How do I get rid of my CDs? - Page 4

That's pretty handy. I don't know if I would use it, though. I just rip to flac with EAC, and then in Media Monkey, I setup sync profiles for each device with rules that tell it to generate a VBR V0 mp3 on the fly if a flac or wav file is in the sync list. Certainly takes more time to sync, but I don't have to store but one file on my hard drive and in my music library. But I can see why some people would like having duplicate mp3 versions of each file that they have lossless. Would be faster for transferring files.

I totally agree. This is an excellent advise.

Although we are a 100% Apple-based family (iMac, Macbook Pro, Mac Mini, iPhone, iPad, etc), when it comes to media handling the best way is to do it your way so that it is platform agnostic and transferable/re-producable. In case something goes wrong you will still have the copy of the originals. These days storage is cheap but your time and effort to get the music again is expensive.

I use (and suggest) the following workflow:

Rip original CDs to FLAC format (I use XLD software on Mac)
Store them on a NAS (I have QNAP running in RAID5 mode)
Network everything using your cable/wi-fi router and/or a gigabit switch (whichever is applicable)
Use a quality player (aka quality DAC) to stream from NAS through to your music system (I use Oppo93 BD/DVD/CD player+Onkyo AVR)

All this may sound complicated but in reality once you understand the basics it is really simple and you will save tons of time and effort going forward. You won't regret it

That "advice" is a bunch of CRAP. The Apple Lossless Codec was made open source and royalty free last year. It's stored within an MPEG4 container (one of the most used containers in the world). There's no DRM scheme and no lock in. Apple cannot sweep through your files and suddenly demand money for having them, so forget about that.

Besides, the data rate of those "lossless" codecs is so high, you may as well use AIFF or WAV. I can play everything through the incredibly cheap and capable AppleTV and even have an old AirPort Express laying around. Forget about screwing with all that other stuff which may or may not work with each other.

All the FUD about Apple allowing or disallowing what you can do with media is tiresome and untrue. Apple is pretty much the only corporation which forced the content owners to allow an escape from THEIR proprietary nonsense. Even in the days of DRM forced by the RIAA, Apple gave you a mechanism to burn a CD of your purchased media and take it anywhere else, much to the chagrin of the RIAA. Apple's "Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign was daggers to the RIAA, so give them a little credit.

The only thing Apple really locked was the relationship between the iPod and iTunes. It's their ecosystem and that control made sure it worked perfectly. However, the media being created was still very portable to other devices. That's the important part. The iPod was first and foremost an MP3 player (but everyone forgets that part). No, there's no DRM applied to ripped CDs. That's just more FUD from ignoramuses.

Not everything plays AAC or WMA or FLAC so you have to choose your technology. In fact, when Microsoft was licensing WMA (which went thud), they required the exclusion of AAC from the same device just to screw Apple. How did that go, Microsoft?

If it still bothers you, use high bit rate AAC encoding. Apple doesn't own or control that. I challenge you to hear the difference between high data rate AAC and uncompressed.

That said, I landed a couple of PowerFile R200 BD data libraries. That's a 200 disk changer with dual Blu-ray recorders. The software to run it is available for free and Rip Monkey software will run the PowerFile and rip everything to iTunes with names. I did about 900 disks between two systems on one old iMac in two weeks. The software won't run on anything newer than OS X 10.5.x but man, it was a great thing. All my disks are gone and everything is a file. Check eBay for those. You can pick them up for a few hundred bucks but don't do it if your time is worth nothing.
Edited by Houdaman - 10/16/12 at 9:11pm

iTunes purchased music is typically high-rate AAC. Their iTunes + was, if I recall, 256K AAC. It should be noted that AAC bashes up music WAY less than .mp3, so a high-rate AAC is as near to lossless as a lossy file can get these days, and still be usable pretty universally. Nope. So long as your car stereo handles the file format the music is in. For example, you might find it harder to find a car stereo that plays FLAC files., but if you run into a problem you can create the file type you need within iTunes (typically .mp3 for the car) from anything downloaded. The one glitch is there's no exporting files to a USB memory stick, though you can burn an mp3 disc, or just go directly to the file from within iTunes, then copy it to the USB memory.

