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**McCrea** · June 19, 2008, 06:23

Re: Give Rufus Digital Music Advice

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Step one, ditching my old Windows-98-running laptop, is complete.

Sorry to hear that.

Since I'm going to end up with an iPod, I guess I'll end up being sucked into the iTunes universe.

Sorry to hear that, too.

I would advocate just ripping them to cda -- that's what they are, CD Audio format. Keep the copies as close to the original as possible. From there you can duplicate to iTunes, MP3 or anything you want, without burning your bridges behind you.

HDD space is cheap. Ensure the foundational quality of your new library is intact.

[I won't ask whether you are licensed to duplicate your purchases.]

**SpencerH** · June 19, 2008, 06:34

Re: Give Rufus Digital Music Advice

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Since I'm going to end up with an iPod, I guess I'll end up being sucked into the iTunes universe. So here's the question: since I'll eventually be sucked into the iTunes universe anyway, should I use iTunes to rip my cd collection? Is there any advantage or disadvantage to doing so? And if not iTunes, anybody want to suggest an alternative? TIA.

Dont let Jobs-almighty control your life! Dont cross that line! There must be another player that will suit your needs! Look harder!

**snoopy369** · June 19, 2008, 09:39

You're probably better ripping them to MP3... cda would be a bit of a storage issue, i'd guess, if you have a large library.

That said, you can use iTunes to rip them to MP3 and automatically have them included in your iTunes library (though its not particularly difficult to include them manually, of course); but it's just as good a tool as anything.

**LordShiva** · June 19, 2008, 09:44

HB Rufus

**Nostromo** · June 19, 2008, 10:37

Not sure how good iTunes is. General consensus is that EAC is the best ripper there is, but its a bit tricky to set up initially. Other good choices are CDex and dBpowerAMP. Both EAC and CDEX are open source. dBpowerAMP is 24$, but its also a great converter (if you need to convert your FLAC files into MP3, for example). That said, iTunes will probably be good enough for your needs.

Since ripping and tagging 500 CD's is quite long and time-consuming, the ideal approach would be to rip your music in a lossless format with EAC and tag them properly. Lossless is a form of compression where you keep the exact same sound quality as the original CD. That way you'll never have to do it again. Its done once and for all. After that, you convert them all in a format better suited for your iPod (MP3 LAME@ 192Kbps, for example) with dBpowerAMP.

Suppose you return to America and decide you want to get yourself an amazing sound system. Suppose moreover that you're finished with CD's: you just just want to play your MP3's on it. Unfortunately, even though they sounded great on you're iPod, you rapidly find out that they don't sound very good anymore on the high-fi. Its a good thing you have your lossless archive at hand. You won't have to re-rip and re-tag all your CD's.

Or suppose you lose all your CD's in fire or whatever. You'll still have all of them on your lossless archive. You could even burn them all on CD and they'll sound as good as the original.

I suppose you could do all this with iTunes. But you'll have to use AppleLossless, which is proprietary. But I believe you can batch convert Applelossless files with dBpowerAMP.

**Asher** · June 19, 2008, 10:39

Originally posted by snoopy369
You're probably better ripping them to MP3... cda would be a bit of a storage issue, i'd guess, if you have a large library.

That said, you can use iTunes to rip them to MP3 and automatically have them included in your iTunes library (though its not particularly difficult to include them manually, of course); but it's just as good a tool as anything.

I don't see why he'd rip to MP3 when he can rip to AAC in iTunes, which is higher quality.

**Nostromo** · June 19, 2008, 10:40

Re: Re: Give Rufus Digital Music Advice

Originally posted by McCrea

Sorry to hear that.

Sorry to hear that, too.

I would advocate just ripping them to cda -- that's what they are, CD Audio format. Keep the copies as close to the original as possible. From there you can duplicate to iTunes, MP3 or anything you want, without burning your bridges behind you.

HDD space is cheap. Ensure the foundational quality of your new library is intact.

[I won't ask whether you are licensed to duplicate your purchases.]

That's silly. Better use a lossless format.

**Asher** · June 19, 2008, 10:54

I downloaded the new Coldplay album (yeah, I know) in FLAC and it's jittery to all ****. I just deleted the thing.

**Rufus T. Firefly** · June 19, 2008, 20:03

Thanks everybody!

Nostromo: when we talk about a "lossless format," what's an example? I'm not sure what those formats are actually called. (Oh and BTW, I'm unlikely to give up on CDs; I'm a jazz fan, and the liner notes, especially the personnel lists, are too important. But I do take your point.)

~~Asher~~ Mr. Snuggles: Is "AAC in iTunes" the same thing as AppleLossLess?

Thanks again!

**Nostromo** · June 19, 2008, 20:46

AAC is a lossy format and Apple lossless ain't.

FLAC, Apple Lossless and WMA Lossless are examples of lossless formats.

Yeah, I understand where you're coming from. A lot of classical and jazz fans feel that tags are not flexible enough. There are workarounds, though. Take, for example Money Jungle by Ellington, Mingus and Roach. Here's how I tagged it:

- Artist: Duke Ellington (I should probably ad Mingus and Roach or, alternatively, put "with Mingus on bass and Roach on drums" in the comments tag)

- Album: Money Jungle

- And I could always copy the liner notes in the"lyrics" tag. There's a plugin on the Squeezebox (the device I use to play my music on my stereo) that allows you to display the lyrics while it plays a song. So you could in principle read the liner notes while listening to the music.) But unless you can find the liner notes on the net, that would be a pain in the ass.

For classical music, I use the album field for the work. For example:

- Artist: Fauré, Gabriel
- Album: Quatuor à cordes en mi mineur, Op.121 (Ad Libitum Quartet)
- Title of track 1: 1. Allegro moderato
- Title of track 2: 2. Andante

If I was more anal, I'd put "Ad Libitum Quartet" in "artist" and "Fauré" in "composer". But it wasn't practical.

**Asher** · June 19, 2008, 20:57

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
Thanks everybody!

Nostromo: when we talk about a "lossless format," what's an example? I'm not sure what those formats are actually called. (Oh and BTW, I'm unlikely to give up on CDs; I'm a jazz fan, and the liner notes, especially the personnel lists, are too important. But I do take your point.)

~~Asher~~ Mr. Snuggles: Is "AAC in iTunes" the same thing as AppleLossLess?

Thanks again!

AAC is lossy, Apple lossless is a different format altogether.

Either/or WMA/AAC are better quality than MP3. But MP3 is more pervasive...how you plan to use the music should dictate what you encode in. Every device I'd care for supports AAC, so I rip my CDs in AAC (m4a file extensions).

**Dinner** · June 19, 2008, 21:56

Skip the Ipod and get a second generation Zune. Does more and costs less.

**Wiglaf** · June 19, 2008, 22:14

Ok, first: no, this doesn't belong in the tech forum.

TECH FORUM BENDING OVER AND TAKING IT HARDER THAN EVER

**McCrea** · June 19, 2008, 22:35

Re: Re: Re: Give Rufus Digital Music Advice

Originally posted by Nostromo

That's silly. Better use a lossless format.

I see that I was wrong, CDA is not a pertinent aspect to consider, it's just the directory info, not the audio data.

Sorry there. I was certainly advocating losslessness though. At least I got the thread going.

I'd have to argue with snoopy and not to worry at all about storage space. 500 CD's worth at least $5000 are clearly a worthy investment. Even if we estimated no compression to be 70 Megs per CD, that's 35 Gigs, a pittance. ($50 ~ 200 GB Ultra ATA).

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