Ripping Mission Accomplished (mostly) - Thanks to Spoon and Illustrate

[garym]

Only the digital music geeks that hang around here can appreciate my recent accomplishment. My wife simply says "meh...."

First a big shoutout to Spoon and his work. None of this would have been possible without the tools provided by Illustrate!

With the COVID-19 lockdowns, working from home, and nowhere to go, I decided to finally finish ripping all my CDs to FLAC. Many years ago when I got the first or second generation iPod, I ripped all my CDs to mp3 (192kbps CBR), not even using a secure ripper (something called "musicmatch" as I recall). Yes, I can hear you all groaning now (many in self-recognition). I eventually educated myself and started ripping new CDs with dbPoweramp. And I went back to re-rip thousands of CDs to FLAC. I made a lot of progress with my favorite CDs but still had about 1,000 CDs left to re-rip. Using my isolation time, I finally reripped all these (turns out there were about 900 to rerip). I did all this one CD at a time (no batch ripper). I make too many edits to artist name, genres, etc. to make batch ripping worthwhile for me.

Of course after the reripping (thanks AccurateRip!), I had to then painstakingly delete all the mp3 versions of these albums from my library. That was a real pain and required a lot of attention to detail (e.g., some things were either in or not in my "compilations" directory, some artists had been ripped with slightly different names, particularly when a couple of artists made an album together). But I got that done, then merged in the new FLAC files.

With my updated Library, I decided to also clean up some naming and genre issues. I'm a longtime PerfectTunes user (mostly for post-rip AR checking and some artwork cleanup). But I had never used the ID Tag updating part of the program. I used this to fix lots of artist naming issues for both album artist and artist. (For example, band names with "and" vs. & vs. "And" or with "The" vs "the" etc.). And the typical misspellings or different capitalization (Jimmy Lafave vs Jimmy LaFave). Anyhow, PerfectTunes made this dead simple. Also had wanted to simplify and reduce the number of genres I use. And PerfectTunes made this super simple.

New library now installed on my main systems at home, weekend cottage, and office, and lots of backups made. I used dbpa converter and "Covert to TEST CONVERSION" on all the drives to confirm that all the files are not corrupt and can be decoded properly. In the end, I have about 4,000 ripped albums to FLAC. CDs stored away in "jewel sleves" (with CD, booklets, and backmatter) in specially made cabinets to save lots of space, but hoping I never have to look at again!. Still have about another 4,000 "albums" in mp3/m4a (mostly thousands of live shows, etc., legally obtained (Archive.org, etc.).

Not that I'm ever really done. I still buy lots of CDs, but at least I can keep up with ripping the new ones, as I have for many years now. And as many of you know, tagging is a never ending job, as one finds things or changes ones mind about naming.

Anyhow, you folks are the only ones I "know" that can at all appreciate what I'm saying. Thanks for listening.

p.s. And in case you're wondering--yes, I maintained a couple of archive HDDs, containing my library *prior* to all this fixing in case I find something has gone horribly wrong.

[Dat Ei]

Re: Ripping Mission Accomplished (mostly) - Thanks to Spoon and Illustrate

Congrats, Gary!

My story is very similar to yours. An iPod was the inital reason to rip my CDs to mp3 - that is more than one decade ago. And we all know that those rips where everything but not free of errors. In 2014 I've re-ripped my collection containing something more than 2.500 CDs to flac with dBpa. With a single CD drive (like you) it took me about 3-4 months to accomplish the mission. Today, my collection contains about 3.300 CDs and there is only one Jazz-CD Box with 160 CD left - I lack a little bit of motivation to rip that last box, because I fear that the metadata in the databases aren't very neat for this cheap CD box. But maybe I should follow your example...

And don't forget - ripping is one thing - the joy to listen to and to support artists is even more important in those strange days! Copy kills music!


Dat Ei

[garym]

Re: Ripping Mission Accomplished (mostly) - Thanks to Spoon and Illustrate

And don't forget - ripping is one thing - the joy to listen to and to support artists is even more important in those strange days! Copy kills music!

Agree. That's why I don't torrent and share around my library. And--until March--attended as many live shows as possible every year. My favorite way of enjoying music is still a live show, in a good venue.

[Spoon]

Re: Ripping Mission Accomplished (mostly) - Thanks to Spoon and Illustrate

Thanks, reminds me I have a whole pile of CDs to rip myself...

[Dat Ei]

Re: Ripping Mission Accomplished (mostly) - Thanks to Spoon and Illustrate

And--until March--attended as many live shows as possible every year. My favorite way of enjoying music is still a live show, in a good venue.

