slow rip?

[RichardP 0]

QUOTE (BigBen @ Apr 26 2006, 08:49 AM)

By the way Rich, do you have any links to these twin and 250gb drives?

No worries - here are some links for external drives -

 

Maplin currently doing a £60 off promotion deal on Seagate 250Gb USB2 External Drive - £89.99

 

DABS also have various other decent 250Gb drives:

Maxtor Personal Storage 3200 · 250Gb · 7200rpm · 16Mb buffer · £96

Buffalo DriveStation · 250Gb · 7200rpm · £94

Western Digital MyBook Essential · 250Gb · 7200rpm · 8Mb buffer · £82

 

DABS also have a twin disk external drive unit, RAID for online failover security:

Maxtor OneTouch III Diablo · 300Gb (RAID 1) · 7200rpm · 16Mb buffer · £297

 

 

Playing from WAV, hmm - in my case I'd probably be waiting for hard drives to drop in price farther. Out of interest is anyone out there doiong this? i.e. a considerably large CD album collection ripped solely to WAV & actively playing out from it?

 

As part of a project last year, I ripped 19 Now albums in FLAC format (38 physical discs), and after aggressively weeding out lots of non-hit wonders & the infamous NOW-esque slush padding, this resulted in 775 tracks (i.e. about a 50% cull), requiring approx 19Gb on disk. Bear in mind FLAC saves approx 35% on disk space, so estimate the equivalent in WAV to be around 30Gb.

 

I've got about 480 physical discs in my CD album collection that I've bothered to catalogue to date and are (or have been) actively used on t' road. The database says that translates to a shade under 8000 tracks. Quick approximation says I'd need 190Gb space to encode that lot to FLAC, so I'd get myself a 250Gb unit to allow lots of room to breathe. If I elect WAV however, that works out around 300Gb, so the next step up would be a 400Gb disc.

 

With over 700 discs to do, I imagine you'd need to budget for a pretty hefty drive to store all of that uncompressed in WAV. Plus you might want two of them (one hot spare).

 

You'll have noticed that hard drives (like CPUs) tend to be priced kind of exponentially - there's a steep climb once you get to the higher capacities. 250Gb external drives cost around £200 three years and today are now half that.

 

(The other bonus about FLAC alluded to earlier is that encoding programs store ID3-like tagging information as well, though I've yet to find one that transfers tag info to WAV. One workaround would have to be a huge filename with all the tag logged into that instead, which would be somewhat cumbersome on screen, eg for track searches.)

 

- Richard

[Andy Westcott 0]

As regards ripping from CDs:

I recommend dBpowerAmp, as this allows the 'Slow, accurate Ripping' feature to be used. You can also select the maximum rip speed - I suggest you keep it to a quarter of the CD-ROM drive's capability or less.

 

Trying to rip too fast can allow dropouts to occur in the datastream especially if the discs aren't in pristine condition, and you won't know the gaps are there until you play the tracks.....

 

Give the CDs a good clean beforehand as well - you'll only want to do this once, so make sure it is good.

 

Regarding format:

Go for WAV if possible - it is pretty much universal and is recognised by (just about) all Windows software.

 

However, if space is tight and the track in question is not too important or of pretty poor quality, go for mp3 at a bitrate of 320. It should be OK to mix the formats without problems.

 

It's a long job you have there, but I'm currently recording my 7 & 12 inch vinyl singles - now there's a job and a half! Spare a thought for me..... http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html//emoticons/sad.gif

 

Have fun!

[Electrofreek 0]

As for it taking you time to do.....there are companys that will rip all of your cds to a hard disk for you....i heard about this when i was in the USA.....sure we have it over here though.......i was considering ripping my music but stopped when i realised how long it may take

 

 

jules

[Jimbo55 0]

QUOTE

What version of the PCDJ software? Was it a fast rip or a slow rip?

 

PCDJ FX Ripping at 320 default settings. I have done About 100 cd's over the last 2 days thanks to my 'enforced rest' So far technically faultlesswith my new laptop. Had two cd's that were scratced, buffed them with T cut and they ripped ok.

 

There must have been an issue with my desktop. Maybe it's time for a reinstall.

 

NOTE if the underside of the cd is scratched you can polish the scratch out. If is the 'Top' the printed side that carries the data. If This is scratched the data will be lost. I have about a 85% success rate with 'polishing'

 

Jimbo

[RobbieD 0]

QUOTE (BigBen @ Apr 26 2006, 08:49 AM)

there will also be a ton of trash tracks.  I'm undecided whether to copy these or not, on the basis that I may get asked for them once in my career!

QUOTE (RichardP @ Apr 26 2006, 01:35 PM)

...after aggressively weeding out lots of non-hit wonders & the infamous NOW-esque slush padding....

I've also just started the long process of ripping all my CD's to hard disc, having just brought a 250GB external drive.

