How do I get rid of my CDs? - Page 3

Right now, my comptuer and wireless router are in a den...my stereo receiver is in the family room.

Simplest and best is to get a long cable with a 3.5mm jack at one end and banana plugs at the other end. That is what I did. Attach the 3.5mm jack (like the one on your iPhone earbuds) to the sound card on your computer, the other end to an accessory jack on your stereo. Assumes you can snake wire unobtrusively.

About time someone put a stop to the FUD here. One can obtain iTunes for free for either platform. One can rip to mp3s which can be used on any device. No being locked into a proprietary system. You don't like Apple products? That's fine, just don't put out false information.

Unfortunately, The Squeezebox line is being discontinued.
I personally like iTunes and it's ubiquitous. It does a decent job of organizing your library; fetching artwork and there are enough plugins on both Mac and PC to find missing metadata and lyrics. Then you can move your library elsewhere if not happy with iTunes. There's no DRM so you're fee to do with your music library as you'd like.

Once your library is ripped; an alternative in both Windows and Macs is Plex http://plexapp.com
There's also a Linux backend service within Plex.

One comment regarding ripping to a lossy format. If you are using iTunes and an iPod, you can rip lossless for use with your stereo and have iTunes sync lossy AAC versions to the iPod without saving the AAC version in iTunes.

Do NOT rip your collection with iTunes. Seriously, don't do it. You can use iTunes for playing music all you want, but don't rip with it, even with their "error correction" turned on. I learned this lesson the hard way.

Two years ago I decided to rip all of my CDs in Apple Lossless format, so I thought that iTunes was a nobrainer. After getting 3/4 of the way through my collection (hundreds of CDs), I noticed that some had digital glitches in them even though I had iTunes "error correction" turned on. This happens when you have some dirt, scratches or other imperfections on the CD (which is rather common with some of my old CDs) and apparently iTunes isn't good enough to compensate or alert you otherwise. This defeated my whole purpose of ripping to Apple Lossless, which was to get an exact duplicate of the CD on my hard drive. I had to rerip everything with better software. Here are the two best options and why:

For the Mac (which is what I ultimately used) X Lossless Decoder is excellent. It can use one of several different "secure" ripping techniques to read each bit several times and can create an Accuraterip hash that is compared with an online database of other hashes, further confirming the accuracy of your rip. It can rip to many different formats, including Apple Lossless and can embed artwork in each music file.

For the PC, Exact Audio Copy is the way to go. It can do just about everything that XLD can do, and then some. It's been around a very long time (I've been using it for more than a decade) and is considered the default standard for ripping CDs.

I have now boxed up all of my old CDs in storage. You really won't get much money by selling them, so they make a great, cheap backup copy in case of total disaster.

another benefit to having everything digital (yes you can even digitize your albums if you have any) is getting a nice car stereo with USB and loading up a jumpdrive with tons of music and just enjoying it. I do not have an iPod/iPhone either but I sure do love my jumpdrives! I do still use CDs in the car but not nearly as much as I use to. Plus making MP3 CDs is fun and can just leave them in the car and not worry about them. As far as the initial ripping of music, I grabbed about 20 CDs after work each day and over time had my entire collection ripped. JUST MAKE SURE YOU MAKE INCREMENTAL BACKUPS!!!

iTunes worked fine for me and I'm VERY critical of my music. Something else must have been going on during the ripping process for the guy above as I've had no issue with iTunes.

If you are going to get rid of all your cds and dont wan't them let me know jeje sagxel@gmail.com i am more than happy to get them

throwing this out there

EAC

Google music

but people who listen on an IPOD type device don't need perfect rips and definitely don't need FLAC

I would rather have mp3's with LAME than a propitiatory format

bump for media monkey

also musicbrainz picard

Not only is keeping the discs as a backup a good idea, selling them and continuing to use the digital copies is, in fact, pirating.

For me I used Roxio Creator to rip my CD's to MP3 format then stored them on my networked external hard drive. If I remember right Roxio also supports other formats than MP3 so it might be something you can look into.

Another way to back up CD's is: you need a good converter that will take the cd track and make it into a 16 bit 44,100 Wave file.
Some will say a wave file is large. But who cares when you achrive to a DVD.You save it as data.
I'm such a purest I want to hear the CD...Or better formats DVD-A and SACD,however you can't copy the 5.1 on those disc.
When I have music I want to share with a good friend.Take 4 or 5 CD's and place them on a DVD as a wave.That way they go thur the material on their computer,pick songs and then burn their own CD or compress the mess out of it and make a MP3 or MP4 to put on their I-Pod.
Hard drives do fail and all is lost.

No matter what format you ultimately choose (e.g., lossless FLAC or lossy MP3), you DO need accurate rips. Dirt or scratches tend to ad digital "glitches" to the songs. You WILL notice these at any bit rate.

