Burning Down your CD collection

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Serg · #1 Post by **Serg** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 9:04 am

So I will have to start the much needed burned down of my CD collection. I am carrying way too many CDs into gigs, most of them originals and I cannot afford to have them stolen or lost.

So my question to you is: What do you do to burn your collection down? Do you rip all your tracks into MP3 and them make new CDs? Do you copy track by track in WAV format (takes longer?). What software do you use?

All help is welcome.

Serg

Nate Dogg · #2 Post by **Nate Dogg** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 9:22 am

I used CDEX to MP3 and I choose the highest quality option. I did a CDDB lookup for every rip.

I also bought a few extra external CD burners to speed up the process. They are so cheap these days, it really accellerated the process. It was worth it to me.

I am in the process of standardizing tags now.

LindyChef · #3 Post by **LindyChef** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 9:26 am

I used to burn down ... by default I rip every CD I get into a high quality MP3 and then put the CD into storage ... you don't want to store as WAV files since they take up too much space.

Pretty much any software will work. My personal favorite is Easy CD-DA extractor, but YMMV.

Basically, my main concern with burning a music CD is the fact that due to the vagaries of CD-R media, some media might not play in some players. If you have half of your CDs burned onto one batch of media and the CD player at the gig doesn't like that media, half your CDs are gone for the evening (I speak from experience here).

You also need to make sure that you don't burn at a faster speed than your media is rated at ... that will also make for CDs that aren't readable in some players.

#4 Post by **JesseMiner** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 9:43 am

I rip all of my selected tracks to wav files using Exact Audio Copy (EAC). I then burn my compilation CDs from these wav files to avoid any loss of quality. Ripping with EAC takes a bit longer that with some other programs, but EAC has error-checking, so you are ensured of a quality rip.

When I had a smaller HD (20-40 GB), I would just rip and burn a few compilations and then delete the wav files to make space for more. I ended up doing a LOT of defraging.

Now that I have an external 250 GB HD, I am ripping all of those compilations to wav files as back-ups. I have yet to decided exactly what route I want to go for future storage, bit I will probably decide on some mp3 compression that will be high quality enough for and and space-saving enough to fit on a laptop for mp3 DJing, if I ever choose to go that route.

For now, I like having all of the wav files around as they guarantee the highest quality back-ups. Since I have the space, why not use it?

A note about wav vs. mp3: if you decide you want to go with mp3s, I would still recommend ripping all of your music as wav files first. Then you can batch the encoding using a program like RazorLame. It is quicker to rip to wav than mp3, and then you can do a ton of mp3 encoding while you sleep. The program will even automatically delete the original wav files in the process if you want it to. Then if you have named the files correctly, you can do smart bulk tagging with a program like MP3 Tag Studio (I love this program!).

Jesse

#5 Post by **JesseMiner** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 9:48 am

By the way, I am moving this topic to its appropriate home in "Tech Talk".

Jesse Miner
SwingDJs Moderator

CafeSavoy · #6 Post by **CafeSavoy** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 9:56 am

I'm with Jesse. I rip to wav first using EAC and then convert to mp3 afterwards. when i have time i rip the entire cd and convert all the files to mp3. but will only keep in wav format those files i want to add to my compilations. i convert to mp3 using LAME, mostly i use dbPowerAmp because it lets you convert using right click on your mouse. I convert at 320.

GemZombie · #7 Post by **GemZombie** » Fri Aug 27, 2004 10:37 am

I have ripped almost all of my cd's using VBR High (wont' get into that discussion again), which provides as close to archive quality as MP3 can give you I think.

If I need to make a complition I often just create them from the MP3's. I have considered actually making full backups of my CD's, but the thought of copying and labeling over 300 CD's is not something I care to entertain too often.

LazyP · #8 Post by **LazyP** » Mon Aug 30, 2004 12:47 am

Has anyone tried FLAC for encoding? It's supposed to be a lossless audio format. Which means you could rip your cds and turn them into FLAC files which should be equal to wav in quality but somewhere inbetween mp3 and wav in file size. Which means wav-files on your hd is a complete waste of space when you could have flac files.

