Adventures In Ripping

Rip to FLAC its going to be far more future proof than Wav should you choose to stream it differently.

Gary, very interesting post.

I luckily have this whole process behind me and would only in exceptional cases go into ripping again (sometimes a summary collection can be cheaper on cd) but in general I only download. And I would fully agree with you a very painful process.

A couple of tips and learnings through which might be helpful.

1. Use your own categorization of music. I never use the suggestEd categories as I have my own way of categorization. At the end it's all about how quick you can find your music while searches not the best way in my opinion. With this you will get to a maximum four click system to get to your music (I always go through genre, artist, album, play...). The genres I use are also ensuring that I have a good even distribution of music accross and as mentioned it works for me - it's for me irrelevant that somebody might find it odd.

2. Make choices on how you deal with various artist as they can screw up your visibility. Again a personal choice I have under album artist and artist always the same. you loosee potentially some info but it makes it easy for me again and gives me a clean representation.

3. I do everything in flac meaning I can use it across with less need for space. I already see the benefit of that as I only have 390 gab left on my NAS with around 5700 albums. I transcode on the NAS to wav before it get's to my NDS - better quality. This approach means that I also can use the files without changes for my mobile solution which will arrive this week (Sony high res player).

4. Check every album on the first song after you transferred it to the NAS - sometimes things don't work and you.Need to do it again. It's frustrating to find it out later. Only two cd's I needed to finally buy some files from Qobuz as they where beyond repair.

5. I have two cd drives for ripping. Not all cd's rip perfectly on the drives. And I bought specifically and external drive (not expensive) to be quicker with my ripping, the laptop one was slower.

6. I also ripped my music dvd's - a welcome addition.

7. Watch your folder structure on the NAS especially when you buy downloaded material it's good to keep it also organized under the right artist name, otherwise you have a wood of directories.

8. Check every now and then what happened. Sometimes something goes wrong with the artwork. And you can only correct it in odd ways - I had some tricks for it and have corredt artwork for all my albums.

9. Decide how you define your albums. Title ok but what do you do with classical I always start with the composer so example Beethoven: Symphony 1... And I use indications in the album title in case the album is not cd quality - low res and high res....

10. Watch the length of the titles - this sometimes in classical gives you a problem in storing and changing tags.

11. Spent time on correct tags - it's a one time effort.

12. Don't do too many at once, one tends to start making mistakes in the workflow.

13. Select the right time for classical - it can be very intrusive to it while you are watching a movie.

14. If possible try to avoid ripping by getting ripped ones you share anyhow with friends.

15. Stop buying cd's - downloading material is cheaper and less work.

Just a thought: if you have no real idea what to tag your music 'style' as (for style read genre) then don't bother. You will change your mind and waste time pondering!

Czukay (dependent on the album) could be Avantgarde, Acid Jazz, Ambient, Berlin School, Krautrock....

Chemical Bros most likely Breaks, Techno, Electro, not like TD! Soundtrack, Ambient, Experimental, Synthpop. Is it worth it? Not to me.

3650 CDs = 10 per day every day of the year before you hear the same piece again. Have a cull and don't waste time listening to 'average' good stuff. I have a top 1000, for me it makes listening more rewarding, all killer no filler as they say!

Definitely! Rip to FLAC and transcode on replay. The files are smaller and more importantly miles more flexible. WAV is a nightmare when it comes to metadata. 

Some good points made!

I'm definitely tagging, to my own thoughts (not sure I'll be as idiosyncrwtic as Wat though!), as I'm the main user and just relying on alphabetical band names is too unwieldy. With dbPoweramp WAV or FLAC, it makes no difference.

As to WAV, I may reconsider on space considerations, not on portability.

I'll be ripping everything, as a lifetime's experience has taught me that what I like today I may not like as much next year and vice versa.

I've ripped the Hi Def stuff of my DVDs (thank you Mr Wilson) and would dearly love to extract the DSD stuff from my SACDs ready for the new firmware, but absent a PS3 or a pirated device it's not going to happen, sadly. As for my music DVDs I'll see what my appetite is by the time I've done this little lot

Gary, amusing post and keep up with it. No issue with Wav and does offer a little extra flexibility with some software I have come across, but FLAC is nearly as flexible and in my experience typically takes up around 40% to 50% less space. I actually have different formats such as ALAC, wav and FLAC and let my media server convert everything to WAV(PCM) on the fly. If you use FLAC, use maxmum compression. I now use FLAC compression level 8 as my default ripping encoding format.

On categories with multiple values.. You can usually use comma seperated values and your media player will understand that ( Asset and Minimserver)

If you are like me, you never stop ripping.. I rip about 5-15 new CDs every month. CDs are usually so much cheaper than downloads it's a no brainer even ridiculously cheaper if you buy used. Also there is massively more choice of titles with physical media.

i find Dbpoweramp a fantastic tool and helps create a great tidy directory of music.

The one feature I do need to consciously check is to ensure the compilation flag is set for compilation discs. This appears often not correctly set with the retrieved meta data, and can result in an album split into severeal directories, especially if you have the base directory defined by artist as I do.

Finally with Dbpoweramp and WAV, just check you maintain the default setting for meta data.. Which is using the  'list Info' method, which is the official standardised wav meta data method.. and is used by MS windows, the broadcast industry (EBU)  etc.. and also the unofficial consumer metadata extension called ID3.

Simon

Flac vs WAV

I initially ripped to flac, I then found that in my system WAV sounds better, even when the flac has no compression.

Personally I would have preferred to stick with flac for the meta-data advantages ....but, I run with WAV. I did keep the flac files for when my NS01 dies.

