Poll about ripping CDs

[RayB]

Poll! I have at least 4 hundred CDs. Until yesterday, I had only bothered to rip a handful of them. I'm curious about others' ripping habits. (See above poll)

It was sparkd by both the question of wasting disk space for stuff I don't listen to (though really, we're talking about only 22gb) and how it bothers me a little to have incomplete albums on my ipod.

 

[Neverending Project]

I think I'm somewhere in between the first two options, if that's possible. I like to have my entire collection digitized, so I lean toward ripping everything. But there are some CDs I own that I know I wont want to listen to, and I won't want showing up in any shuffles. But if I like any track on the album, it all gets digitized. So for the most part, I want a complete library, but only CDs that I like at least one track.

[shmokes]

I marked rip everything, but I more or less agree with NP.  If you are sure that you have a disc that you will never ever listen to, just get rid of it.  If, on the off chance, you change your mind down the road about a song on the disc it's easy enough to acquire it, legally or illegally.  But if you like one song, you should get them all.  BTW, I digitized all my music years ago.  One day, after about 4 or 5 years I looked at my CD collection, which was incredibly dusty, and I thought, "That's taking up space for no good reason.  Why the ---fudgesicle--- am I keeping all of this around?"  So I took it to a CD shop and sold it all.  I was thinking I'd walk away with $30 or so.  I walked away with $209, if memory serves.  And they only bought maybe 1/3 of my collection.  The guy helping me was a serious collector, and he was horrified that I was voluntarily parting with some of these CDs.  For example, I had a Hendrix CD from before his family took over his estate and apparently had everything remastered or something.  I don't remember.  Anyway, after the CD store bought 1/3 or so of my collection I let him go through and take anything he wanted for himself.  You should have seen him.  It was like he had won the lottery.  It was really fun.

ps I know that this was illegal.

[SavannahLion]

ps I know that this was illegal.

OK....

As long as you're aware of it. It's just annoying when people say it's legal and try to partially quote some obscure, unrelated, law to justify their actions. ---smurfing--- just grow some balls and own up to it. Sounds like you've done that.

To answer the OP, I might be #2,

Rip only CDs I like. The rest can always be ripped later, if I want.

At one point, I set up my Linux box to auto-rip any audio CD I popped in. So it was reasonably easy to digitize anything I listened to.

[javeryh]

I have about 1500 CDs (my wife had a lot before we got married - we actually gave about 150 duplicates to my sister) and over the past year I painstakingly ripped and tagged all of them to 2 external hard drives.  My iPod can't possibly hold everything so I am selective about what goes on there but it's always full albums - I don't have the time or the patience to sort song by song and if I like an artist I can generally tolerate 80% of whatever is on the CD.  I digitized everything for a jukebox project that I still have to finish.   

About 3 years ago I decided my collection was taking up way too much space so I bought some leather bound books to hold them all (300 to a book) and they are now on the top shelf of my front hall closet for (somewhat) easy access.  The cases are in boxes in my basement.  I haven't so much as opened one of the boxes since I put the CDs in the books but I'm hanging on to them for now.  I figure maybe my son will get into some "classic rock" like Nirvana, Pearl Jam or Alice In Chains (damn I'm old) and want to listen with the liner notes like I used to do.

[wp34]

I have about 1500 CDs (my wife had a lot before we got married - we actually gave about 150 duplicates to my sister) and over the past year I painstakingly ripped and tagged all of them to 2 external hard drives.  My iPod can't possibly hold everything so I am selective about what goes on there but it's always full albums - I don't have the time or the patience to sort song by song and if I like an artist I can generally tolerate 80% of whatever is on the CD.  I digitized everything for a jukebox project that I still have to finish.   

About 3 years ago I decided my collection was taking up way too much space so I bought some leather bound books to hold them all (300 to a book) and they are now on the top shelf of my front hall closet for (somewhat) easy access.  The cases are in boxes in my basement.  I haven't so much as opened one of the boxes since I put the CDs in the books but I'm hanging on to them for now.  I figure maybe my son will get into some "classic rock" like Nirvana, Pearl Jam or Alice In Chains (damn I'm old) and want to listen with the liner notes like I used to do.