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

CafeSavoy · #9 Post by **CafeSavoy** » Mon Aug 30, 2004 7:06 am

LazyP wrote:Has anyone tried FLAC for encoding? It's supposed to be a lossless audio format. Which means you could rip your cds and turn them into FLAC files which should be equal to wav in quality but somewhere inbetween mp3 and wav in file size. Which means wav-files on your hd is a complete waste of space when you could have flac files.

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

I haven't but i have thought of using lossless compression as an alternative to wave files. thanks for the link, i'll play around with it. the only question would be whether you can play those files without conversion in your player.

Doug · #10 Post by **Doug** » Mon Aug 30, 2004 11:30 am

If FLAC is truely lossless, I'm not sure how much it helps. At some point I looked into archiving my .wavs using zip or one of the other lossess compressors. It didn't help much. To get some numbers I just chose a set of 27 wav files I had on my computer and both zipped them and used lame with command line: -b256 -ms -q0 --lowpass 19.5 ; 256 kbit/s and high quality

wav files: 790Meg
zipped files: 640Meg
mp3s: 143Meg

GemZombie · #11 Post by **GemZombie** » Mon Aug 30, 2004 4:39 pm

flac would get you in the range of 400 - 500 Meg I believe.

For true archival purposes, it makes sense.

Lawrence · #12 Post by **Lawrence** » Mon Aug 30, 2004 8:28 pm

I save to wav file using Nero (which also has error-checking) and then burn compilations from that. Instead of buying a huge hard drive that can handle all these compilations, I make two copies of each compilation because CD-Rs are so cheap; I then eventually delete the wav files after the compilations are made. If I had the time or inclination, I would buy the biggest hard drive available and use it like Jesse does because then you can re-mix compilations more easily and have a better, more reliable archive.

Sound quality is too important to me, and I can always tell when someone is DJing off MP3s as oppsed to wav files. That might be because of the system or bitrate of those whom I hear DJ off laptops most often. Granted, I suspect I might also be one of the few who really notices or cares about the sound quality difference between a wav file and a high-quality MP3, as well. But because I'm the only one suffering through the process, I'm willing to take the steps to preserve the sound quality.

Toon Town Dave · #13 Post by **Toon Town Dave** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 12:03 am

Another option for Windoze users (NT/2K/XP/etc) would be to compress the directory of filesystem where the wav files are stored. It's probably not the best possible lossless compression but it would buy a little extra space without the hastle of dealing with codecs or zip files. Just right click on a folder or drive and enable compression.

Titus · #14 Post by **Titus** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 10:27 am

Lawrence wrote:... I can always tell when someone is DJing off MP3s as oppsed to wav files. That might be because of the system or bitrate of those whom I hear DJ off laptops most often. Granted, I suspect I might also be one of the few who really notices or cares about the sound quality difference between a wav file and a high-quality MP3, as well. But because I'm the only one suffering through the process, I'm willing to take the steps to preserve the sound quality.

I'd be willing to bet that if you did some double blind tests, you couldn't pick out an EAC/LAME APS mp3 from a wave file on most of the music you dj.

Granted that few people actually use that high of quality mp3.

GemZombie · #15 Post by **GemZombie** » Tue Aug 31, 2004 10:56 am

Titus wrote:
Lawrence wrote:... I can always tell when someone is DJing off MP3s as oppsed to wav files. That might be because of the system or bitrate of those whom I hear DJ off laptops most often. Granted, I suspect I might also be one of the few who really notices or cares about the sound quality difference between a wav file and a high-quality MP3, as well. But because I'm the only one suffering through the process, I'm willing to take the steps to preserve the sound quality.
I'd be willing to bet that if you did some double blind tests, you couldn't pick out an EAC/LAME APS mp3 from a wave file on most of the music you dj.

Granted that few people actually use that high of quality mp3.

I'd take the same bet. I've done the test with my VBR encodes. I am highly sensative to mp3 lossy compression artifacts too.

It bugs me to no end when people use subpar compression with mp3.