I have begun the process of transferring all my CDs to MP3 format.
Normally on a desktop PC this would not be a big deal but since I am using a notebook and an external USB 2.0 Hard Drive it took a bit of planning. First things first I had to move my USB 2 hub to on top of my Ikea computer desk's little side stand. There I hooked up the Hard Drive, my Wacom tablet, keyboard, mouse, digital camera cable and a game pad.
After some brief mental debate between the merits of ACC, WMA, ATRAC, OGG, and MP3 I decided to go with the tried and true cross platform cross player good old MP3 high quality 160kbps Stereo files for my digital music collection.
I am going to be ripping my CDs using Apple iTunes but I set up the default music directory on the external HD. I am going to be keeping only about a Gigabyte of MP3s on my notebook for listening to when away from home. Since iTunes will notice that all the normal music files are not there when the external HD is not connected I am going to be using WinAmp to listen to the cache of MP3s on my notebook when I am out in the big bad world. This should also work out great when I get around to getting that MP3 compatible CD player in my car or if I get a hard drive based MP3 player in the distant future.
So I am going to be using iTunes for Windows to convert all my CDs to mp3 and once I am happy with my music collection I am going to be donating all my CDs to Goodwill. So in the near future my local Goodwill is going to be overstocked with lots of techno CDs.
MP3's your best bet for cross-platform compatibility, yeah. That's what I use.
As another plus, MP3 can be used with those games that let you drop in custom soundtracks (like the PC GTA games). If your collection's in another format, you have to convert it first.
My MP3 collection works with all of my PCs (PC, Mac and Linux), my PDA(s), iPod and any other device I get at some point down the road. The audio quality isn't pitch-perfect, but I'm not nearly enough of an audiophile to tell the difference.
What the hell?! What are u, some kind of bitch? Dropping names of computer desks and crap! Cant you just spare us the commercialism and just call a computer desk a computer desk?! Jeez, Really!
Wow I think I just got a new addition to my Stupid Comments page. ( http://www.8bitjoystick.com/StupidComments.php )
It is a C-shaped Ikea computer desk. ( http://www.ikea-usa.com/ms/en_US/virtual_catalogue/main.html )
It is my God-damn site and if I want to mention brand names I will mention brand names.
I think the point of the post is highlighted by the detailed descriptions. Yeah, that guy's a classic, Jake. I wonder if he's the same dill-hole with the lame Dean comments from earlier?
Sounds like you have a good plan. I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to scrap all my old CDs after converting them all, though. Mostly because I rip mine at a 192 bitrate (since 256 takes up significantly more room), but in the future when disk space is less of a problem, I might want to upgrade my collection to a new format without any loss of converting from the 192 MP3s. Then again, Jason's right. I'm not enough of an audiophile to tell the difference, either. (though I can tell a difference between 128 and 192)
Hey Jake, I just finished ripping my entire collection to MP3 a few months ago. I didn't use iTunes, but used CDex instead. It's open source and uses the LAME encoder. I went for an Average Bitrate (ABR) of around 128Kbit after testing with several settings (I used to rip to 160Kbit on CBR).
If you have a fast PC it takes 30 seconds per song to be ripped to MP3 directly, and it's very flexible in naming conventions (I ripped to Drive:/Year/Genre/Artist/Album/00 - Title.mp3). I've tried iTunes as well, but it's nowhere near as flexible. Afterwards, apply MP3Gain to normalise the sound levels of your entire collection, read the instructions, though.
Check CDex out at Sourceforge, it's really worth it. Good luck!
By the way, I've held on to my CDs, because it would be illegal to own the MP3s after I've sold, or given away the CDs, right?
I'm slowing working on my own "Great CD to Mp3 Migration" by ripping 5-7 albums per week. I work slow. :)
you might want to check out cdex for real, and i would think about going 192 over 160 - especially if you are going to give away your cds, which i wouldn't do without some serious backup-ing, as per one of your latests posts.
I just started my own migration tonight and I'm shocked at how easy it's been.
I've got decent ears. . . but evidently not good enough. . . as in blind tests I consistently failed at picking out 128 from 192. . . I suggest people test themselves to see if they can pick out the less bit rate file . . . maybe 20 years of drums has killed so much of my high end, that I can now simply not need to spend the extra money.
Price of storage these days seems to be ~$1.20 per gig (seems pretty incredible to me). . . Therefore, the cost of saving a song 5 mb per song is 20 songs pee Gig. $1.20 / 20 as $x / 1 = $0.06 per song, roughly. So it costs, in storage space, somewhere between $0.70 and $1.00 to store a full record/cd; depending upon how long it is. . .
I f-ing dig this stuff already. In the first night, i ripped about 25 of my 800 cds. I can see a caffeine infused all nighter or two this weekend, and coming out the other side completely digitized. And, I'm not as generous, I'll sell my collection on eBay rather than give to goodwill (ummm, I'm a poor grad student :-).
cek.
ps - decent audio output out of laptop into both of my stereos with regular Y cables 1/8in to RCAs in. Have to go buy two long pair of those. I even had my old headphone amp running for a while (weak headphone outs off laptop).
Yeah I am putting all my CDs in a big pile and will start ripping them in a marathon session.
Hi,
This is probably an elementary question, but here it goes. I'm trying to transfer cd's to my iriver mp3 player. I recently switched from pc to a mac laptop, and iriver has no instructions about the procedure using a mac. I emailed iriver and have not received an answer. I have everything hooked up, and have dragged the cd icon to the mp3 drive, but it's not registering on the mp3 player. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks,
-George
I'm on my own ripping marathon as I write this, and am using CDex. Is there anyway I can speed the process? This is taking forever.