Is there an easy, high-quality CD ripper/organiser program?

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Would like to rip our CD collection to the computer. We have approximately 800 CDs, and also have plenty of hard drive space available for storage. It’s a big project so would like to simplify it/automate it as much as possible while retaining the best quality sound. Want to rip everything in .wav format. Later on we may convert various music to FLAC or .wma lossless for smaller file sizes to take along on vacation, etc. Have heard that the free program Exact Audio Copy (EAC) does a good job of ripping with the fewest data errors or error correction, but am open to persuasion.
Beyond the basic task of high quality ripping to .wav files, there are a number of information and convenience factors to consider. Will list the main ones here and hope you experts can suggest what software would best handle everything. A friend suggested we might want to rip using one program (like EAC?) and to organise or catalog the music using a different program. Although we prefer free software, an excellent program that does it all very conveniently might be worth paying for. Here are some features we’re hoping for:

After initial setup and configuration be able to insert a CD and have it automatically rip at highest quality to desired folder, probably organised by album title and with full artist, track, title information. If one or two quick mouse clicks are necessary with each CD that would be OK I suppose, but fully automated would be most convenient, of course.

Album art included would be nice.

Tagging or key words included would be nice. For example, locating a particular piece of classical music on an album containing various composers would be much easier if we could search tags or keywords.

There may be other useful features we haven’t even thought about.

Thanks very much for your help!

Creating and saving playlists of various music would be nice.

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For the most part, Media Monkey can do all this. And its free. The excepetion of what it can rip to is maybe WAV. I’m not sure it can (never tried it), but it can rip to FLAC which I think you’d be better off, and happier with anyway. the free version’s single limitation is the number of .mp3 rips you can do. And they even tell you how to circumvent that with an Open Source LAME convertor. I don’t have quite the collection you do, but mine’s still pretty large, in excess of 300 albums. I couldn’t live without Media Monkey.

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OK, I’ll bite! Why would i be better off and happier using a compressed format, even a mathematically lossless one like FLAC, bearing in mind that we have plenty of storage space and want archival quality? :confused:

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Personal preference on my part I guess. There is no acoustical difference between the two formats that the human ear can hear, not even the most discerning ear. Even given plenty of space, they are both “archival quality”. So my return question is why not use the the more efficient format?

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On portable digital music players and many home audio systems i would agree, but on our fancy-dancy hi-fi system those .wav files win out on sound quality, especially for finely recorded music.

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I think you ask for too much. 800 CD’s will require a lot of hours to rip and there is no automatic way to do this at home. My best suggestion is to hire/borrow a number of laptops and rip several at the same time or pay a smart teenager to do the job (or both).
There’s a number of ripping programs available (some are free). Check out Gizmo’s page http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-cd-ripper.htm where EAC is rated best. Also check out Goldwave which can access the internet for details I think (I haven’t used it to rip).
There’s also a number of catalogue programs but I’ve found InsideCat http://www.insidecat.biz/disk_cataloguer/disk_cataloguer.htm to be the best for me. It also accesses the internet for details including art.
The catch is that the rip and the cataloguing are separate actions and both take time. It may be possible to find a commercial company that will do the job eg. Music Shifter http://musicshifter.com/ but there may be copy-write issues, I don’t know.
I think your best bet is to offer a teenager (maybe younger) $100 and a Pizza to do the job.

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Must jump in here – have a look at Easy CD creator – I’ve just done what you are contemplating and this software is brilliant. I don’t think it does auto rip when closing the try because you need to “ok” what it says about album name, tracks etc. I wouldn’t use anything else. The author is an enthusiast and runs a good forum too, which you might like to visit before you start ripping.

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why not use a program you already have on your computer.

windows media player. it will automatically rip cds as they are inserted into your computer and can save in wav and it will manage your collection too…

you already have the tool you need…

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why not use a program you already have on your computer.

windows media player. it will automatically rip cds as they are inserted into your computer and can save in wav and it will manage your collection too…

you already have the tool you need…

You’re right, Windows Media Player is more nearly “automatic” than others I’ve seen. I wonder if it will retrieve track & artist info, album art etc. for music that was ripped to the hard drive by a different program? The reason I ask is that Win Media Player and most other ripping programs will only correct timing errors when they rip a CD. But, Exact Audio Copy or another program that uses “Accurate Rip” reads the digital data stream carefully/repeatedly to avoid any data errors that would normally invoke digital data error correction. This way you get an exact bit-for-bit copy of all the original data on the disc, nothing added, nothing removed. That fulfills our desire for “archival quality”.