Oh yes! I second that. Usually I visit up to 30-40 concerts a year in my favorite Jazz Club, but due to Covid-19 most of the concerts have been canceled. In the last weeks the first concerts took place with a drastically reduced audience. They are allowed to let 20% (36 people) of the max. capacity (180 people) in. And instead of a nearly daily concert only one or two concerts take place a week. That's really hard for the over 40 year ol' club, which has seen tons and tons of international Jazz musicians.

Dat Ei

[garym]

Re: Ripping Mission Accomplished (mostly) - Thanks to Spoon and Illustrate

Oh yes! I second that. Usually I visit up to 30-40 concerts a year in my favorite Jazz Club, but due to Covid-19 most of the concerts have been canceled. In the last weeks the first concerts took place with a drastically reduced audience. They are allowed to let 20% (36 people) of the max. capacity (180 people) in. And instead of a nearly daily concert only one or two concerts take place a week. That's really hard for the over 40 year ol' club, which has seen tons and tons of international Jazz musicians.

Dat Ei

Yes, I greatly fear the toll of all this on small clubs (my usual venues), not to mention the musicians themselves. I try to do "virtual tip jars" etc. with performers that have moved online. But it's not the same for them or us.

[Dat Ei]

Re: Ripping Mission Accomplished (mostly) - Thanks to Spoon and Illustrate

In my opinion my club is quiet robust, as it get's cultural sponsorship, monthly contribution from the members (more than 1300 members) and support from the record companys (like ECM and ACT, which are located just around the corner). But I pray for the artists and the independent gastronomy within the club, although the german goverment tries to support them with a little money.

Dat Ei

[garym]

Re: Ripping Mission Accomplished (mostly) - Thanks to Spoon and Illustrate

In my opinion my club is quiet robust, as it get's cultural sponsorship, monthly contribution from the members (more than 1300 members) and support from the record companys (like ECM and ACT, which are located just around the corner). But I pray for the artists and the independent gastronomy within the club, although the german goverment tries to support them with a little money.

Dat Ei

Sadly, we're not as good about government support of the arts in the U.S., particularly the last few years.

[mville]

Re: Ripping Mission Accomplished (mostly) - Thanks to Spoon and Illustrate

Only the digital music geeks that hang around here can appreciate my recent accomplishment. My wife simply says "meh...."

Well done garym and a very familiar tale of ripping in the dark ages (iPod, mp3, hard drive limitations etc.)

I completed the same task a few years ago, thankfully (approx. 3,700 discs). I too am keen collector of music, but I am at that age that there aren't enough hours left in my life for much more new music, so I don't tend to buy anymore, although there is tons of new stuff that I hear and would love in my library.

[garym]

Re: Ripping Mission Accomplished (mostly) - Thanks to Spoon and Illustrate

Well done garym and a very familiar tale of ripping in the dark ages (iPod, mp3, hard drive limitations etc.)

I completed the same task a few years ago, thankfully (approx. 3,700 discs). I too am keen collector of music, but I am at that age that there aren't enough hours left in my life for much more new music, so I don't tend to buy anymore, although there is tons of new stuff that I hear and would love in my library.

Yep, I hear you on age and amount of music. I have slowed down music purchases considerably compared to last 20 years, and I do have Spotify for checking out new things. The problem is I'm a sucker for the deluxe re-releases of classic stuff that I like, and box sets like Grateful Dead (Europe 72!), Bob Dylan Bootleg Series, and the 38 Disk Complete Woodstock (when I played the entire thing last year, my wife just laughed and said, "how much did you pay to hear 30 different announcements of "Please come down from the towers"). But I'm realize I'm very lucky to be at a place in life where I can do these things. How much music to buy?.....First World Problem for sure.

[schmidj]

Re: Ripping Mission Accomplished (mostly) - Thanks to Spoon and Illustrate

So many of us went down the same path. Back some years ago I bought an Ipod to listen to, commuting on the train when I was getting sick of listening to peoples' inane cellphone conversations. Bases on some recommendations I started to rip my collection of CDs using Winamp, but had to use Itunes to load (and unload due to limited Ipod memory) stuff onto the Ipod. I made some attempts to get accurate metadata, much of which I had to manually enter. Much of my collection is Caribbean and then, as now, there is no on line metadata available for much of it.

I started playing the Ipod in the car through the aux input of the car stereo.

I paid little attention to album art, it then seemed like a waste of time.