A Zip drive is an antique floppy-based removable cartridge drive made by IOMEGA in 1994, originally 100mb capacity. I don't think they ever made it to cars.

Many answers already but nobody has mentioned these two programs for ripping MP3:
CDex (my favourite) and foobar

Little search and you'll find plenty of advice for the best settings and using these.

The other thing is how your PC and stereo is connected and then what program you want to use to play your collection. Try first Windows own Media Player and if you don't like it, there's many alternatives.

I looked at this as an option last year - to digitize the majority of my CD's and reduce my physical collection down to a smaller amount - by having a cd protected 48 disc booklet (keeping 48 physical copies of your favourite albums / music / OST's ).

After much research online and speaking to audio professionals and as someone who cares greatly about pure audio quality/fidelity - I decided to digitize all my CD's into .AIF or .AIFF format (*same format just different extension )

Reasons being:

Pro's:

AIFF allows for true uncompressed PCM audio ( completely lossless / same digital quality as your cd's )
AIFF unlike WAV supports ID3 / Album Art / Metadata so you can have more information yet still have a completely lossless file.
Having an entirely lossless master file means you can convert your files later to anything you wish for other uses FLAC,WAV,MP3,M4A's etc etc..
Iphones, Ipods , various Android phones and various Logitech devices all support AIFF if you want high quality playback - otherwise you can always downconvert to a format of your choice.
Highest possible Audio Quality file ( all master files in Audio Production are .WAV and .AIFF )

Con's:
Filesize, Aiff files will be 10-20 times bigger than it's MP3 equivalent. ( saying that hard drives are extermely cheap now, and you can have 50+ albums on a 32GB phone with plenty of room to spare ).
Slightly more limited from a hardware device point of view.

Still buying occasional cd's and ripping them into AIFF and having my entire library managed by itunes - which I have backed up onto another external HDD and backed up online all in lossless AIFF's.

Hope this helps!

FLAC files are about half the size of WAVs, but that's a minor difference. The problem with WAV files is that they were never intended to include tag info.

Hard drive space is so cheap these days (a terabyte for under $100) that the space required to keep a true archival lossless version of all your music is trivial. I rip all my files to FLAC and can convert them as needed for use in any other device. The choice of FLAC vs. Apple Lossless would only depend on what devices you plan to use for playback, and with software like dBpoweramp, you can easily convert back and forth between them with no loss of music data, so there's not much point in arguing which one is preferable.

What about CD Text for wav files?

For just music, the older (V12? can't remember) version supports secure rip and kernel streaming. With newer versions you have to get the full blown media center to get those features and the media center, like iTunes, is overkill for just ripping, cataloging and playing music.

larry

Still try to put a spin on Apple with your posts, huh?

"Near to lossless" in terms of how much data is preserved from the original audio signal is fairly meaningless for choosing compressed file formats. What's important is the perceived difference in audio quality. In ABX tests, most people can't tell the difference between the VBR V0 bit rate MP3s or best AAC in comparison to lossless files. Among those who can, the debate is quite controversial as to which is better.

However, "near to lossless" still isn't lossless, and neither file format is suitable for having an accurate reproduction of the original file format, especially if one might want to have the option of converting the file to another format (for smaller file size, because of device support, etc.).

^^^
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Either unmarried or is on his 2nd+ or 2nd+++ wife....

Aside from all the other suggestions that folks have mentioned, a few years ago I traded in all my CD's (approx. 450) after ripping them into iTunes, to an online company: http://www.ipodmeister.com/
Based on the number of CD's you have (they should be in cases with their original jackets), you can choose from various items they offer for the trade in. I chose to get an iPod Classic so I could store all my music. I also use an Apple TV to stream music through the house and it works seamlessly with iTunes.

You get an AAC file at 256 kbps. It is not lossless, but the odds are extremely small that you could tell the difference in a fair test.
The transfer isn't a problem. But you'll have to make sure that your car stereo can read the file format you're using. It might not be able to read AAC, for example. So you'd have to convert the file to something it can read. Converting it to MP3 would involve further losses, however. You'd want to convert it to a lossless format.

