Nimbie USB Hardware Ripper

[mouserty]

Hi,

I am a registered user of DBPoweramp 14 and used it a couple of years ago to batch rip my cd collection. Unfortunately, my hard disk was lost in a recent house move and I am faced with the prospect of ripping my very very large cd collection to FLAC. I am thinking of automating the process with a Nimbie USB ripping station. I have a few questions:

a) does anybody have experience of this unit (which I understand is supported by DBPoweramp)

b) Are there any restrictions on the number of lookups I can make for meta tags and artwork.

c) Is it worthwhile to purchase PerfectTunes for this task. Does this work with batch ripping, and again, is there a limit on the number of lookups.

Thanks

[garym]

Re: Nimbie USB Hardware Ripper

with regard to c), perfecttunes is for checking things that have already been ripped. When you rip with dbpa, it will check back to the accuraterip database already without any need for perfecttunes.

[Spoon]

Re: Nimbie USB Hardware Ripper

a) Cannot answer (as we are biased)
b) After 400 lookups there is a 8 cent per disc charge for AMG, GD3 lookups are handled 100% by gd3, there are no free gd3 lookups (10 cent per disc)

[mouserty]

Re: Nimbie USB Hardware Ripper

with regard to c), perfecttunes is for checking things that have already been ripped. When you rip with dbpa, it will check back to the accuraterip database already without any need for perfecttunes.

Some of my recent rips were done in single pass mode and were a bit iffy. Is there any tool that will check these past rips and highlight only those that need re-ripping?

[mouserty]

Re: Nimbie USB Hardware Ripper

a) Cannot answer (as we are biased)
b) After 400 lookups there is a 8 cent per disc charge for AMG, GD3 lookups are handled 100% by gd3, there are no free gd3 lookups (10 cent per disc)

a) biased means you have a view, I would like to hear it

c) is there some annual license for lookups as I have a large cd collection (3,000 ish). Are these charges only applicable in batch rip mode?

[Spoon]

Re: Nimbie USB Hardware Ripper

Per disc lookup charges are only in batch ripper, there is no annual license, sorry.

[garym]

Re: Nimbie USB Hardware Ripper

Some of my recent rips were done in single pass mode and were a bit iffy. Is there any tool that will check these past rips and highlight only those that need re-ripping?

with regard to checking against accuraterip (and not all cds are in accuraterip database):

perfecttunes
cuetools
foobar2000 wih verify integrity component installed.

edit: if I had 3,000 CDs (and I do!), I'd buy perfectunes too for this sort of thing (and I did!).

[mouserty]

Re: Nimbie USB Hardware Ripper

with regard to checking against accuraterip (and not all cds are in accuraterip database):

perfecttunes
cuetools
foobar2000 wih verify integrity component installed.

edit: if I had 3,000 CDs (and I do!), I'd buy perfectunes too for this sort of thing (and I did!).

If I understand you correctly you ripped your cds without any lookup and then retrospectively tagged them and added artwork. have I got this right. I am guessing there is no charge for using the same database with Perfecttunes. Is it reasonably fast to use?

[garym]

Re: Nimbie USB Hardware Ripper

If I understand you correctly you ripped your cds without any lookup and then retrospectively tagged them and added artwork. have I got this right. I am guessing there is no charge for using the same database with Perfecttunes. Is it reasonably fast to use?

I won't bore you with the entire history (short story is I ripped thousands of CDs to MP3 before I knew what I was doing). I've since been on a project to rip to FLAC. When I rip to FLAC, I use dbpa, and when ripping I use the secure mode, which checks against accuraterip database, does tagging, adds artwork, etc. If there is no accuraterip match, it automatically does multiple passes and compares the CRCs (and handles tags, artwork as well). So the short answer is, "no" I didn't rip without lookup and retro tag them. I did all this when I ripped.

This said, there are CDs I buy that are not in the accuraterip database (too new?). so I can use perfecttunes to check these later on (to see if they match the AR database). PerfectTunes can also help find better artwork too. With regard to tagging, it is a never ending job in some sense. I'm always fiddling with my tags (deciding to change genre categories, changing album artist value for some artists that have mulitple band names, etc.). But this is minor/easy stuff. Mostly I try to get everything perfect on initial rip (tags, art, etc.) and then be done with things.

edit: perfecttunes is reasonably fast. And on another note, I've purchased 10,000 CDs, stereo equipment, DACs, networked music players, etc. Spending $50 on Perfectunes for occasional use is trivial in this context. And I'm also one of those crazy people that actually send authors of free software donations (e.g., mp3tag, vortebox developers, etc.).