Adventures In Ripping

When I started streaming last August, it was purely to gain access to music not available on CD. My horizons were not extensive and my emotions were firmly attached to physical music containers – LP and CD.

Developing my streaming hardware at a fraction of my CD replay costs soon got me to a position where I prefer the sound quality and the convenience of streaming….though I still have pangs at paying for bits and bytes (but I’m getting there).

About six weeks ago I decided to start ripping them to my NAS, with the acknowledgement that this would be a lengthy process – but being out of work, I have not that much to do (other than garden, watch the cricket et al.)

As I go, I’m choosing random rips to compare back to the CD to validate my preference for the new media.

The Task

I have about 5,500 CDs. It’s a lot. Many will have more, but it’s still a lot. Nevertheless, moving a mountain from one place to another starts with a single shovel full of dirt…

The Method

My Windows PC, dbPoweramp and a Synology DS214 6TB (raided) NAS. Start at letter "A", Pop, Folk, Jazz and Rock etc. as Classics will take a good deal more thought and care (and experience!) to get right. I only want to do this once.

I’m ripping to Wave. I know it takes a great deal more space, but the thought process was that if I started at lossless my flexibility was maximised (and yes I know it wasn’t but this was as much a psychological decision as a rational one)

The Good

It’s mostly going OK. As I go through, I’m discovering albums that I’d either forgotten I’d ever bought or hadn’t listened to in ages. e.g. my Children Of Dub CDs from the 90s.

I'm managing to untangle those annoying combination CDs where they offer twofers (e.g. Beach Boys) or worse multiple albums spattered across CDs (looking forward to splitting out the George Duke BASF set) into their proper album formats (with bonus tracks safely split out).

It sort of appeals to my inner Geek.

dbPoweramp is a joy to use.

After six weeks, I’m ripping the “D”s. Only the rest of D through Z to go!

The Bad

Discovering albums – hmmm…. did I buy these abominations cheap or was I given them? There are some clunkers in there. Worst so far – Stanley Clarke – Children Of Forever: I love Return To Forever, and have fond memories of his solo albums, but this early effort is a stinker.

Playing obscure stuff and not having the booklet to hand.

After six weeks I haven’t even managed to get all the way through "D". Something like 4,500 to go!

The Ugly

John Cale – Black Acetate, an EMI Copy Protected abomination that my PC won’t recognise as a CD. After many aborted efforts I used my wife’s ancient Dell, whose CD player was so old it thought it was really a CD so it got ripped in the end.

CD rot. I thought I’d tracked all my PDO bronzed CDs down and sent them back for replacement before the amnesty expired. Sadly not, as some of my Island Julian Copes testify to as well as my copy of The Damned Black Album (curiously not marked as a PDO pressing). I either bite the bullet and re-buy them or admit that as it was such a long time since I’d played them I probably wouldn’t need to rip them.

Scale/Genres

In general I like the Naim app. Yes, I’d rather it was better integrated with IOS but it does a decent enough job. What I am finding though is that with something like 1400 albums already on the system, just relying on Alphabetical listing is clumsy(ish). So I’ve concentrated hard on using Genre properly.

Trouble is, sticking reliably to a sensible (and understandable to me) genre classification. Using what dbPoweramp feeds me (sourced mainly from AMG I suspect) is frankly pants – far too general. Most stuff would end up as “Pop/Rock” (Holger Czukay as Pop anyone?) or “Rock”. What is the difference between Electronic and Electronica?

So I’ve used my own thoughts, but those thoughts are being severely tested – for example, are Chemical Brothers “Electronic” in the same way as Tangerine Dream are? Not in my book. And some artists span various Genre (e.g. Tim Buckley’s Goodbye & Hello is Psychedelic Rock in my view, Lorca is Jazz, Blue Afternoon is Blues and Greetings From LA is Rock etc.).

And then there are those CDs which I simply don't recognise at all without playing them. Gah!

The Future

An extension to my existing NAS or a new much bigger one – I never budgeted for this! A backup system that caters for a vast amount of data.

A possibility as I progress through the collection that I will need to re-classify some Genre.

Hey ho!