Transfer of my entire CD collection on to Hard Drive

Why would on espend 1000 EUR for a ripping solution where he would need a PC anyway to access the WHS. So he might as well use the PC for ripping. I have to admit though that the kit looks quite sexy for a ripNAS´...

SBFX uses a small Atom based PC running the open source Vortexbox software. Configured for automatic ripping and portable enough to carry around.
I have asked him for the full specs and will post.
Brilliant solution.

msb1 schrieb:

SBFX uses a small Atom based PC running the open source Vortexbox software. Configured for automatic ripping and portable enough to carry around. I have asked him for the full specs and will post. Brilliant solution.

This is @ my place;
Have been using it for a while.
Interesting.
Just gets too boring after a bit, too mechanical a process.
But, it gets the job done.
So it is good - I guess....

Revisting this thread again.

It appears that the spdif signal that you get from the digital out of a transport and what you get through the USB out of a computer are a bit different. Of course what you get out through the USB needs to be converted to spdif using an asynchronous usb to spdif converter.

The signal coming out of a computer can be controlled by the player’s volume control/DSP etc... So the quality of the signal is dependent on the DSP implementation of the software player, the OS etc…. Is this one of the reasons why different players give you different quality ?

What is kernel streaming ?

While people do PC audio, I have seen that the windows mixer, volume control has control over the sound. I mean you can play around with the equalizer in foobar etc…..
If on does Kernel streaming, it seems one can bypass all this.

From Jriver’s website:

Kernel Streaming is a hardware direct way to speak directly to a WDM audio driver. Jriver Media Center 15.0.6 (and later) adds support for Kernel Streaming output. Kernel Streaming is a hardware direct, bit-perfect method of communicating with an audio device. It bypasses any Windows mixing. It holds the card exclusively so other programs can not play music over the top or change the sample rate.

Also, you can't control the volume (at least within Windows), it's a fixed level output direct to your W4S DAC2 that goes over async USB.

Any thoughts ? Is this the way to go ??

Amp_Nut schrieb:

HO said : Think about a function and some good man has made a plug in for it. I know that this is somewhat off to[ic, but anyone know of a Foobar Spectrum display that goes down to 10 Hz or 20 Hz ? The standard spectrum display starts at 50 Hz.....

Chk this plugin for what you were asking for...

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=61145
http://wiki.hydrogen...eakmeter_spectrum%29

Thanks

HP

Hello,
Thought of reviveing an old thread. I am planning to convert my CD collection to computer based playback system. It would be helpfull if you all can guide me on how to implement it.

1. Format and software to be used for copying CD to hdd
2. How should the HDD directories be organised.
3. I should be able to retrieve entire Albums, induvidual songs based on title, artist etc.

Ani,

Great to see some revival here.

If you use a PC ( and dont belong to the 'Far Side' ) I would strongly recommend EAC ( Exact Audio Copy) to rip your CDs.

It is freeware and simply superb.

2. MOST IMPORTANT ( You dont want to re-rip yr collection, so do it right the 1st time), rip all your CDs ONLY as an Image ( IMG) which is the 3rd icon on the left of the EAC screen.

This will rip yr CD into 2 Files:

i. A single Wav file for the entire CD ( The file will be Big approx 600 MB per 60 minute CD )
ii. A Cue sheet / file . This is a small file that is like the index page of a book. It lists the exact second where each song starts and concludes, serially. It also includes details of the artist, CD title, Name of each track etc.
You can open / view the cue sheet in a text editor like Notepad.

The benefit of a IMG file is that it Completely preserves EVERY detail of the original CD. You can burn a copy CD from the image ( any standard CD Burning software will do - Nero, Ashampoo etc ) and the burn CD will be Identical to the original. It will be recognised as the original disc, yielding you ALL details thru Free Databases on the net ( EAC also looks up these automatically ).

You can directly play the image + Cue sheet in Foobar and a variety of software, and even show the CD Album art when the disc is being played.

Yes, Foobar will built up its entire database automatically from all the Cue Sheets in the specified location. Then you can search and play songs or entire discs or search by artist, with foobar instantly.


PLEASE, PLEASE PLEASE do NOT butcher yr rips by ripping individual songs. You can never reburn then as the original disc.

Also, there was a long, 3 part series in Absolute Sound on this topic. FWIW, Absolute Sound insists that a WAV file played back sounds so much better than a FLAC, that it IS worth re-ripping your entire collection if you ripped as FLAC to begin with.

If you want to read those articles, please E-Mail me.


I know, I know.... there are a LOT of staunch fans of J River as playback and ripping software, including zero compression FLAC which will also store Meta Data....

Would be nice to hear their views

Hi ampnut

You did mention about the img file to me earlier and it makes a lot of sense.

Now about ripping software, I have heard differences in the playback but ripping quality of itunes, foobar(the two that I use), seem to be the same. They also have the same byte count. So for now I am of the opinion that ripping between the above two has identical results.

Would it be any different with any other ripper ?

Manek

Hi Manek,

When EAC encounters a problem in the read, while ripping, it keeps going back repeatedly, till it gets a good read.

iTunes will accept the wrong data, save it as if it was good data and move on!

As a result the file sizes will be identical but the itunes rip wikll have some garbage.

Try this experiment with a CD which has surface blemishes.

When I first started using EAC, I remember trying to rip the STEREOPHILE Test CD. As copyright priotection, this CD has intentional errors built in.

iTune would not rip it.

EAC kept reading and re reading it. Just for kicks I left it on overnight, and the next morning, I was presented with a Pristine rip ( without the copyright protection errors). I could then burn that EAC Rip as I pleased :-)

Just a demonstration of the Great Job that EAC does.

Hi ampnut

I have tried it a while ago with a bad cd also(kenny burrel 75th bday bash was one of them). The cd is full of scratches and blemishes. I have played it too often for its own good. No audible effect. Btw I tunes also has error correction option but am not sure how persistent it is. Now what one needs to do is try it with a very old cd rom and see.

Now I also have a few rips done by EAC(by a friend but I haven't started to use eac personally) and compared it to a foobar/itunes rip and they sound much the same. Ofcourse I will never know where the itunes gave up and where the eac didn't unless I do a detailed comparision of the two with a software.

I am not trying to undermine the eac or what it does as I know how it works and have really high regards for its reputation. Its just that I can't tell much of a diff in the rips when I hear them. With a EAC one is sure the program did its best and that when compared to other similar rips in the database, one is sure of the accuracy of the same.

Regards

Manek