I've seen similar guides out there but a lot are outdated or buried in old boards, never hurts to have another. I like using Media Money for album art tagging (uses Amazon's database) and transcoding, not sure if it handles ALAC tho, probably does... I use FLAC tho, so EAC itself can handle the bulk of the process for me (rip, convert WAV to FLAC, and basic tagging), and MM's just for album art, library organization, and transcoding to MP3 (for phone and streaming across the house).
MM's got very nice/intuitive library and batch tools, and Amazon's album art library is ridiculous (also helps that it lets you check foreign Amazon sites). Ripping your discs properly with EAC and archiving them into ALAC is really the biggest step, the rest is all pretty intuitive.
I actually keep two copies of my library, might as well since keeping a permanent MP3 transcode of the lossless library takes an insignificant amount of space in addition to the lossless files... I mostly play the FLAC files at the PC and the MP3 everywhere else. You'll probably never hear a difference if you use a high enough bitrate for the MP3s but it still makes a lot of sense to rip to FLAC/ALAC for archival purposes... Think of lossless like a virtual CD and MP3 like a cassette tape.
You can remix and manipulate one without losing anything, with the other you've already lost some info so any future transcode/edit loses even more... Lossless is like a zip archive, regular compression that retains everything. MP3's more like a JPEG... Every time it's saved it's altered.
Anyway, MM's a nice multi-tool, cursinchecking out... Tho if you're going with ALAC you're probably already married to iTunes. EAC's definitely the standard for ripping, and foobar has a learning curve but it's ridiculously versatile as a player.
Edited by Impulse - 3/16/13 at 1:26am
MM's got very nice/intuitive library and batch tools, and Amazon's album art library is ridiculous (also helps that it lets you check foreign Amazon sites). Ripping your discs properly with EAC and archiving them into ALAC is really the biggest step, the rest is all pretty intuitive.
I actually keep two copies of my library, might as well since keeping a permanent MP3 transcode of the lossless library takes an insignificant amount of space in addition to the lossless files... I mostly play the FLAC files at the PC and the MP3 everywhere else. You'll probably never hear a difference if you use a high enough bitrate for the MP3s but it still makes a lot of sense to rip to FLAC/ALAC for archival purposes... Think of lossless like a virtual CD and MP3 like a cassette tape.
You can remix and manipulate one without losing anything, with the other you've already lost some info so any future transcode/edit loses even more... Lossless is like a zip archive, regular compression that retains everything. MP3's more like a JPEG... Every time it's saved it's altered.
Anyway, MM's a nice multi-tool, cursinchecking out... Tho if you're going with ALAC you're probably already married to iTunes. EAC's definitely the standard for ripping, and foobar has a learning curve but it's ridiculously versatile as a player.
Edited by Impulse - 3/16/13 at 1:26am
