I’ve got 1500 or so CDs I want to digitize. What’s the best software to use? Is 192 bits going to give me CD-quality sound or do I have to go higher?
Also, will a 1 TB hard drive hold all of it? How do I find out?
Lastly, last time I sniffed around for software to manage a digitized collection, OrangeCD seems to be the best. (I don’t and won’t use iTunes.) Any other suggestions?
Thanks all. I won’t be able to reply until tomorrow.
1500 CDs is around 1,000,000 Megabytes or 1 TB uncompressed. So, I would just copy them as-is, and keep all your musical goodness.
For MP3’s:
Exact audio copy:
Set it up according to this guide:
http://uberstandard.org/
Variable bit-rate gives you batter sound when you need it, and has close to the same size as straight 192 constant bit rate.
beowulff isn’t wrong, you know. But if you want to reduce file size, choose “flac”. It’s still the best lossless format out there and, what’s more important, it is supported by some of the best software (namely foobar2000) and even a growing number of hardware mp3 players; my Cowon D2 has no problem playing flac, for example.
I’d use no other software but “Exact Audio Copy” to digitize CDs; everything else is, imo, second rate when it comes to accuracy. You can also adapt your CDs to the flac-format easily and quickly in EAC and add an ogg or mp3 copy for use in players that are stuck with lossy formats; and please, please follow the advice given on the Exact Audio Copy site or on HydrogenAudio, namely the straight dope on “do NOT normalize”!
Many CDs published since the late 90s are already far too loud and clip like hell; especially the so called “remastered” versions of many classics seem to be adjusted for the tone-deaf.
If you normalize those, the result will be … unpleasant, no matter what format you use.
I’m doing this now.
I found Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is the best (it’s free too).
I found mp3tag works great for tagging and renaming things (of course it’s free too)
I use mp4 format, which has a file extension of .aac, .mp4 or .m4a (among others).
After much reading the concensus seems to be the Nero codec is best to convert your CDs into mp4, (though iTunes is rated second and I can’t tell the differece). Nero also has a free version of a the mp4 codec.
So I would get EAC, encode it with Nero (you can use Nero’s codec with a command line on EAC) and then use mp3tag, ,if you want to play with the tags.
This page from Hydrogen Audio Forums shows you what you can use.
Basically it’s up to you. Once you get above 192 variable bit rate (VBR) in mp3, it becomes harder and harder to tell the difference from the CD, that’s up to you. The aac (mp4) codec is better and you can go to around 128VBR to get a similar sound to 192VBR in MP3
In additon to EAC I would also download, Audiograbber and CDEx (which are also free rippers). I found that EAC works best and when EAC tells you the track is right, it is correct. However a few CDs I had EAC wouldn’t rip. I also would only use the normal mode on EAC to look for errors. I never found that using more than that has given me a usuable ripped wave.
I did find that Audiograbber and CDex (I use them in that order) are able to rip songs from CDs that EAC won’t rip or if EAC rips it, it puts silence in the parts it can’t read so you get distortion. (EAC will tell you where it does this).
I just ripped something with Audiograbber that EAC couldn’t get a good file on. The wave sounds great.
Ironically I found for audio books I tried ripping one on EAC, Audiograbber AND CDex and none of them could do it, so I ripped it as a last resort on my Windows Media Player and it worked beautifully. Just shows you never really know.
Good points, Markxxx. I have encountered only a couple of CDs in my collection, I couldn’t rip with EAC; then I also used Audiograbber as the second best choice. Though in one case, I simply bought a new one and ripped it perfectly with EAC.
Sometimes it’s just better to dumb a scratched CD, instead of wasting time and effort to get it somewhat right.
If you prefer the iPod, Apple Lossless is a great alternative to flac – the format shows the same (perfect) results in audio-sequenzers when you rotate the phase by 180 degrees.
The best compression results, however, are usually achieved by La and OptimFROG; though these formats aren’t used as widely as mp4 or flac.
Soul Brother Number Two, choose the format that works well with your soft- and hardware – but opt for a lossless one and add lossy files if you need them.
Disk space isn’t an issue any longer, so you won’t have a need to compress your music to the maximum.
Good, no, great advice, folks. Thanks a lot.
If you rip to lossless formats and store them instead of a .WAV make sure you can convert them directly to mp3 or mp4 from that format.
I found some of the freeware I used, would not do this. You could compress from .WAV to mp4. If it was in FLAC or other lossless formats you couldn’t covert it to play on your iPod or other devices. Usually though if you have a paid program, the free one won’t, but the paid version will.
I also have a TB of space, in the end I just went to mp4 because I can alway just re-rip the files.
Also try to envison what device you’ll be playing it on. If you play mostly to a personal player the compression isn’t going to be as big an issue (if any) as if you plan to play the file on a speaker in a big room.
[nitpick] If it’s on CD, isn’t it already digitized? [/nitpick]
Home stereo, Markxxx. I was thinking of using, what is it, Squeezebox?, to get the music from computer to stereo.
Alright, I gotta confession to make. I have just the tiniest clue of what most of you are talking about. Lossless, lossy, flac, that kind of stuff. In particular, Markxxx, it sounds like you are doing what I want to do, but I don’t understand what you are talking about re: WAV vs mp4.
I don’t have a personal player right now but if I get one in the future it won’t be an iPod, maybe a Creative Zen product or something else.
Thanks again.
Indeed.
Also, if the sound quality is acceptable, I don’t see why the OP couldn’t compress to 192 VB mp3. He’ll still have the CDs, right?
Use FLAC Frontend to **decode **FLAC back to WAV. At that point, you can then use EAC to convert the resulting WAV to a high-quality MP3. This way, if you store everything as FLAC, but at a later point you decide you want an MP3, you can have one without the need to archive the big-ass WAV file.
FLAC Frontend:
http://members.home.nl/w.speek/flac.htm
Not for the OP, but for anyone else, EAC is Windows-only. The best equivalent for Mac/Linux is CD Paranoia. It’s free as a command-line program, but there are a few GUI front-ends.
The point of using lossless compression is that the data is identical to what’s on the CDs. It’s useful as a backup to the pressed discs or for the advantage of having all the files in one place (a single hard drive instead of hundreds of discs). Compression simply saves you some space.
Compressing to a lossy format will save you a whole lot of space. By keeping a high-quality copy around (either the CD or files saved from it) you can also take advantage of newer formats that provide better quality in the same or smaller size.
For example, if you converted all the music to mp3 files, but then AAC(‘mp4’) comes along and you want to use that, you’d be able to go back to the ‘originals’ to get maximum fidelity. If you no longer had the CD or the file, you couldn’t improve anything over the mp3.
Le Ministre de l’au-delà, of course, you are right. 
Why compress to a lossy format when you have a Tb of disk space? And if you want to add copies later, you shouldn’t do them from a file that has already lost some of the quality of the original – the results can only get worse.
Also, CDs don’t last forever. Some CDs I bought in the 80s, are not playable any longer; and people who use their CDs in the car or under any conditions that are far from ideal face malfunctions earlier by far.
Sure, most of the time, you replace the old with a new one – but sometimes a recording isn’t published any longer and you are left with nothing.
Or it is published as a “remastered” version, which are far too often normalized beyond the max; listening to them is rarely a pleasure.
Because you don’t want to use the whole TB? Or need to back up a TB? I don’t know what the OP wants, but compressing lossy is something a lot of people do every day, and are satisfied with that. Having said that, your points about wearing out CDs and CDs falling out of print are well taken.
I’m getting rid of the CDs, should have made that clear I guess.