Unfortunately for me, I guess, I am an extreme bigot against all things Apple. Because of the way they have treated me following a more than $800 purchase of an iPad, I will never own or use another Apple product, ever! I am also a beginner, so I need some advise on the best way of getting my CDs into the digital world without using iTunes.

I would download Exact Audio Copy (www.exactaudiocopy.de) and use an online guide to set it up for accurate ripping and to download the desired tags. You could also set it up
for an external compressor program so you could have WAV files plus MP3 files or other compressed file formats. This would pretty much reduced to insert the disk and start the ripping process, then
remove the cd when it's completed.

Then decide what playback program you wish to use. I wouldn't use most bundled rippers since they check for jitter only.

As I would recommend to any who asked advise on media formats, WAV (convertible to any format) or FLAC (practically universally supported lossless) are the ways to go for flexibility; mp3 as a secondary format as most programs will have an option to rip FLAC/mp3 simultaneously giving you the option for HiFi stereo listening or portability. You can tailor your format to your needs and preferred programs/hardware that you use, but need to realize that you may be somewhat limited by your choice if not widely supported.
For anyone considering the Apple way of life, think hard as once you switch into it you are locked to their software and hardware. Apple lossless is rarely supported outside the iTunes/iPod-Pad-Phone market, so choose wisely.

I suppose I should add my preference and +1 vote for EAC. Small unobtrusive program, relatively easy to use and quick/accurate. Ability to rip to WAV, MP3, FLAC

Can anyone clarify the Apple iTunes policy on 'ownership' of one's media files? Where Apple says one's digital really doesn't belong to the person on the account, but to Apple itself. The person on the account is allowed to use these files, but not give them to anyone else. Where it is illegal to pass on one's iTune music, videos, etc. to one's heirs. Remember the news of the recent lawsuit by Bruce Willis over this?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/sep/03/bruce-willis-apple-itunes-library

Is this policy different for media files purchased from Apple, vs those uploaded files obtained by ripping your own CDs?

If that is indeed the case, when you put all of your digital media files on iTunes, you are in fact giving up the right of ownership.

There's a difference between stating fact, stating opinion, and "spinning" something...if you care to see it. Or, I can just be your bad guy. Hmm, well, no, if you retain more data, then a file is less lossy. If a file retains as much as 35% of the original data, then it's nearer to "lossless" then, say, a file that retains only 1/10th of the original data. My "near to lossless" was meant to be a qualitative statement of opinion, and would be true when comparing bit rates within a given codec type. Agreed. The key in that statement is "most people", and to be meaningful, you probably should cite the study, otherwise that statement would be taken as opinion. It would be surprising that anyone would debate which is better in a contest between lossy anything and lossless, though you might get a 50% results in an ABX test, meaning the subjects couldn't tell which was which. Again, cite the study if you know of one, we would all actually appreciate some facts in stead of argumentative flames. Never said it was.

That would be an opinion, in case anyone didn't notice. The losses encountered are a function of the original bit rates chosen, and since no study on the audibility of codes and bit rates has been posted, all we're doing is stating opinion. Therefore, in my opinion, AAC for a given bit rate is more transparent than a similar bit rate mp3, and if a high-rate AAC file is used, like 320Kbps, it's good enough quality and close enough to the original for most people, and If an mp3 is needed, it's probably needed by someone who doesn't care if it's more lossy, and just needs the convenience. I have nothing but personal opinion having tried it, but I haven't found a lossless file of any kind to be clearly and audibly superior to a 320Kbps AAC file in the vast majority of cases. I state it that way so my statement of opinion wouldn't be missunderstood for statement of fact, or "spin" toward Apple, even though AAC isn't strictly an Apple format.

And, as I predicted, you couldn't stop arguing.

That sucks. I have about 1.5TB of FLACs that I stream to my not cheap HT system from a Squeezebox Duet. The problem with CDs isn't storage space, it's finding something when you want it. And the quality of the MP3 type stuff is awful on my HT system.