I don't have that many CD's but we did the same thing.  We put most of our DVD's in leather cases as well.  Takes up much less space.

[Silas (son of Silas)]

I ripped all my physical media a while back (both CDs and DVDs) onto a media server that feeds all the rooms in my house via XBMC. I have about 4tb of music and movies that is constantly growing.

I created a script that ripped the disc to an .ISO image, then added it to a queue for processing. That way I could queue up loads of CDs or DVDs at once then the server would just sit and process the CDs into MP3s and the DVDs into XvID without me having to wait for them. It made the process hugely more achievable than ripping discs 1 by 1.

[RayB]

Shmokes: What happens if you lose the data somehow?

[Ginsu Victim]

Shmokes: What happens if you lose the data somehow?

This was the thought that prevented me from ever trying what he suggested.

[J_K_M_A_N]

I used to have every CD ripped with every song but the wife and I would listen and we would have to jump all the time. So we went through and deleted a whole bunch of songs and we kept only the songs at least one of us would listen to. We deleted about 1200 songs. Looking back I think I should have saved those just in case and just not have them in the main list. Maybe listen to them when I am bored and want to find something new.

J_K_M_A_N

[ark_ader]

I did this and it took more than 3 weeks non stop ( I had time on my hands....) and realized that made my CD player redundant.

I missed my CD player and taking the time to pop in a disc and relax.

[shmokes]

Shmokes: What happens if you lose the data somehow?

This was the thought that prevented me from ever trying what he suggested.

It's no different than any of my other data, some of which is far far far FAR FAR FAR more important than my music collection.  I keep my data backed up.  It's that simple.  But original discs make a poor backup both because a CD can only hold 650 MB of data and because the uncompressed music on the CD takes up way more space than the corresponding MP3s.

[Ginsu Victim]

I still like having the case, artwork, booklet, etc.

[shmokes]

I thought so too, until I realized I hadn't opened or looked at a single one in years and they were all covered in dust.  I mean, I still miss it a little bit.  And they're kind of symbolic of the collection.  But honestly it's nice sometimes to get that ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- out of your life.  Like, it's tough to let go of because you might wish you had it some day or something, but that's just the pack rat talking.  Getting rid of that stuff is cathartic.  Declutter.  Simplify.  You think you want it, but really . . . what is it doing for you?  What purpose is it serving?  You have it to have it.

Or not.  Maybe you make more use of your CDs and their manuals than I did.

[RayB]

Yeah, reason i asked is a friend of my brother ripped all her CDs, gave the CDs away, then a year later lost everything in a HD crash. Heh

I really like shmokes' attitude though. I tend to accumulate useless stuff. It really hits you when you move and find yourself dumping vanloads. Takes a retraining of ones thought process. Usually the problem is rationalizing a use for X or a value.

[saint]

I haven't bought a CD in years. All the music I buy is digital now. Amazon or iTunes.

[drventure]

I kept the liner notes and cd cover art, tucked it into the leather binders with the cds and sold all the cases to some girl for 20$ (there were hundreds).

Just keep lots of good backups and maybe an offsite backup or two. I +could+ rerip everything, but it would take a LONG time.

Plus, i ripped piles of LP's that I've never been able to find on CD (old obscure 80's techno/industrial). That truly DID take forever 

[shmokes]

Yeah . . . I ripped my father-in-law's old vinyl collection for a Christmas gift a long time ago, back before there was hardware and software that semi-automate the process.  His record player had been broken for almost a year so he didn't even notice that we took them.  I hooked a record player up to the computer and just had to play the records and record the output.  A single file for each side of the record.  Then we had to go through and manually chop them up into individual tracks in a music editor (just look for the sound wave to flatline) and tag them.  Then my wife created front and back liners for full-size CD jewel cases and CD labels.  I can't remember whether we printed the labels directly on the discs, or if this was before printers could do that and we had to use a CD Stomper to affix sticky labels to them. 

