Mega Box Madness

I want that set...

Something I'd suggest when considering a task like this is to buy an external disk drive...You will burn a few out ripping thousands of CDs. Something a few friends have done is to get one from a place that offers replacement warranties on them and just go get a new one whenever it burns out. lol

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot 

I've recently decided to dive in and start ripping my classical CD collection to my music server. But with thousands and thousands of CDs, it's a daunting task. I've never felt guilty to have CDs that I've never had a chance to liten to (gotta have some music for a rainy day) but I do feel guilty not having everything ripped and accessible in my itunes library.

 

My problem is that with the drop in price on mega box collections, I'm accumulating faster than I can rip. I already had the Haensler Complete Bach set, and I recently got the Living Stereo box, the Decca Sound box and today I ordered the whopper... 170 CDs of Brilliant Classics Mozart. I'm not learning my lesson, becausenow I'm eyeing the Furtwangler box and the upcoming complete Rubinstein. Ouch! Somebody stop me!

Yeah, you're absolutely right - I've burned-out a couple of CDRW drives ripping CDAs, but that was back in the day when they still cost upwards of $70 each - OUCH!!

The thing that particularly stressed the drives was using 'Secure' mode in EAC (Exact Audio Copy) it's a great program but damn... all that over-reading really punishes a ripping drive.

I would say that drives are cheap enough these days to render them 'disposable', but that makes me cringe from an environmental standpoint, since they're not recyclable. Best advice would be to buy 2 drives and use them alternately, to give each one a chance to cool down whilst the other is ripping the next disc.

I will also point out that the Toshiba-Samsung-Storage-Technologies ('TSST') drives are fabulously stable drives and I highly recommend them, from personal experience.

I had an old Plextor that could sure accurately rip CDs, even scratched CDs. It doesn't work at all now. I also have an old Pioneer drive that works just okay -- not like the Plextor, anyway.

Otherwise I know what you mean about needing to rip your CDs. I only have a couple of hundred to go, but probably 50 or so are scratched to the point where I can't get 100% accurate rips without a bit of elbow grease. Rainy day is right. 

Let me try to stop you:  Instead of Furtwangler and Rubinstein, go for the 2 DGG 111 years megas (esp the first one), the William Steinberg box and the Horowitz box.

Originally Posted by bigshot 

I've recently decided to dive in and start ripping my classical CD collection to my music server. But with thousands and thousands of CDs, it's a daunting task. I've never felt guilty to have CDs that I've never had a chance to liten to (gotta have some music for a rainy day) but I do feel guilty not having everything ripped and accessible in my itunes library.

 

My problem is that with the drop in price on mega box collections, I'm accumulating faster than I can rip. I already had the Haensler Complete Bach set, and I recently got the Living Stereo box, the Decca Sound box and today I ordered the whopper... 170 CDs of Brilliant Classics Mozart. I'm not learning my lesson, becausenow I'm eyeing the Furtwangler box and the upcoming complete Rubinstein. Ouch! Somebody stop me!

Quote:

Originally Posted by J W 

I had an old Plextor that could sure accurately rip CDs, even scratched CDs. It doesn't work at all now. I also have an old Pioneer drive that works just okay -- not like the Plextor, anyway.

Me too! I had a Lite-On which was good while it lasted (not very long) but, just as you said, I also had a Plextor and STREWTH! Those Plextor engineers did something very clever with the firmware - I could have a scratched or decayed CDR that'd take HOURS to read on any other drive, practically burning-out the drive in the process, and then I could stick the same CDR in my Plextor and it'd somehow just 'see' through all the imperfections like magic, ripping the disc in minutes. It was a noisy drive but it worked. I still have the drive, actually, tucked away in my old PC. I think it was a 40x read and 40x write so the Lite-On had higher top speed but with any damaged discs, the Plextor just stormed past any other drive. Then, Plextor started using Sanyo parts, apparently, and they lost their superior performance with damaged discs.