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

[garym]

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

I bought my first CD in 1985 -- two years before I bought my first CD player.

Funny, my first CD purchase (the previously mentioned Bob Dylan Biograph set) was BEFORE I bought my first CD player. I'm from Texas originally and have bought many, many CDs from Waterloo Records. Everytime I was in Austin, I'd check out the local music shelves and load up....

[linkman]

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

I bought my first CD in 1985 -- two years before I bought my first CD player. In the interim I used a friend's CD player to record my small number of discs onto cassette tapes. About 2000 CDs later I ripped my collection into MP3s and that revitalized my collection/listening habits because it became much easier to select anything from my catalog. Fortunately I had a Discmakers Pico to automate a good part of the ripping.

I hate the term "digital" for MP3 files and the like -- CDs have been digital from day one. People refer to converting CDs to digital format; they are already digital darnit!

A big thing I miss is the availability of used CDs. Most of the source of them for me has dried up. Sources like Spotify and Apple Music have taken their bite out of CD sales. A store in my city (Austin, TX, USA) called Cheapo had several thousand used CDs come in each day (not an exaggeration), but unfortunately business declined enough and they closed a few years ago. The only decent source now for me is Half Price Books.[/FONT]

[garym]

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

Congrats garym!!

I have nowhere near the number of CDs that you have, but the process of starting with an iPod and eventually ripping everything to flac is familiar. Tagging is still an on-going process for me. I've become more selective in the CDs I buy, and Spotify has been an aid in what I do buy.

Yeah, I've been buying CDs since 1985. First CD purchase was the CD version of Bob Dylan's Biograph box set. In the late 80s and all through the 90s, the place my work colleagues and I ate lunch at almost every day was right next door to a great used CD shop. They had several bins for "new arrivals". Essentially every day after lunch a buddy and I would stop in and peruse the new arrivals bin and pick up anything interesting.

[GaryG45]

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

Congrats garym!!

I have nowhere near the number of CDs that you have, but the process of starting with an iPod and eventually ripping everything to flac is familiar. Tagging is still an on-going process for me. I've become more selective in the CDs I buy, and Spotify has been an aid in what I do buy.

[garym]

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

[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!

[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 . . . .

[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

[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!

[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

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.

[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

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.

[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

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.