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CD ripping, if you were to start anew.......

Did exactly this last year - ripped entire CD collection.

dBpoweramp was a joy to use, and well worth the investment. Ripped all to FLAC.

The only things that ever slowed the easy process down was incorrect initial artwork suggestions, but most could be found through their search online tool (very simple). Only had to photograph myself a handful of obscure ones that weren't available.

Also, rarely, incorrect metadata on the disc itself; but again easily overridden. Important to get it right from the outset.

And say one in twenty CDs took hours to rip for some reason. You could tell straight away. These were just put aside to be 'overnighters', and would be ripped by the morning.
 
... And do get at least one back up external hard drive to copy it over to as you go. As above, it's a easy process but does take time and you wouldn't want to have to re-do it.
 
Id by an old mac pro cheesegrater. it has an excellent optical drive - loads of bays for hard drives - which you could raid, and then an sdd on a pci card to run the system. Also cheap to buy second hand.
 
Which Naim ripper would be the easiest and most future proof to use?
None of them. They are all just repackaged computers, which are going to be obsolete before you know it. I remember clearly a conversation I had with a young-ish Naim employee at a new product launch where he said that Naim rips are better then anyone else's, because they use a wonderful flim flam algorithm which has been blessed by virgins. He couldn't provide me with more information than that, so you have to have the faith. Or not.

This is not Naim-bashing BTW, I like their stuff generally. But dBPoweramp is just fine on whatever PC you're using at the time
 
Most audiophiles are over 50, they have large to massive CD collections, already made, already delivered.

Covid has killed concerts so no revenue for artists (or cinemas). Covid has imposed lockdown so massive revenue to internet providers and streaming platforms.
You may wish to ignore that data centres consume unsurmountable amounts of energy.
Streaming didn't cause Covid, and you can't blame streaming for the effects of Covid. How much of the energy that data centres consume is streaming music responsible for? As opposed to storing emails you'll never read again? Saying that audiophiles should depend on the CD collections they already have is unlikely to support new music or musicians either. Until Covid I easily spent big hundreds a year on going to concerts, some by artists whose CDs I never would have bought. I donate directly online to musicians like Justin Kauflin, a blind jazz pianist who I would never have heard of had it not been for streaming.
 
Streaming didn't cause Covid, and you can't blame streaming for the effects of Covid. How much of the energy that data centres consume is streaming music responsible for? As opposed to storing emails you'll never read again? Saying that audiophiles should depend on the CD collections they already have is unlikely to support new music or musicians either. Until Covid I easily spent big hundreds a year on going to concerts, some by artists whose CDs I never would have bought. I donate directly online to musicians like Justin Kauflin, a blind jazz pianist who I would never have heard of had it not been for streaming.

It's not the storing that is the problem but the reading (streaming).
You can increment on your CD collection by buying downloads. I would expect these to pay better to artists too.
 
The BBC did a project and found that CDs/DVDs have a smaller carbon footprint than streaming. The power consumption of all the servers and internet infrastructure far outweighs the impact of plastic and shipping


How streaming music could be harming the planet - BBC Future

Just can’t believe that me buying a cd from Amazon, that has to be made from plastic, shipped hundreds of miles, wrapped in cardboard, delivered to me in a polluting van driven through a crowded city, played twice, then sat on a shelf is better for the environment than me downloading the same music. Nor is it the case that streaming an album 20 times means it is sent 20 times - Qobuz has a local cache which it maintains automatically. And artists seem to be making stupefying quantities of money selling the rights to their music as streaming has made it far more valuable. The issue of up and coming artists not getting a fair slice is to do with the greed of established artists and the way globalization concentrates money in the hands of the few that make it to the top. A new distribution medium always upsets those invested in the earlier one. TV was supposed to kill the movies, then video was supposed to kill TV, now streaming is the enemy. But Netflix is giving exposure and work to far more creative people than terrestrial TV.
 
A bad idea, I think. Bad for new and emerging artists, from what I've read. And we all want new music, surely.

So, stream it to find out if you like it, and buy the CD if you do.

Ripping takes minutes, music is for life.
Oh the irony!
Ripping is an illegal breach of copyright in the UK.
Bad enough, but selling on CDs after ripping is bang out of order.
 
I’ve been using dBpoweramp for many years. I tried EAC initially, before dBpoweramp was released, but once it appeared I greatly preferred the latter and have had no regrets about buying it.

Mick
 
OP; I used, and still use, EAC. I've seen it suggested that dBPoweramp has more bells and whistles, but I really can't be bothered with the learning curve now that all my back catalogue are done, and that I'm only doing a handful of new items per year.

If I was doing it all again, I would choose one of the above two. I would check the metadata of each rip, and correct or modify it as I do each CD (or possibly once I'd ripped all CDs for each artist), which I didn't do rigorously last time, and am now finding the occasional correction to be done with mp3tag.
 
So that one can listen to them offline. Without internet access. Away from home.
For the CDs that aren't on Spotify and the like.
For the self-made CDs that many folk have made themselves, by recording live radio concerts and such onto CD.
Yup, and add to that not potentially being stuck with the latest crappy master, dubious file provenance, etc...
 
I ripped my CDs many years ago and at the time ran macs, so I have about 700gb of CDs in Apple Lossless.
On top of that I have another 50-60gb in FLAC.

If I were ripping them now they would all be FLAC but Apple Lossless is essentially the same thing.

I have them all on a tiny 1TB USB3 stick plugged into the back of a Node 2i which connects to my amp's dac via coax.
Works well as I can access my CDs and Quobuz in one interface, reliably.

However I still prefer to pop the disc into the player and hit Play :)
 
I used to rip my CDs in iTunes but that was looooog ago. I just can't see your points mates. Your Spotify (say) playlists can be available offline as well.
I have a nice collection of vintage players and I like to play my equally vintage CDs on them, just for the sake of it (yes the sound is good too).
Now for the rest of my listening it's streaming only.
 
I ripped all my cd's on a Innuos Zen Mk2 - average processing time of 5 minutes per disk - no failures and artwork all present and correct.
The Innuos is also a mighty fine one box solution - be it playing local files or streaming.
Just add the dac of your choice, kick back and enjoy.:)
 


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