Gary, I am digitising my LPs and, like you, have found lots of albums which get me scratching my head, 'Did I REALLY buy this?'. Most are as bad as I expect, but a few have proved to be a pleasant surprise.

Remember that your NAS gives you resiience. Back up all your hard work. A couple of years ago I had to re-build my NAS using my backups, I was very glad I had made them.

Regards,

M

All my CD rips and the music files bought on the various internet music shops are FLACS and I use a Qnap NAS with Minimserver and Assetnas both programmed to transcode on the fly from FLAC to WAV in order to have both Metadata and less stress for the Dac of my NDX.

with this configuration I'm very happy and enjoy a very good SQ.

Hi Phos,

Hence me italicising 'in my system'. I am suggesting that the OP should test within his own system and draw his own conclusions, it varies according to context.

M

Rip to Flac. That way you use less space on the hard drive(s) which will equal longer life (theoretically). Btw how you were planning on putting 5500 WAV lps onto a drive? Or would you span across a couple? Be sure to back up as well. 

HAHA, people said I was crazy...I've found a fellow nutjob!

WAV sounds better...

Indeed why many if not most around these parts transcode to WAV for their Naim If they can....

Simon

WAV sounds better to my UQ as well, but that's what transcoding is for. 

Transcoding is well and good when you can use it. In my case I have an NS01 that connects to my NAS shares using SMB, this outputs direct to my DAC using spdif.

In years gone by I have used transcoding to good effect; but I would always advise doing a test.

M

Latest:

Good

I've discovered I had a complete Children Of Dub CD collection, and on playing three of them (Chameleon, ESP and Silent Pool - check them out if you like hippie-style ambient dub from the 90s) they're great.

Bad

A couple more Bronzed CDs - most annoyingly my copy of The Damned's Black Album which doesn't appear to be a PDO abomination)

Despite FLACing (I run Minim so can transcode) I'm looking at a NAS extension unit. Ah well.

Genre

Concentrating like f*ck when doing extended rips (just done the Deerhoofs and Deleriums - Canadian version) to  ensure I get it right, but have back-tracked a little and dispensed with Pop as a genre (Pop/Rock can encompass ABBA as well as Bee Gees and Beatles), though I will stil keep French Pop as a genre, allowing me easy access to my Ye-Ye girls and Mylene Farmer etc.

Sometime Lounge (Scotts 1-3), Orchestral Psych (Peter Knight, who orchestrated Scott 4 was the brains behind Days Of Future Passed), Slightly Odd (Climate Of Hunter), Bonkers (Tilt), Totally Deranged (The Drift, Bish Bosch), Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls (And Who Shall Go To The Ball), and lastly Vaguely Comprehensible (Soused) 

P.S. If you like Canterbury, particularly the edge that veers towards jazz, then try Picchio dal Pozzo. They're Italian (and have been nowhere near Herne Bay AFAIK but they're definitely Canterbury and quite excellent.

Ripping to Flac will give better metadata support.  But transcoding to WAV is the recommended 'Naim' way.

In terms of the EMI protected CDs, the old trick that use to work (it's been a while) was holding down the 'Esc' key when closing the CD tray and the CD loading. This suppressed the protection program running and allows the encode program to then do its thing.  Back in the day it use to be annoying I could encode the legit cd with no issues, but playing the same CD in the car 'jumped' due to the protection. Epic fail by the record companies, but at least they eventually saw the light.  

I really disagree here ... my experience is the buying a CD is usually as cheap as download (at least for the stuff I buy).  Also the time for ripping is minimal and you have to check downloaded metadata is up to your standard just as much as when ripping!

If you're using something like MP3Tag; there is no reason you can't give multiple genres to a track.

I tend to give things a general genre (i.e. Pop; Rock; Jazz; R&B) which I prefix with an underscore so they appear at the top of the Genre list, I can then select a second Genre if I want to drill down further when browsing for music.

I will admit recategorising my CDs with good genre tags is still work in progress.

Down to Nick Drake, with an estimated 4,000 to go. I'm enjoying it in a perverse sort of way, and I've learned to stop when mistakes start to creep in. 

Am still nervous about how any App can handle a sizeable collection though. Guess I'll find out some time next year!

Minor reworking of Genres. As pointed out above, as long as I know what the genres stand for I should be OK...

Agree on CDs: on a case by case basis (ho ho), for example the Rachel Podger Bach Partitas and Sonatas was cheaper as a double CD than as a download. OTH Bandcamp is both cheap and a Class A drug

Latest re-discovery from the vaults: Doof - Psy Trance a la Shpongle et al.

OK, so I've slowed down a bit. I've done Brian Eno (having discovered more copy-protection annoyingness from EMI via their Eloy re-issues)  and am about to relaunch into Roger ... ooerr.

One of the downsides of this mass ripping is that I'm losing the newly bought stuff in amongst the old. With CDs and LPs it was simple - I just put them on a bit of shelf space of their own. Hitherto with downloads I'd relied on the excellent Synology Media Server filter of "Recently Added", which Minim doesn't have, but as I said the new new stuff gets lost in the welter of old new stuff.

Finally used my brain (it did involve hitting it a few times with something heavy - Paranoid did the trick) and created a "New Stuff" folder and I now copy everything that really is new into that folder as well as their proper Artist folder. Not quite such a breakthrough as General Relativity, but alongside Brendon McCullum's destruction of Derby yesterday has left me chuffed.

I am also missing the recently added facility. I have across new stuff which I bought months ago......., tells you also something about my destructive buying habits 

Playlists. I use MediaMonkey to maintain two playlists. One is simply a sequential list of everything added in the last 60 days therefore giving an easy album view. The second is a random mix selected from everything added in the last 90 days. Minim plays these just fine.