I quickly found a lot of the rips, done often on my laptop's built in DVD drive, were bad. They skipped, dropped out, stopped abruptly mid-track. That was as annoying as the cell phone calls. I also found out the hard way about Itunes propensity to modify your metadata, usually incorrectly, without asking.

Finally, I bought a "smart" receiver and speakers for my flat screen TV, as I couldn't stand the lousy sound from the built in speakers. It had the ability to play audio, first from the Ipod, then from a NAS I bought (to store the rips which were overflowing the laptop hard drive, and my digital photos which had replaced my film photo equipment). Now the bad rips were even more annoying, and I also could better hear the limitations of 128K m4a on some material. So I did some research and found dBpoweramp. While I initially started reripping some of the CDs I had already ripped, I quickly decided to put my efforts into ripping the half my library (or more) that had never been ripped before going back and reripping the ones already ripped to m4a. I did try to note the bad rips in the m4a library and rerip them. Some turned out to be defective CDs. (A lot of the Caribbean stuff these days is self produced and released in small quantity on CDRs, with little to no QC.)

About this time, I bought a "smart" cell phone which replaced the Ipod as a portable player. With larger micro-SD cards, I could fit a larger percentage of my music onto it than I could on the Ipod. And I no longer had any use for Itunes.

A couple of years ago I finally got all of the unripped CDs ripped to my server. I've been working spasmodically to rerip the ones ripped initially with Winamp. I still have something like 650 CDs to rerip, from the 3000 or so that had been ripped with Winamp. But my recent acquisition of 1500 or so CDs from a radio station I was involved with that was throwing them out has again moved the rerip process to the back burner.

I listen mostly in the car with the player in the phone via Bluetooth. Random selection most of the time. It still blows my mind, as one who grew up seeing 78's then for many years LPs, and then CDs, the micro SD card in my phone is smaller than a postage stamp. My entire music collection and a bunch of photos easily (before adding the new 1500 CDs) fit on that card. Played 24/7 the music would last about 1/3 of a year, with no repeats! Compare that to the space taken up by the CDs, or if it was all LPs, or God help you 78's. Technology is amazing. and every time I fill up the SD card, they have come out with bigger ones!

I intend, when I have time, to list some of the mistakes I've made, and 20-20 hindsight so others may avoid them. Then a "wish list" for some minor issues (in my opinion) in otherwise pretty good software, and a couple of issues common to the whole stored music business, more of player issues than ripper or server issues. Finally some points for "newbies" to consider before starting to rip (or rerip) their collection. Stay Tuned.

And Thank You Spoon and Peter for all your efforts. You certainly have added greatly to my enjoyment of music.

[garym]

Re: Ripping Mission Accomplished (mostly) - Thanks to Spoon and Illustrate

Good idea about listing your mistakes. We could all write a book on what we wished we hadn't done re: digital music!

[Dat Ei]

Re: Ripping Mission Accomplished (mostly) - Thanks to Spoon and Illustrate

I've started with a cassette recorder in the mid / end 70's. After a very short episode with vinyl I jumped on the bandwagon called Audio CD in 1985, when good CD Players have been rare and more expansive than a 70" flatscreen today. End of the 90's I bought a Mark Levinson Disc Drive with an external Mark Levinson D/A converter. While watching the CD drawer of that drive opening is still a joy (flat piece of Aluminium, that accelerates at the start and deccelerates at the end), I don't listen very often to the CD Player. Over the years a small mini PC running LibreELEC and connected to an AV receiver has become my main system. I can remote control the system with my mobile phone and listen to each of the over 42k tracks with a finger tip.
As reported in different thread the ol' iPod Classic with 160 GB has been substituted at the end of last year. The storage space was too small, the handling with iTunes became more and more uncomfortable, so I switched to a microSD card based FiiO M11. As schmidj said, it is still a miracle to have all the music of thousands of CDs on one small memory card. I use a 512 GB card, nearly filled with mp3 files. What a luck to have a second card slot, but I guess I need a second life to fill that memory card too, unless I don't switch the codec. While I had my difficulties with the M11 and the original player software, I use UAPP now and I'm quiet happy with that player software. Now I've made my peace with the switch from iPod to Fiio.

Dat Ei

[Maxpower]

Re: Ripping Mission Accomplished (mostly) - Thanks to Spoon and Illustrate

Thanks, reminds me I have a whole pile of CDs to rip myself...

I can recommend some good software to do that . . . .

[GBrown]

Re: Ripping Mission Accomplished (mostly) - Thanks to Spoon and Illustrate

Amazing how similar many of our stories are, from where we started to where we are today. But thanks to Spoon and this group, we have all shared the learning and can enjoy our music in this new era of listening!