This has nothing to do with Apple, or even with recordings. Whenever you buy a copy of a copyrighted work—book, record, movie, etc.—you are really buying the right to use that work in some ways, but not other ways. The basic idea is that you can use it yourself, you can give, lend, or sell it to others, but you cannot make copies and give them to others. (I am not a lawyer, and that is not a legal opinion.)
Bruce Willis is a hack actor and a known crank. A lawyer in the article you linked to made the correct point that this whole area is rather new and there are a lot of questions that haven't been fully worked out yet. That said, my nonbinding opinion would be that Bruce Willis has the right to pass each song in his iTunes library to one of his daughters, but not all three.
No. See above.
The music isn't "on iTunes," because there is no such place as iTunes. The music is on your hard drive. iTunes is merely one of a number of databases that allows you to access that music. It's irrelevant to the question of either ownership or copyright.

Go do your own research and find the studies which show that many people can't tell the difference between low compression files vs lossless. As for those that prefer the sound of AAC vs MP3, you can people find people arguing about that all over the web (well, unless you hang out mostly on Apple forums).

If you prefer the best AAC encoding over MP3, then state that as an opinion. Don't mislead people to think that just because AAC shows a little less data loss than MP3s (which it does) that it's somehow superior in SQ. More lossy in data loss does not necessarily mean more loss in perceived audio. A prime relevant example is that MP3 VBR V0s are often found to be equal in SQ to 320kbs MP3s. It's the difference in the encoding process. Simply which one has more of the same data left in comparison to the lossless file is not a good measure. And yet, people like you and other Apple advocates, mislead people to believe that AAC is better just because of that reason. Audio perception is the only factor that matters here. What's important is what is lost and how that loss is perceived, not so much how much is lost.

Now perhaps I was too hasty in accusing you of intentionally spinning for Apple. Maybe you don't realize that this is the "spin" over why AAC is better?

There's a whole big dispute over US copyright law (see the works of Lawrence Lessig and Pamuela Samuelson, for example) and how it doesn't favor consumers when it comes to digital works. Copyright laws only grants rights to users over the instance of the copy they purchase. Digital works require making copies just to play them on your computer--the file is copied from the hard drive into memory. Consequently, no one buys downloadable digital media with the same rights that you get with physical copies like a CD. Apple "licenses" use to the consumer however they see fit. I wouldn't be surprised at all that Apple's music (or for that matter, any licensed digitally downloaded content) isn't licensed just to the buyer for their personal use and is not transferable.

There were psychoacoustic studies showing that, at low bitrates, AAC was indeed preferred over MP3. At rates over 200 kbps, the differences would have to be vanishing small, however.
Maybe you're less familiar with the issue than you think you are?

Which would make it different from a CD—or a book, for that matter—how?

That's a different discussion. The original point of contention is that the high bit rate AAC has less data loss than the MP3 versions.

US first sale doctrine gives the right of redistribution of intellectual property in a physical medium to the consumer for something that they have legally obtained from the copyright holder.

Although not the right to redistribute copies. Which is the problem with digital media. Everything has to be copied to transfer it to other devices or even use it on a computer. I didn't ever find out what happened (I stopped following the copyright and digital media conversations about five years ago), but initially the big content providers even wanted to suppress the consumer's ability to transfer a CD to a computer. I'm not even sure it's technically legal to make mp3s off your CD and transfer them to your mp3 player. Unless case law has come out in the last five years or so permitting that, it's probably not. (IANAL, but I am intellectual property scholar).

I did the same thing as Has7738 did and I ran interconnect cables from my computer to the stereo so I can play any sound on my computer and have it come out of the stereo. I did record all my CD's onto the computer but for some reason the sound quality when playing from the computer sounds a tad grainier then going through the BlueRay player so I don't play my CD's off the computer. But what's cool is I have a really nice HK cassette player/recorder, and this machine can make a near perfect recording of a CD, so I can take any music off the internet that won't allow me to record to either the computer HD or a disk and simply record it onto a cassette. I know you can get various pirated programs that use bit torrents but I don't really need that and weird legal stuff that could happen.

This is so 10 years ago...

Seriously, ran into this problem 10 years ago, what to do with over 1200 cds/albums. My solution for our household (4 users) has worked for the last 10 years and everyone is happy. We currently have over 34,000 songs; over 1TB of FLAC's and over 200GB's of MP3's. We have 2 PC desktops, 2 windows 7 laptops, 1 mac laptop, 1 HTPC, 2 android phones, 1 ipad, 6 ipods and 1 Windows Home Server (WHS). Each desktop uses iTunes for playback, but not for ripping.