Seriously this far into the thread and nobody has mentioned dbpoweramp for ripping / converting files?

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/

If you have MANY CDs to rip. This will be the best $40 you spend. If you value your time or quality software. I recommend ripping to FLAC with AccurateRip enabled. You can then use the batch converter to convert from FLAC to any other file format you may need, such as MP3. But you should strongly consider archiving your CDs in a lossless format.

Also, have you considered just getting rid of the cases and using sleeves?
http://www.amazon.com/Snap-N-Store-SNS01658-Double-Storage-Black/dp/B001B0APOO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350419486&sr=8-1&keywords=snap+store

This can hold many discs in sleeves if you are just looking to get rid of the clutter.

dbpoweramp is clearly worth it. Great tool for ripping.

Can't believe no one has mentioned J River. www.jriver.com. This is way more than just music playback, but audio is it's roots and nothing does it better. If there is a better tool out there to play your lossless files on your computer thru your stereo, I wish someone would point me to it. It can't be beat on video either.

Can't most music managers do that well? I rip to FLAC, and then converting to mp3 in Media Monkey is just a matter of selecting a bunch of tracks and a couple of clicks. Is there some advantage to dbpoweramp for that? Always wondered since it has gotten good testimonials.

Take a look at the Cocktail X10

If one uses Music Match the quality of the playback (on iPhone or Apple TV, etc.) is that of Apple's server and this is usually much better than that obtained by ripping. Once matching is done, the higher quality version can then be downloaded freely and easily (although there is no usually need to do this). It is not necessary to waste time ripping to high quality at all.

I beg to disagree - iTunes is all easy at first, when you're just ripping your CDs. But it doesn't support FLAC, and with Apple's lossless format, you're stuck with - Apple.

Why is that bad?

Because of the way Apple handles your Music Library. Data is only partially kept in the Tags inside the Audio file. The rest, important things like Ratings are stored in a ****** proprietary data file that Apple keeps changing around as it pleases. Album art won't stay associated with the Music files either, should you move to some other playback option.

So, what looks easy at first, becomes a major headache later. Ever upgrade your computer or want to use your music on an external device that Apple doesn't approve of? Tough luck, unless you have LOTS and LOTS of time to spend hacking your way through Apple's lock-in roadblocks.

External music devices like those Audio Video playback streaming devices? NAS boxes? Android Phones? Its possible but only by doing a lot of work over and over.

I recommend you get a good FLAC ripper and store the stuff your own way on the hard drive. Its not hard if you understand how to make folders on your drive. At least not nearly as hard as dealing with Apple's stuff, unless you want to be a 100% Apple and-nothing-but Apple household. Any Playback software can scan through your directory tree to automatically add your music, so it won't be a problem to find the music later, so you can sort it any way you prefer on the hard drive. There's Mediamonkey and Songbird and Winamp and several dozen more to choose from.

From the FLAC files, you can make as many MP3 or M4A or AAC files as you wish for portable players, but the FLAC files are what you safe-keep, with secondary hard drive backup, in case one breaks one day.

In the paid version of DBPoweramp, you have available a multi-encoder. I have mine set to convert to FLAC and MP3 (high bit rate) at the same time.
When ripping a bunch of recently purchased used CDs, it was taking me approximately 4 to 5 minutes to go through each CD. As I watched, it would finish the conversion within about 3 seconds of the rip completion. I was using a recent laptop with a multi-core processor, which this application will take advantage of the extra processing power.
Also, it uses accuraterip. Although, depending on your music preference, it may not locate some of the CDs. In those few instances, it'll display the message "not in accuraterip". The track information is still displayed, it's just letting you know that it has no information to determine whether the rip is accurate or not.

It saves a lot of time converting to lossless and lossy at the same time. I have a perfect backup of my entire library, and for playing in the car or on the iPod, I have MP3(not enough space on the iPod for lossless).

One other thing about the accuraterip - sometimes, it will flag as inaccurate due to different pressing of the CD. When listening to those flagged as inaccurate in my own experience, they were actually good rips. You have to keep that in mind, especially with re-released CDs.

I said: N13L5 replied: Looks like perfect agreement to me!

The crux of your argument is that, while it's easy to do at first, you might want to do something later that Apple doesn't allow or makes very difficult. No argument from me on that score. But remember, we are talking about an OP who admitted to having problems just getting the hang of iTunes. And you want him to adopt some other, far more complicated approach which is undoubtedly not as well documented...just in case? I don't think that's advice particularly suited to this particular poster.

Yes, Apple is proprietary, but for an awful lot of people that's a feature, not a bug. Apple gives them everything they need, and it all works together seamlessly. For most of us, a computer is just a tool, and that's the way tools ought to work.