At any rate, it took a couple of months and a lot of work and a lot of time (just to let the record player run through about 80 or 90 albums that had to be babysat to some degree to stop the recording, flip the record and then start the recording again, etc.).  But it was amazing.  When he opened the present he just looked perplexed.  Then he looked even more perplexed and he started pulling the discs out one-by-one.  And when it finally dawned on him what it was he wouldn't stop smiling and laughing about it all week.  Was prob the best gift I ever put together for someone.

[t3design]

I answered "rip everything" because I did/do.

Being obsessive/compulsive is a problem when it comes to music collections. If I like an artist I not only have to have the whole album ripped, I have to have every  track off every album that artist ever recorded. 

To date I have about 4TB of music mostly ripped at 320 but lately I have switched to VBR.

I too back-up ALL my data to NAS RaidX drives on the home network and then once a quarter I back those up to Portable HDs and move those to work where I store them in our vault. The music is probably the least of my worries for data loss. It is ALL replaceable. Since we have been taking only digital pictures and video now for several years, it is the memorabilia files that are priceless.


 

[SavannahLion]

To date I have about 4TB of music mostly ripped at 320 but lately I have switched to VBR.

I find VBR files to be hideous. Some of my earliest music was ripped with VBR and they cause no end of troubles for a certain Windows player and some lesser known players. I've taken to just installing whatever other third party player (VLC whenever possible) instead of dealing with some moronic player that can't play back VBR files. I've even taken to having VLC on a USB stick just to avoid the whole hassle whenever I go somewhere.

I too back-up ALL my data to NAS RaidX drives on the home network and then once a quarter I back those up to Portable HDs and move those to work where I store them in our vault. The music is probably the least of my worries for data loss. It is ALL replaceable. Since we have been taking only digital pictures and video now for several years, it is the memorabilia files that are priceless.

++1

[Silas (son of Silas)]

Shmokes: What happens if you lose the data somehow?

I have several ways of addressing this. For my essential data such as documents, family photo's and the like I use my free 'ubuntu one' account to keep a copy in the cloud. and also I have a USB memory stick in the back of my server that I use rsync to keep a local copy.

For my music and movies I capitalize on the fact that my friend who lives about 130 miles from here and I have VERY similar tastes and both our media servers use rsync over SSH to keep a copy of all my movies and music on his server and vice versa. We are both with the same cable broadband ISP with 20mbs connections. At most we add a couple of movies and a CD a week to the collection, so syncing isn't a big deal. The initial sync was done by taking my server to his house and syncing across his LAN. Occasionally one of us has a movie or CD that the other doesn't like, but its a small price to pay.

Prior to having the sync set up I had a motherboard with 6 SATAII connections, with 2 logical groups defined, with 2 logical volumes (not RAID, I just relied on the fact that a disc failure in each LG simultaneously was unlikely.) I then used rsync to keep the data between the two LVs synchronized.

[Ginsu Victim]

Holy crap, why did no one tell me about this sooner?!?

http://www.grooveshark.com/

[javeryh]

Holy crap, why did no one tell me about this sooner?!?

http://www.grooveshark.com/

We are getting closer and closer to "Computer!  Sir Mix-A-Lot.  Baby Got Back.  Make it so!"

[Ginsu Victim]

Yeah, it seems even the internet owns an iPod now.

[RayB]

Holy crap, why did no one tell me about this sooner?!?

http://www.grooveshark.com/

Because there are hundreds of sites like that out there. (Though to be fair, one of the best known ones, Imeem, got killed off by Myspace).

[RayB]

Offtopic, but it would appear a 16 gb ipod is not enough for my collection. 

[Silas (son of Silas)]

Holy crap, why did no one tell me about this sooner?!?

http://www.grooveshark.com/

Now this.... I like 

[koolmoecraig]

Apple really needs to make it possible to delete songs directly from an Ipod.  Just sayin'

[Ginsu Victim]

Apple really needs to make it possible to delete songs directly from an Ipod.  Just sayin'

Yeah, I hear ya. I like to kill something off if I don't like it or if I've watched an episode of something already.