I use EAC w/Lame encoder to rip CD's. I use the Mareo program with EAC rip it into a couple of different format. Basically, EAC starts the rip and then passes the WAV file to Mareo, I have Mareo programmed to take the WAV file and create a FLAC file to my WHS (server), an MP3 file (in 192kbps VBR) to both the WHS and my local desktop drive. I use the FLAC file for just archival purposes. The MP3 file on the server is for the entire network and the MP3 file on my desktop is for my personal use and also serves as a back-up for the server. Any user on our home network can access the music via the server. Through a java program called Fireplay, users on our network can browse/play music from the WHS through their browser. If they want it on their computer, they can simply choose download to copy it to their computer and add it to their iTunes playlist.

I too needed to connect it to the stereo as I was phasing out the CD. When I first started doing this a decade ago, I was never pleased with the sound results through my Sony ES receiver. MP3's sounded flat, whether it was through the headphone jack of my iPod or through several gadgets at the time, like Roku; or a RCA connection from the PC. I finally decided to build an HTPC with old computer components. The most expensive component that I didn't skimp out on was the sound card. I bought a B-Gears soundcard (other manufacturers sold the same card) that used a C-Media Oxygen chip. The sound card also has a toslink output, thus I had a direct digital connection into my receiver, no RCA crap. This set-up made a huge difference, sound was very clean and crisp with an MP3 file. No need to stream FLAC's, thus they got relegated for archival duty. BTW, i use iTunes for playback on the HTPC which looks pretty cool on our 47" LCD.

You mentioned that you are getting rid of your CD's, my advice is to make sure you have a back-up plan. Hard drives will fail, I've had a couple drives fail on me, luckily I had redundancy and was able to get everything back up and running within a few hours. A NAS drive or better yet, a WHS system will help tremendously if you go all digital.

Done it. How do you think I formed my opinion? Oh, perhaps I have an Apple bias? Yea, don't think so. It's not as simple as how many people can't tell the difference between low compression and lossless. It's a question of degree, and how you define low compression.

Interesting that while YOU are the one saying my opinions are wrong, You are also putting the burden of proof on me. Usually, the guy saying the first guy is wrong proves his point, not the other way 'round.

I actually spent some time searching for studies on the perceptual evaluation of codecs. There are many good papers, but most if not all compare a particular codec to audio not so encoded. And most are written to prove the efficacy of a particular codec. I have not found a formal paper that definitively supports the number of people that can or cannot detect a particular codec at a particular bit rate. I did, however, find this somewhat less than academic report - below.

I provide this links with these comments…er…my opinions:
The test sample is a little small, but adequate at 30 people. The tests were presented on headphones only, but IMHO (will that suffice?) the Sony MDR-7506 headphones are quite unforgiving and revealing of audible flaws. The are one of the more musically unforgiving headphones, which makes them great for analytical listening, but not exactly fun. If anything they probably made the testers hyper-sensitive to audible anomalies. AAC was not tested at bit rates higher than 128Kbps, and the Test Results chart therefor shows only three data points for AAC. Oddly, several of the other codecs are also missing data points, so a detailed comparison is not possible. In the chart "How The Formats Compare" we see AAC already at a 4.8 at 128Kbps (5=identical to original CD), with no test data for 256Kbps, much less 320Kbps which I have suggested. We could extrapolate that given higher data rates the AAC codec might have scored a 5, but that would strictly be conjecture.

http://pcworld.about.net/news/Oct022001id64123.htm
The above link isn't on an Apple forum, and does represent at least an attempt at an objective double-blind test, if incomplete. OK, done. But again I doubt that will stop you from arguing with me.
I'm not attempting to mislead people into thinking anything. Oh, forgot I'm your bad guy.
The above statement is my opinion. In my opinion, at least.

Here ya go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

Did you happen to notice AAC's parentage? Hmmm…lets see now…"AAC was developed with the cooperation and contributions of companies including AT&T Bell Laboratories, Fraunhofer IIS, Dolby Laboratories, Sony Corporation and Nokia. It was officially declared an international standard by the Moving Picture Experts Group in April 1997."

