I own a lot of CDs. I have a player but I am too lazy to load it up and the CDs are scattered all over and it is hard to find the ones I want. My laptop no longer has a reader. I would like advice on what hardware and software to get that would permit me to copy my CDs to my computer through a USB port, organize them to my satisfaction and then prepare, say, an 8 hour program of my choosing.
These are all CDs I own; I don’t want to do anything illegal.
The short version, is that almost any external CD drive with a USB interface will let you do the job - I might make sure it was USB 3 (assuming your laptop supports it) just for faster data transfer, but it’s not a requirement. And while many makes are pretty flimsy, it may not be an issue considering it sounds like a one time import rather than steady use.
One thing to always mention, is that double check to see if your state or other local government has established rules about importing for personal use. Most have not, but it’s an always changing thing, so why not?
As for software, I prefer minimalistic interfaces and broad utility. So I most frequently use VLC Media Player, which is a multi platform system that looks like it came out of the 90s. It will get the job done, but it’s a good bit less user friendly than some. Plenty of guides will tell you how to do it though.
Again, I like it because I can use it across a wide variety of devices. I store my music in a local NAS - I can use VLC to stream (as long as I’m on the same wireless network) to my iPhone on iOS, my Kindle (on an android fork), my Android Tablet, or my PC.
Others can mention services that are more user friendly, and of course, there’s lots of questions and opinions about importing format and quality, but I normally pick the equivalent of “very good” but not various “loss less” options. I can’t hear the difference, but then again, I don’t have multi hundred/multi thousand dollar speakers or headphones.
Assuming they’re music CDs, the term is (was?) rip and the end result is an audio file, usually MP3. I haven’t done that in a long time but ripping seems to be built into Windows now.
I did something similar a couple years ago. A US$20 CD drive e.g. Amazon.com: Gotega External DVD Drive and the built-in Windows Media Player are 100% of what you need.
It takes about 3-4 minutes to “rip” an audio CD into your computer. So you get to listen to the first song and a bit of the second and it’s time to change disks. I did about 400 CDs over the course of about a week while I was otherwise Doping or whatever.
Once you have all the CDs on-board your PC, you can go back and build playlists if you want. Or just let it shuffle, or play whole albums. Zero hassle.
I agree with my colleagues. I rip CDs to place of flash drives and listen in the car. I ripped the Flying Dutchman last weekend. Had to buy a really large flash drive than I have. Gonna to it to Der Ring next week. Had to buy a really,really, large flashadrive.
What are you using, Windows? Last time IIRC I used Exact Audio Copy.
Meh, welcome to the future, you do not even have to bother to compress it and it still does not require a “really, really large flashdrive” by contemporary standards.
My personal collection at this point is just a few hundred CDs, nearly all of which date from the 1990s or before, and were purchased retail by me at considerable expense. If I declined to check (even once, let alone double-checking 
) whether my local jurisdiction allowed me to rip MP3s onto my personal computer, would that make me a bad person? Since this is IMHO, can I ask does anybody check their local laws before performing such an action, and if forbidden, would people refrain from doing so?
My disclaimer is because IANAL, and IAN a mod. Having a nice pro forma comment to check the legality protects me, you, the OP, the mods, and the PTB from possibly suggesting means and techniques to break the law, which is very much against the rules here.
Yeah, I get that, and I am also careful not to recommend breaking the law. Just surprised at the admonishment to even check in this case. The powers that be MIGHT pass a law forbidding me to tie my shoelaces on Sunday, but I’m not going to check up on that before going ahead and doing so. I’m reckless that way, but only about shoelaces, never about DRM. Perhaps we should speak no more on this topic.
ETA: I really do get you. I’m sitting here musing about law, but you’re actively recommending an action that others might take that COULD run afoul of something, so your disclaimer in an abundance of caution makes sense. It just makes me sad, you know?
Actually, it was (in part) for another reason. We have quite a number of non-US posters. And in some nations (the UK as a key example) it’s still technically illegal to do so. It was legally permitted in 2014 (by which point I think most people were buying digital anyway, duh) and then made illegal AGAIN in 2015 by the courts. So… check your local jurisdiction. 
I would not even know how to go about checking the legality. It is not as though I am planning to sell it.
It is quite possibly illegal that my wife and I use the same e-reader account so that any book I buy can be read by both of us, just like any other book, even though we have two devices.
Anyway, thanks for the suggestions.
I doubt the player in the car would be able to deal with that.
I’m a bit late to the party, but if you’re in the USA this is a non-issue. If you’re not in the USA I have zero clue.
Not in the US (Montreal) but I have no idea how to find out. But I own the CDs and have no intention of making copies to sell. How can it be illegal?
It’s completely legal even according to the controversial Copyright Modernization Act, and even if that did not cover it, as you say you are not trying to pirate anything.
I don’t think it is, but that doesn’t mean it hypothetically couldn’t be. What is and is not legal doesn’t always correspond with what is and is not reasonable or ethical. Copyright laws certainly exist, saying what you can and cannot legally copy; and they don’t always keep up with advances in technology.
Since we’re talking about Canada:
The most recent lawmaking on this subject seems to have been the Copyright Modernization Act (2012). Regarding personal copying:
So: as far as I read this, personal reproduction is allowed if you don’t have to break any copyright protection mechanism, the source is legally owned by the copyer, and you’re not copying music onto a “blank audio recording medium” (because apparently that’s already covered by earlier law that isn’t superseded – hence the media taxes on writable musical media like burnable audio CDs).
But ripping a properly purchased commercially-produced audio CD, which is a format which has no intrinsic “technological protection measure” (i.e., DRM) and storing it in a computer storage device doesn’t seem to fall afoul of any of the provisions of the rule.
IANAL, but I can read just fine.
There was a time window from about 2000 to 2005 when some labels added different methods of DRM to regular music CDs, but ripping software always caught up fast to circumvent it. So technically, if today you are ripping one of these old CDs with a modern ripping software, you are circumventing the old and never really effective copy protection. I don’t think that anybody would be prosecuted for that anymore, but according to a law that prohibits such practices, it’s still technically illegal.
Yes, but I wasn’t referring to those. Those were not music CDs in the technical sense (which is “Red Book compliant”).
I don’t know if any such discs are under consideration here. Since many of them attempted to surreptitiously install malware on a computer, I would hope they would have been disposed of.
Before that scandal, there had been other copy protection methods that didn’t work on a software level, but by special manipulations of the physical discs (I don’t remember many details, but it somehow had to do with putting some inner rings on the surface or something like that). I don’t know if these CDs were Red Book compliant. I had a few of them (one I distinctly remember was “A Bigger Bang” by the Rolling Stones) and remember they often made trouble when trying to play them on my then rather old CD player. This was before 2005 and the Sony/BMG scandal. When I ripped all of my about 2000 music CDs (for personal use) in 2011, the ripping software had no problems with those “copy protected” CDs, and you couldn’t even notice a difference in the process. But technically, it was still a circumvention of copy protection.