Anyone convert their CD collection to MP3's?

[GasX]

Is there a non-time intensive way to convert 100+ CDs to mp3 format? I'd really want to get rid of my CD collection if I can.

 

[FoBoT]

setup windows media player to rip automatically when you put the cd into the tray and eject automatically after ripping is complete

then you just change the discs out everytime you walk by the computer

i just re-ripped about 250 cds to wav format onto a 1 TB drive and it only took a few days, as i was watching tv in the room or whatever

 

[nakedfrog]

Each one shouldn't take more than 5-15 minutes.
I know the feeling, though, I still have a bunch I never got around to ripping because I hardly ever listen to them. Of course, now I listen to them even less.

 

[Anubis]

what FoBot said. However if you can do that same thing with EAC and FLAC it would be a better idea

 

[SSSnail]

Send me the CDs, I'll pay for shipping. I'll even upload them for you to down load once.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

EAC or CDex. Let them connect to CDDB or FreeDB to fill in the tags (and make sure they're correct!). With a fast drive it shouldn't take too long per disk, and you can kick through your collection on a saturday.

 

[AndrewR]

If you find it, let me know. I have about 400 CDs that I need to convert.

I started encoding them awhile back, but then I discovered that some of the tracks were corrupted or of questionable quality. I abandoned the MP3 conversion until I could find a better program for it (obviously it's not been a priority since that was a year or two ago). I did numerous ones in an uncompressed format which is compatible with my D-Link media bridge (Ogg Vorbis or something like that?), but I need to get a dedicated drive for all that music uncompressed.

I finally have a good drive (Asus) because I was using a Dell with a craptastic optical drive. Unfortunately, I have less time now than I did previously because I'm traveling so much. Being an adult sucks sometimes.

 

[ElFenix]

it took me a few years to do it on and off. i think i went from cbr lame to vbr lame. always with eac.

 

[LS21]

pay some kids on craigslist to do it for you

ive seen it before

 

[TwiceOver]

Converted my entire collection 4 years ago and the CDs have been in a box in storage since. Dead technology.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Originally posted by: AndrewR
If you find it, let me know. I have about 400 CDs that I need to convert.

I started encoding them awhile back, but then I discovered that some of the tracks were corrupted or of questionable quality. I abandoned the MP3 conversion until I could find a better program for it (obviously it's not been a priority since that was a year or two ago). I did numerous ones in an uncompressed format which is compatible with my D-Link media bridge (Ogg Vorbis or something like that?), but I need to get a dedicated drive for all that music uncompressed.

I finally have a good drive (Asus) because I was using a Dell with a craptastic optical drive. Unfortunately, I have less time now than I did previously because I'm traveling so much. Being an adult sucks sometimes.

I had the same problem. I encoded 400-500 to find out that not all of them converted cleanly. Still been to lazy to re-encode them.

 

[Ns1]

I am in the process of doing it right now. I rip about 3 cd's a day.

EAC + 720gb HD

 

[daniel1113]

It may not be the quickest method, but I would just follow this guide:

Best mp3 Guide

It will probably take 5 minutes to properly configure EAC, 2 seconds to retrieve the track tag information from FreeDB, and 10-15 minutes to rip each album. In the end, you'll have the best sounding mp3's you can get.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman

Originally posted by: AndrewR
If you find it, let me know. I have about 400 CDs that I need to convert.

I started encoding them awhile back, but then I discovered that some of the tracks were corrupted or of questionable quality. I abandoned the MP3 conversion until I could find a better program for it (obviously it's not been a priority since that was a year or two ago). I did numerous ones in an uncompressed format which is compatible with my D-Link media bridge (Ogg Vorbis or something like that?), but I need to get a dedicated drive for all that music uncompressed.

I finally have a good drive (Asus) because I was using a Dell with a craptastic optical drive. Unfortunately, I have less time now than I did previously because I'm traveling so much. Being an adult sucks sometimes.

I had the same problem. I encoded 400-500 to find out that not all of them converted cleanly. Still been to lazy to re-encode them.

Were you guys using EAC? It seems to be pretty good about catching the errors (if the disc itself was the cause and not the encoding)

 

[TridenT]

Originally posted by: SSSnail
Send me the CDs, I'll pay for shipping. I'll even upload them for you to down load once.

It wouldn't be legal for him to have the MP3s then. He wouldn't own the CDs.

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: Anubis
what FoBot said. However if you can do that same thing with EAC and FLAC it would be a better idea

I always found EAC to be ridiculously slow for ripping. It does a good job, but very slow. If I had stuck with Windows as my main OS on my laptop, I'd have gone back to using CDex.

I re-ripped ~100 cds over winter break and used Grip (a paranoid-ripper available in the ubuntu repositories) and had them ripped into Flac so I never have to do it again. If I need mp3s for a portable player, my media program can convert them on the fly or I can download a converter and do it all manually.

 

[gorcorps]

Originally posted by: AndrewR
If you find it, let me know. I have about 400 CDs that I need to convert.

I started encoding them awhile back, but then I discovered that some of the tracks were corrupted or of questionable quality. I abandoned the MP3 conversion until I could find a better program for it (obviously it's not been a priority since that was a year or two ago). I did numerous ones in an uncompressed format which is compatible with my D-Link media bridge (Ogg Vorbis or something like that?), but I need to get a dedicated drive for all that music uncompressed.