What? No Apple? OMG!
I regret to inform you that you have just voiced your opinion, not stated fact. Please clarify your statements with a disclaimer when they are comprised of your opinion only.

I make no attempt to mislead. I am not strictly an Apple advocate, and the reason you state…that AAC has more of some data left in comparison to the lossless file…is NOT my primary reason for my preference of AAC over .MP3. Agreed, if we change that sentence to "Perception of Audio Quality is the only factor that matters here." No, thats not it... That's it…

I will have to disqualify any VBR file as being inappropriate because of what it does to the ability to fast-forward. VBR files confuse many players because, well, the bit rate is variable. For example I have dozens of .mp3 VBR files that are all 55 minutes in actual length, yet if you grab the play slider and try to go to, say, the 30 minute mark, you can't. You can get about 17 minutes or so in then the player is lost as to where it actually is in the file. I've found this true on all VBR files, on many players - haven't tried them all, so sorry. It seems the common technique is to use the file size and bit rate to derive play head position. A VBR file will simply confuse this calculation. It adds a rather unpredictable inconvenience to the whole mess, though yes, VBR sounds subjectively better for it's average bit rate. But that's the key. You are't always listening to the average bit rate! Joint Stereo has some merits too, though it also has a sonic impact. How's half the file size sound? That's true if the file is mostly mono, but I never…ever… use Joint Stereo.

The above paragraph is my opinion, based in facts collected by my own observations. In my opinion, at least.
Spin…I assume you mean "a particular viewpoint or bias". You do get that this is a forum, right? This is a place where people express opinions. If my opinion (or viewpoint) is biased, that implies a bias in a direction other than what the opinion would be were the one with the opinion be completely truthful.

Yes, I'm biased. Highly so. I'm biased to discover the truth. I have been for my entire career in audio.

I've been listening to bit-rate reduced audio since the early 1980s, long before most current .mp3 listeners were even conceived. I've heard the effects of just about every bit-rate reduction scheme many times, and worked with professional audio software that had the ability to select bit rates, codecs, and all the permutations. I've even studied the effects of sequential re-codeing, passing already bit-rate reduced material through another (different) codec. Yes, done the research, but I don't need to prove it to you since you wouldn't believe me anyway. I've selected 320Kbps AAC as my codec of choice when I must use some form of bit-rate reduced file because, in my opinion, it's more transparent than .mp3, an opinion not arrived at casually.

But of course, the above paragraph is also just my opinion.

As to being an Apple proponent, let me just give you a perspective on where I'm coming from. I've actively used many OS's:
Unix
Xenix
DOS
CP/M
Apple ][ DOS
Mac OS from System 3 thru current
Windows from 3.11 thru Win 7 - sorry, no Win 8 yet.

When I say "actively used", I mean used on a daily basis to accomplish productive work, not just tried it out recreationally. Administrated networks, designed and constructed audio editing suites, production and broadcast facilities. I've used Windows and Mac OS computers for audio production applications since 1988, in one form or other. I've evaluated audio CODECs in the context of voice and music transmission systems, recording systems, and broadcast systems. I even mounted a brief, but failed campaign for "No Bit-Rate Reduction" at a time when it was just becoming popular. By the way, Bit-rate reduction is technically more correct than "compression", as you can have data compression without data loss, but to change the bit-rate, you have to throw something away. And I first played stereo 15KHz bandwidth audio off a hard drive in 1984.

I doubt this background will improve our adversarial relationship, but I post it to show I've used both Windows and Mac platforms for over 26 years, not just for a few months. I hated them both, loved them both, and felt indifferent too. But over the years I've had to be objective and apply technology to solve problems in the best way possible. I've seen good, bad and ugly solutions on all platforms.

DO you still think I'm "spinning" to Apple? You're right, in the context of this thread I am. And I have my reasons, which would mean nothing to you, and I'm not going to detail them here. Suffice it to say, the preference was not arrived at casually, or with a mere 8 month cursory brush with the OS and software.

Oh, but the above is just my opinion, don't ANY body take anything I say as fact! I could be wrong.

You may, once again, fire at will.