 

I've decided to rip everything as .wav for now. However with the trash/slush tracks that I'm convinced I'll never ever play, I'm still ripping them, but as 320Kbps mp3's, because you never know if you will have a situation like Ben's Iron Maiden story.

 

I'm also ripping 1950's rock & roll, and anything earlier as 320Kbps mp3.

 

Even so, 250GB probably won't be enough. But as I expect this process to take many months (maybe even a year) my thought is to buy a larger or second hard disc once I reach this ones capacity. By then, the prices will be lower, and I may get a 400GB or even a 1000GB for what this 250GB cost.

 

QUOTE (Andy Westcott @ Apr 26 2006, 06:52 PM)

As regards ripping from CDs: I recommend dBpowerAmp, as this allows the 'Slow, accurate Ripping' feature to be used.

This sounds interesting Andy. Can it also automatically convert large batches of .wav files on a hard disc into mp3's?

 

If so, I may just rip everyting as .wav, then I could select the tracks only worth having as mp3's, and leave it to convert them all over night, or over a weekend.

 

As for the tags, that is an issue when ripping to .wav. At present I have most of my discs catalogued on a spreadsheet with Artist, Title, CD/Track no, BPM, Length, Year, Month (if known), Chart Position (from everyhit.com), and notes (such as "cue to 00:30:05" or "sudden end"). I'm hoping that at some point in the future I can get a program that will match up the spreadsheet info with the files names (I'm using "Artist - Title.wav"). Does anyone know if this is possible?

[RobbieD 0]

QUOTE (Jimbo55 @ Apr 27 2006, 09:26 AM)

NOTE  if the underside of the cd is scratched you can polish the scratch out. If is the 'Top' the printed side that carries the data. If This is scratched the data will be lost. I have about a 85% success rate with 'polishing'

Can you tell us more about how you do this Jimbo?

[RichardP 0]

QUOTE (RobbieD @ Apr 27 2006, 10:54 AM)

QUOTE (Andy Westcott @ Apr 26 2006, 06:52 PM) As regards ripping from CDs: I recommend dBpowerAmp, as this allows the 'Slow, accurate Ripping' feature to be used. This sounds interesting Andy. Can it also automatically convert large batches of .wav files on a hard disc into mp3's? Hey Robbie,   Yes dbPowerAmp (it's a high quality free util) includes a utility called "dMC File Selector" that allows you to multi-select files from several folders at once and then convert to your selected format at your selected destination. The killer feature is that it preserves the directory structure at the target folder http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html//emoticons/smile.gif   At the risk of sounding like an evangelical FLAC bore http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html//emoticons/laugh.gif if your intention is to build up a WAV archive, and then selectively convert the tracks you want to mp3 for active/portable use, and you find that WAV doesn't have the tagging, what concerns do you have about using FLAC?   - Richard

[RobbieD 0]

QUOTE (RichardP @ Apr 27 2006, 12:01 PM)

if your intention is to build up a WAV archive, and then selectively convert the tracks you want to mp3 for active/portable use, and you find that WAV doesn't have the tagging, what concerns do you have about using FLAC? - Richard

I don't want to limit which DJ software I eventally use. I know that every DJ software will play .wav files.

 

Out of interest, do any of the DJ software systems play FLAC files? If so, which ones?

[Jimbo55 0]

'Polishing' scratched cd's

 

The disc itself is a support for the media that stores the music data. The media (an Aluminium derivative is sprayed onto one side of the disc. This is then usually printed over with track details or art. The CD lazer reads through the clear disc. If this is dirty the lazer can not focus correctly to read the data and the cd 'Skips'. A clean and all is ok.

 

If it is a scratch then the lazer cannot focus due to the distortion. A light scratch will easily polish out using a light abrasive like T Cut colour restorer for Car Paintwork. this will not work with a deep scratch that you can feel with your finger nail.

 

Place the disc on a flat surface with a cotton cloth underneath to protect the printed side. If you try to do it without a cloth underneath you will scratch the printed side and render the disc usless. Then simply use a small amount of T cut on a soft cloth using a circular motion to polish out the scratch(es). After a few minutes work you should be left with a clear surface. You may have to repeat the process two or three times. Polish the residue off with a clean soft cloth.

 

This polishing should be viewed as a last resort and may or may not work. It is worth trying it rather than just throwing the cd away.

 

There are comercially available kits that will physically fill the scratches and there are various software programs that will intelligently work out what is missing under the scratch. This will allow you to rip the disc. You effectively end up with pops and scratches just like vinyl but it will mean that the copy will play.

 

Jimbo

[Dukesy 0]

Good advice.

 

Also, have tried the furniture polish 'remedy' on light scratches and it works too!

(Reduces the distortion for the laser)

 

 

[ian . 0]

CD-DA X-Tractor is a good prog to use for ripping MP3's.....

