How to archive my collection?

[Budgie]

I have over 1000 cd's I want to move to hard drive. In view of that I have set up a network media server (2.8 ghz Dell SC1420) running Windows Home Server. I have 1.5 T-byte of storage available on it. Looks like enough room to do it all as wav files. And it's easy to add more. So far so good?

I have started testing by ripping from my 2.4ghz pentium desktop pc over my wired network to the server. EAC seems to take forever to rip this way. (edit- seems the slowness was mainly when ripping to flac or WMA lossles)

I guess my question are-
Should I rip at the server's DVD drive instead of over the network?
Is there a better option then EAC ? (Faster but reliable?)
Should I rip to a different format? (no need for portable/compressed formats)
Anybody else currently using Windows Home Server have any pointers for me?

Thanks in advance!!

 

[MrSlim]

You definitely should rip them directly on the server. If you are ripping them and saving them to a network share, then the network transfer will slow you down.
EAC is the defacto standard for high quality ripping, as it reads the disk blocks twice and compares, then reads again if there is a miss comparison, so it can be quite a bit slower, but you are guaranteed the best quality data. Im using a prog on Linux called Ruby Ripper that does the same thing as EAC. I was surprised how many times it found errors.
As for different formats, you could use FLAC(my fave) which is lossless, but still compresses some (to about 30% of original size I think.. but don't quote me) to save you space and transfer size.
Since I'm rather anti windows, I can't help on the Windows server side. If its a typical Microsoft product, its probably bloated and slower than the alternatives (something based on Linux or BSD) . Im planning on setting up a server based on a FreeNAS (which is a derivative of MonoWall, a BSD based firewall distribution) with the Slimserver extension. Small, light, runs off a Compact flash card, with a 500 GB drive in a small quiet box..

 

[scompton]

I use EAC. I rip to a USB drive and it's slow.

Instead of ripping to the network drive, an option is to rip to your local drive and after a ripping session, move everything you've ripped to the network drive. I do something similar to this. I rip to ALAC using EAC and itunesencoder. The last thing I do for the night when I'm finished ripping, is have iTune convert everything I ripped to AAC for my iPod. I end up with everything in ALAC and AAC. AAC is for my iPod only, ALAC is for archive and listening at my computer.

What format to rip to depends on how you intend to play it back, or burn it to CD if it is truly just an archive. Your choices are ALAC, which is Apple only, or FLAC, which is playable in foobar, winamp, and others. Don't do WAV. Not only does it waste space, but it doesn't use ID3 tags. WAV would only be for a true archive that will only be used to burn to CDs if you loose your CD collection.

 

[breakfastchef]

Here is what I am doing. I use EAC or MediaMonkey to rip CDs to FLAC and save them to my external hard drive on a desktop PC. As Mrslim points out, FLAC files are smaller than WAV files. I know that EAC can be slow, so consider using MediaMonkey (free, by the way). It is much faster.

The external hard drive feeds my music wirelessly to a Logitech Squeezebox. I can connect the Squeezebox to my stereo system or put it at bedside running the coax out to an iBasso D1 and finally into my HD525's

I archive the FLAC files on the external hard drive to another external hard drive for safekeeping. This hard drive is removed from the PC and stored in my desk drawer until I add new music.

With the FLAC files in place, I can create playlists for the Squeezebox and convert tunes to high-rate mp3's for use on my portable digital audio player.

 

[Tarkovsky]

Using lossless compression is little different from zipping and unzipping, no affect on the file, except of course it's done on the fly. There's no argument for using unpacked pcm such as wav or aiff in terms of quality, as the same bitstream will reach the dac (assuming the player handles both correctly).

 

[craigmcg]

There are several excellent rippers and players out there (I use EAC, dBPoweramp, Foobar and J River Media Center). I'm a newb compared to some of the people here but I totally agree that you will get faster results if you rip to a local drive then move the files. One thing that is very important to me is the ability to tag- something that is not possible with wav. I suggest that you use a lossless format like FLAC, ALAC, APE, etc. because then you can tag and using these tags, organize your collection and create playlists.

 

[Budgie]

So rip to flac from the server drive sounds like the right thing to do. Now I just need to figure out how to get EAC to do this without a hassle. (web search time!)

MrSlim- I took a stab at switching to Linux. I'm just not smart enough to get it figured out. No problem for desktop use, but setting up a server and doing all the required tweaking defeated me.

later that same day....) Easy to rip to flac with Jet Audio Player. Seems fast too. Easy to set up. Now if it will install to Home Server

 

[krrm]

There has been some reports of file corruption on Windows Home Server so it could be an idea to have a backup (imo the original cd's are only a valid backup if you have plenty of spare time).
Microsoft addresses Windows Home Server file corruption, promises fix - Engadget

 

[Budgie]

krrm- better info at-
What’s the real story on the Windows Home Server data corruption bug? | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com
Not a problem for me luckily.

I have Jet Audio player running on the server and after getting my file path correct, it is working fine. It's not any faster then ripping over my little network from my desktop machine, though. Now I can look at some other rippers and see if the process can be streamlined a bit.

 

[analogbox]

Easy CD-DA Extracter is fast and reliable and can rip to any format with no problem. I use EAC to rip to wav and use the mentioned program to convert to whatever format I want.

 

[Budgie]

Isn't Easy CD-DA Extractor a free trial pay to use program? (Or am I looking at the wrong ripper?)

 

[scompton]

EAC is Exact Audio Copy if that's what your looking for, and it's free. You also have to download FLAC.exe from FLAC - Free Lossless Audio Codec Here's a tutorial Exact Audio Copy Guide

 

[analogbox]

You can download it to try out but I think they'll restrict the rip speed or what not until you pay for it.

 

[krrm]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Budgie /img/forum/go_quote.gif krrm- better info at- What’s the real story on the Windows Home Server data corruption bug? | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com Not a problem for me luckily.

All is ok then, I just remembered I read something about it and took the first link of google.

 

[scompton]

Quote:

Originally Posted by analogbox /img/forum/go_quote.gif You can download it to try out but I think they'll restrict the rip speed or what not until you pay for it.

Are you talking about EAC? I always thought it was freeware. I get fast rip speeds unless there are errors.