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I use FreeRIP which allows you to rip a CD and convert files to .mp3 among other formats: http://www.freerip.com/

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Best choice for what you request is Easy CD-DA. Even after having used many others, MediaMonkey etc, Easy CD-DA is the easiest to use and understand what you choices are. And it offers a ton of choices for format and bitrates.

And I will repeat that FLAC is my choice of file format. I have yet to ever have had one moment where I had any doubt about it being the best choice. More people who are serious collectors of music use FLAC than anything else. And for those who may say that mp3 is more popular, I am saying serious collectors.

800 albums will take a while. I think you may be looking at 4 to 6 months before it’s all done.

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We want to thank everyone here for their suggestions. We’ll experiment with some of the recommended programs and see where it takes us. Have to agree this will likely take some time but not nearly as much as it will to actually get through the entire collection !

For you music lovers and audio guys here’s a quick rundown on sound quality as experienced on our home system. The system includes a pair of Magnepans each with a dedicated subwoofer, a McCormack stereo power amp., an Audio Research stereo pre-amp and various Transparent Audio cables. Source components include our PC with GigaByte motherboard and Creative Xtreme sound card. Comparative listening was conducted both with and without an external DAC. The environment is our medium size living room (carpeted) that opens onto the dining area (wood floor). There’s a large Turkish rug mounted on the wall behind the speakers, and the windows have cellular shades which were closed at night. All sessions except one were conducted after dinner with a glass of wine in hand. One session was conducted early afternoon with the shades up.

Music selection was a variety of our own choosing, including Beatles: Revolver (the recent mono remaster), Miles Davis: Kind of Blue, Joe Cocker: Sheffield Steel, Anonymous Four: An English Ladymass, and Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Seviglia on EMI with Gobbi, Alva & Callas.

The person operating the computer for music playback kept his back to us the whole time and we could not see his monitor screen. In the Music folder the tracks were labeled 1a, 1b, 1c and so on. So, our operator didn’t know what format he was playing for us, either. On every music selection played, the format was unknown to us. Our first two sessions were very simple. Sit back, relax and listen to a favorite piece of music lasting between 3 and 8 minutes; then listen to the same track again at the same volume but in a different format. Then simply state which one we preferred, and keep a note of our preference for each comparison. The contenders included .mp3, ogg vorbis, FLAC, .wma Lossless and .wav.

The results were clear in one regard. We never chose an .mp3 format selection as “preferred”; bitrates of 128kb, 192kb and (I think) 320kb were all auditioned and all found to be unsatisfactory. We always preferred the “other” format which turned out to be FLAC, .wma, and .wav. So, mp3 was dismissed and sent packing – no surprise there. (To be fair, we did note at lower volume settings that the 320kb .mp3 sounded OK, but at medium volume or above it just couldn’t compete.)

The next session, a couple of nights later, again involved the which-do-you-prefer-?-this-or-that-? method. Briefly, the results were that .wma Lossless and FLAC were enjoyed equally with .wav format coming out on top as the most enjoyable sound. FLAC and wma Lossless are both admirable for the clever way that they retain good sound quality even though the file size has been significantly reduced; however, we chose .wav as being preferred each time it was in the comparison.

In our one daytime session, I requested that each comparison should include .wav format against one other format. One track was chosen from each album so there were five comparisons. I correctly identified the .wav file each time but the last. On that one I dithered then asked to hear them again. Afterwards, I complained that my concentration was gone because “neither selection sounded quite right”. The computer operator then turned to me and grinned; he had played “una voce poco fa…” from Il Barbiere in FLAC format both times ! (When you listen to the concert hall ambience from a soprano voice dying away into silence it should trail off smoothly, not roughly & quickly. The same goes for string sound from the orchestra, etc. etc.)

There is, for we unlucky few, a sound reason for using up soooo much hard drive space that.wav format requires. For everyone else, I commend your choice of FLAC as a high quality music format with more modest space requirements !!

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Check out http://www.brennan.co.uk for the Brennan JB7 CD Player/Hard Disc that can store & select any of 5000 CDs.

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Check out http://www.brennan.co.uk for the Brennan JB7 CD Player/Hard Disc that can store & select any of 5000 CDs.

Nice player and it looks easy to rip and manage your music collection. The only caveat would be the super-fast ripping that it does; bit-for-bit error free ripping takes more time so JB7’s super-fast feature should be reserved for discs in pristine condition, maybe?

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Media Monkey will rip to WAV – I use FLAC to save space.

cheers, Paul

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