I use the same method ripping all my CD'sto FLAC ( using exact audio copy software ) and use a 12TB NAS for all my HD movies and audio library completely networked to 3 WD media players and 4 computers .
I use a Sandisk flash player 8GB on board and 32GB micro card totaling 40GB of high quality FLAC tunes for the car audio.

Bought an HDD media player and a gigabyte of hard disk. Copied some of my favorite CD collections "as is" (.wav) and the rest in FLAC format. The media players, choice of: (xtreamer, measy, wd live, himedia, kaiboer) has it's own software in compiling media files. Models with hard disk drive compartments is also available. Newer models has android operation system. I have another 2 gig hard drive for movies and photos. It is now the heart of my entertainment center connected to my audio video home theater receiver and HD dlp projector. Capable of playing almost if not all media formats available.

Hi All
Thought it might be worth outlining my experience with using a digital music library.
I started using Itunes about 2 years ago and as someone who has avoided anything to do with Apple for over 20 years it was a tough philosophical decision.
Previously I had been using Windows media player and various other similar packages, primarily to get music onto portable music devices ( all non-apple e.g Sony Walkman). When I tried to purchase music online ( primarily for my kids) , it was a nightmare and most of the time it never dowloaded properly and I ended up losing money for files that I was told had been downloaded but never arrived and could not go back and get them again.
So after much frustration I downloaded Itunes and it grabbed all of my existing music on my Windows PC hard drive and allowed me to purchase and download music without any issues at all.
I have since learnt to live with its proprietry idosynchrasies and now 2 years down the track, I have almost 100 gb of ripped apple lossless format files ( from my purchased CD's) on a NAS 2 TB Hard drive ( WD Live), this music is used with a Sonos system that connects to 2 separate AV receivers in my house all operated by an Apple Ipad ( yes I am now a convert, in fact in my house we have 3 Ipads, 3 Ipod nanos all able to play lossless CD quality music) and I can listen to music perfectly sychronised or separate in each area of my house in high quality format.
Note : I also have a high quality CD player , which I use periodically, but most listening is done using Sonos via the Ipad ( free Sonos App).
There is nothing like sitting outside on a nice evening with friends , selecting and changing songs as you need and enjoying it all in very high quality format.

I am not a big fan of a lot of Apple's rules and constraints, but it has made the listening to music ( via Sonos and NAS drive) a pleasurable experience for everyone in my household and to be honest that is what it is all about, enjoying the music.

The reason people go with lossless over wave files is not just to save space, it is because of the superior tagging capability as well as being able to have your music level matched via some additional metadata so that you don't have to frequently adjust volume when playing random tracks across different CDs that may have different average volume levels.

I think that most programs/solutions are just as easy to use (and sometimes more so) than what Apple offer. The area where Apple has the advantage is in it's eco-system of supporting products. e.g. Airplay to name but one - it is available on so many more devices than other competing solutions.

Not seeing the difficulty in this request. I have been doing this for years. No need for itunes or music servers.

Rip cd in Windows media player, go to rip properties and use wav or wma lossless (although WMP doesn't always play well with wav files). WAV will rip it in the cd standard of 1414 kbs. Send rip to a dedicated hard drive (HDD's are cheap). Get an external HDD for back up. I use an optical cable from my sound card to my AVR. Connect your video card to the television set. Get a wireless mouse and keyboard. Now you can listen to music from your couch using your mouse and TV.

I use an wma converter program to down convert the music files to 320 kbs to use in my phone, ipod. flash memory, etc.

No offense intended but, hey, if she wants you to get rid of your CD collection, maybe you married the wrong gal ! Next thing you know, she'll start throwing out your underwear and socks just because they have holes in them ......

Note as they're lossless compression, you can migrate between ALAC and FLAC as often as you like with zero loss in quality, the debate being whether playback of one sounds better.

Then tell your wife you're going to start collecting vinyl.

unless you already have something hooked up to the stereo, this is going to cost money. does your AVR have HDMI input? a great many of us have migrated to HTPC solution. HTPC doesn't have to be super$. goto a used computer geek forum like hardforum, anand, google around. i just saw a very capacble media laptop for $150delivered.

then connect it to your HDMI AVR and stream 24/192 flac. rip everything into flac. don't use alac. iTunes store has an app titled 'FLAC' that plays flac natively. so no matter what flac is fully supported! it's what i have, my entire library as FLAC

PS after that, use mp3tag to update all the tag info (including album art)

Jumping in late on this thread with a quick question for the knowledgeable people here: If I download a copy of a piece of music from Itunes, do I get that in lossless format or some other format?

Second, any reason I can't transfer music from Itunes onto a zip drive for a car stereo?

Thanks

Steve V