What's The Best Way To Rip my 1,500 CDs

My preferred ripper is XLD.

I would avoid using WAV format. On a Mac it does not store metadata which means if you move your files elsewhere the only labels you will see are filenames. I'd go for a lossless format which if you stick with iTunes (or its next generation equivalent) means ALAC.

I recently ripped my CD collection of about 3,000 CDs. I initially started ripping them to WAV but soon discovered the meta data does not travel with the actual files. I set up iTunes to import to Apple Lossless (ALAC). After importing all the CDs, it is easy to convert them to MP3 using iTunes or any one of a bunch of other apps.

My only advice is to use the fastest CD drive you can get your hands on. My superdrive is pretty slow but I had another CD drive available and it was 3x faster than the superdrive. Take your time because it will take several days or more depending on how much time you want to spend in front of your computer.

The key word is "lossless". WAV, AIFF, and ALAC can reproduce exactly the same audio information. You can even convert from one to the other dozens of times with no loss of fidelity, however ALAC has the best metadata support and the smallest files.

iTunes should remember your previously chosen import settings from one session to the next.

See Grouping tracks into albums for some background on iTunes organization. Pay attention to any discrepancies as you rip each album. These are much easier to fix from the outset than resolve later.

tt2

Formats such as AIFF and WAV keep all the information but do not compress, and produce large files.

ALAC and FLAC (the latter not supported by iTunes) compress the data but do not lose any information. They are the same as WAV and AIFF, just smaller.

AAC and MP3 produce the smallest files but do so by compressing the data and trimming parts through a complicated set of processing. These are "lossy" formats.

It depends upon what you plan to do with your various files. Which formats are best depend upon your specific circumstances. I rip all my CDs to both FLAC (been doing this since long before ALAC was around) and MP3. FLAC I put on a a couple of archive drives should something happen to my CD collection, but I almost never listen to the FLAC files. I keep MP3 (again because I have been doing this for a long time and some of my hardware such as our car player is happier with MP3) for daily iTunes and other use.

Almost no music software cares about the filenames and the physical layout on disc. What matters is that the metadata makes sense. iTunes only has one layout that it uses, though you are of course free to use other software for ripping or make the effort to move files around as you see fit after the fact. Making additional rips at a lower bitrate seems to be making extra work for yourself given that iTunes can reduce the bitrate on the fly when you sync to a device.

tt2

You seem gung-ho on using WAV so go ahead and do it, but the one thing the rest of us all have in common in our comments is WAV is the worst of the formats to use. If you need WAV files at some later stage then just convert your ALAC files to WAV. There will be no difference (oh, I am sure if you search the Internet you will find a blog saying that an original WAV file and one made from ALAC are only 99.9999999999% identical) .

If you give away the CDs then your collection is technically pirated music.

KITT2010 wrote:

Again, I want to give me CDs away as I do not want to have to lug around my collection of over 1,500 CDs in their jewel cases. I only want to keep the rare CDs and give away the rest. But I still want that high resolution file, that's the intended purpose.

As Limnos noted, if you give away the CDs, by law, you need to delete the files you ripped. Pack the CDs in a box, ditching the jewel boxes for paper sleeves if you really want to reduce size and waste. Think of them as an additional back up.

I did the initial rip to Apple lossless. From there you can do mp3 or AAC and at a much faster rate. That means selecting the entire Apple lossless library and encoding to say AAC320 and all at one time and just walk away from the computer for a while.Just for relativity, a 4 minute song in Apple lossless will be about 24 megs, AAC 320 about 12 and MP3 320 about 4 (a huge loss of data).