I finally have a good drive (Asus) because I was using a Dell with a craptastic optical drive. Unfortunately, I have less time now than I did previously because I'm traveling so much. Being an adult sucks sometimes.

Ogg Vorbis is still compressed (aka lossy), it's just (supposedly) a better way to compress than mp3. FLAC is the popular format that doesn't compress (aka lossless).

 

[FoBoT]

hard drives are so cheap, start with a copy in native wav format and keep them archived that way before you convert the wavs to compressed formats
250 cds only used one fifth of the 1TG drive

 

[Capt Caveman]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman

Originally posted by: AndrewR
If you find it, let me know. I have about 400 CDs that I need to convert.

I started encoding them awhile back, but then I discovered that some of the tracks were corrupted or of questionable quality. I abandoned the MP3 conversion until I could find a better program for it (obviously it's not been a priority since that was a year or two ago). I did numerous ones in an uncompressed format which is compatible with my D-Link media bridge (Ogg Vorbis or something like that?), but I need to get a dedicated drive for all that music uncompressed.

I finally have a good drive (Asus) because I was using a Dell with a craptastic optical drive. Unfortunately, I have less time now than I did previously because I'm traveling so much. Being an adult sucks sometimes.

I had the same problem. I encoded 400-500 to find out that not all of them converted cleanly. Still been to lazy to re-encode them.

Were you guys using EAC? It seems to be pretty good about catching the errors (if the disc itself was the cause and not the encoding)

It was so long ago. I'm going to say no b/c EAC added so much more time to the ripping.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: Brainonska511

Originally posted by: Anubis
what FoBot said. However if you can do that same thing with EAC and FLAC it would be a better idea

I always found EAC to be ridiculously slow for ripping. It does a good job, but very slow. If I had stuck with Windows as my main OS on my laptop, I'd have gone back to using CDex.

I re-ripped ~100 cds over winter break and used Grip (a paranoid-ripper available in the ubuntu repositories) and had them ripped into Flac so I never have to do it again. If I need mp3s for a portable player, my media program can convert them on the fly or I can download a converter and do it all manually.

the drive you have has a lot to do with EACs ripping speed + depending on what error checking stuff you have turned on it adds to it, i use a seperate comp for it and just drop CDs in and walk away

 

[Legendary]

EAC for CD -> WAV
RazorLame for WAV -> MP3

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: Brainonska511

Originally posted by: Anubis
what FoBot said. However if you can do that same thing with EAC and FLAC it would be a better idea

I always found EAC to be ridiculously slow for ripping. It does a good job, but very slow. If I had stuck with Windows as my main OS on my laptop, I'd have gone back to using CDex.

I re-ripped ~100 cds over winter break and used Grip (a paranoid-ripper available in the ubuntu repositories) and had them ripped into Flac so I never have to do it again. If I need mp3s for a portable player, my media program can convert them on the fly or I can download a converter and do it all manually.

the drive you have has a lot to do with EACs ripping speed + depending on what error checking stuff you have turned on it adds to it, i use a seperate comp for it and just drop CDs in and walk away

Definitely. I only have my asus 8x super-multi dvd-burner in my laptop and it would rip at about 1x for every CD . The desktop I had built at home would rip at 3-4x with its 24x DVD/CD burner from LiteOn and the old Dell P4 machine I had would also rip at about 3-4x with whatever brand its drives were (Hitachi, I think). I just don't have access to those machines at school and at home, my little brother and mom dominate them (and I don't really want to use them as I have a laptop anyway).

Grip in Ubuntu would rip for me at between 3 and 7x on my laptop, making the job much faster and it was pretty good as well - haven't heard any errors as I did when I first started experimenting with Linux rippers.

 

[Lumathix]

Originally posted by: FoBoT
setup windows media player to rip automatically when you put the cd into the tray and eject automatically after ripping is complete

then you just change the discs out everytime you walk by the computer

i just re-ripped about 250 cds to wav format onto a 1 TB drive and it only took a few days, as i was watching tv in the room or whatever

This worked for me. I've only got ~1600 songs though.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: Brainonska511

Originally posted by: Anubis
what FoBot said. However if you can do that same thing with EAC and FLAC it would be a better idea

I always found EAC to be ridiculously slow for ripping. It does a good job, but very slow. If I had stuck with Windows as my main OS on my laptop, I'd have gone back to using CDex.

I re-ripped ~100 cds over winter break and used Grip (a paranoid-ripper available in the ubuntu repositories) and had them ripped into Flac so I never have to do it again. If I need mp3s for a portable player, my media program can convert them on the fly or I can download a converter and do it all manually.

the drive you have has a lot to do with EACs ripping speed + depending on what error checking stuff you have turned on it adds to it, i use a seperate comp for it and just drop CDs in and walk away

I ended up with an LG DVD drive that seems to be pretty zippy about it. It's of limited usefulness as a DVD-ROM drive since it can only read either DVD+R or DVD-R (I forget which)

 

[frostedflakes]

Well OP you're not really supposed to rip the CDs and then sell them, but whatever, I won't tell on you.

Just make sure you use a secure ripper (EAC, CDex, etc.). I'd personally recommend EAC+LAME for archiving.