It's also free! http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif

It's got a Lame encoder - Ogg Vorbis - WAV - Raw Data

 

CD-DA X-Tractor

[BigBen 0]

What about approximate times for ripping a disc, such as Now 62 Disc 1, to WAV only? I've now tested on five machines with 10 minutes the best result. If I've got 700+ to do then shaving two minutes off the average rip time will save me 24 hours!

[RichardP 0]

QUOTE (RobbieD @ Apr 27 2006, 12:50 PM)

QUOTE (RichardP @ Apr 27 2006, 12:01 PM) if your intention is to build up a WAV archive, and then selectively convert the tracks you want to mp3 for active/portable use, and you find that WAV doesn't have the tagging, what concerns do you have about using FLAC? - Richard I don't want to limit which DJ software I eventally use. I know that every DJ software will play .wav files.   Out of interest, do any of the DJ software systems play FLAC files? If so, which ones? Ripping to FLAC isn't necessarily a risky approach. At any stage you wish, you could convert your archive (in part or whole) from FLAC to WAV as desired with nothing lost except disk space (and, erm, those tags - but with WAV you wouldn't have had them anyway).   DJ software natively currently supporting FLAC include: 'Traktor 2.6 Studio', 'Traktor Beatport', 'Mixere' and 'Ableton Live'.   By installing some filters, Windows Media Player or any directshow-compatible player - Virtual DJ being an example - will play FLAC files. I've just tested Nero Wave Editor, that works too.   Support for FLAC is ever growing - eg. an upcoming version of iTunes will support it.

[Andy Westcott 0]

With regard to FLAC:

 

It is the better option when compared to high bitrate mp3 if you are considering reducing the filesize through compression. FLAC is compressed and therefore smaller in size than the equivalent WAV file, although the compression algorithm used doesn't sacrifice any quality - all of the original information is retained, unlike lossy compression such as mp3, wma and so-on. I've not used this format before, so I don't know what size reductions are possible - I would guess perhaps 50% or thereabouts, which seems to be typical of other similar technologies.

 

Support for FLAC is improving, but check your software will support it. http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html//emoticons/smile.gif

[RichardP 0]

QUOTE (BigBen @ Apr 27 2006, 03:29 PM)

What about approximate times for ripping a disc, such as Now 62 Disc 1, to WAV only? I've now tested on five machines with 10 minutes the best result. If I've got 700+ to do then shaving two minutes off the average rip time will save me 24 hours!

10 minutes 3 seconds was the best I managed on my desktop PC, ripping Now 62 Disc 1 to WAV only. The machine's about 3 years old, has an AMD 2400 CPU, TEAC CD-W540 CD drive and LG 4163 DVD drive. EAC was consuming about 14Mb RAM during the process, so that's pretty light http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html//emoticons/smile.gif

 

Anyone out there got a top notch CD drive that can do it in well under 10 mins?

[BigBen 0]

Well what about this....6 minutes 24 seconds!!! That is for Now 62 Disc 1 ripped to WAV, at default settings in EAC. To achieve this I disconnected the network and turned off all security features (hardware and software firewalls, spyware checkers and anti-virus software) but it was only five seconds faster than when these programs were all running, so you may as well stay connected and secure!

 

I then tried in safe mode where the drive speed never rose above 4.6x. To get the times above the drive was working at 12.3x...this convinced me that drivers were the reason for these great improvements.

 

So, I managed to locate and download the latest firmware. Unfortunately, I have to dismantle the PC to adjust jumper settings and IDE channels so I'm not going to delve any further tonight. My current firmware is A300, the latest is A306 so a lot of changes have taken place since my drive was first built. I'm hopeful these changes may result in an even better performance.

 

If I get in under 6 minutes then I will have saved myself 48 hours work!

 

For the techies, my PC is a relatively old Sony Vaio - Pentium 1.8 with 1.25gig RAM. It has two hard disks and two optical drives, correctly set-up with the hard disks on one IDE channel and the optical on the other. I use XP Home. The drive is a fairly new LG DVD-RW - model number GSA-4160B.

 

I have a second LG drive, still unopened, so tomorrow I will try it again on a more modern Pentium PC compelte with SATA hard disks. I will also test the new firmware.

[RichardP 0]

Heh, the gauntlet has been thrown down! http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html//emoticons/biggrin.gif

 

Guess what though, after a couple of easy EAC settings optimisations for my LG DVD drive, and setting the target as drive C:, for Now62/1 I managed to achieve a fab 2m:59s!

 

When I set the target back to my USB external drive, it was only 20 seconds slower - but that's pretty fast all the same.

 

BigBen/Rich, to try this for yourself, put an audio CD into your intended optical drive, go into the EAC Drive Options (F10) and under the 'Extraction Method' tab, click on 'Detect Read Features...' and let it do its stuff for a short while. When the results appear (hopefully the 'cache' feature will result 'No' - better for DAE, apparently!) click the 'Apply' button. Also set the target directory to an internal drive rather than USB external drive. Would be interesting to see if it makes much difference!