I see.
Probably too complicated in that I would screw up which was which and thus mess up my library.
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I'm redoing my entire iTunes library
- Thread starter themoonisdown09
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Probably too complicated in that I would screw up which was which and thus mess up my library.
Use this Applescript, no need for two libraries. Works like a dream.
That might work if you have a desktop and an iPod, but I store all my Apple Lossless files on an external drive. I have a MBP and a shuffle, so two libraries is the way to go for me. One library on the MBP in 128kB, the other on the external for archiving and connecting to home stereo. It is kind of a pain in the butt to add one album to two libraries, but it's worth it to have everything available in both situations.
I quite like the idea of a separate lossless library as a backup purely in case one of my CDs is damaged. I'm thinking I could set up a separate user account on my Mac just for ripping them to a separate library. Here's how it would work:
1) Buy a new CD for my collection.
2) Log onto special Mac account ("MusicArchive") which automatically brings up iTunes set to rip losslessly as soon as a CD is inserted.
3) Insert CD which is ripped and then spat out.
4) Log off special Mac account.
5) Log onto normal Mac account where my current, compact (lossy), "everyday listening" iTunes library is.
6) Rip the CD again
7) Do all the obsessive tag-tweaking and artwork stuff that I normally do.
Then, when disaster strikes - and I need to make a duplicate of a damaged original CD - I can just log onto the Archive account and burn it. Done.
I suppose, in the future, I'll acquire ipods/phones big enough to hold the lossless files. At that point I'd start migrating the big "Archive" rips into my everyday-listening account.
Downside?
This is step-by-step what I did for the last two years. I was ultimately unsatisfied with it because I could never easily bring those tracks into my primary iTunes library without losing playcounts and metadata - which are almost as important to me as file quality.
Last year, it occured to me that I could reimport my whole library as Lossless, "uncheck" the songs with one or fewer plays via a smart playlist, and still get the rest on my iPod. As iPod capacity increases, I would be able to eventually keep everything on my iPod. (Of course, that was prior to the SHRINKAGE of iPod capacity. I was assuming at the time that we would have a 240Gb or 320GB iPod in near future. Silly me.)
My library consists of about 1100 CD albums and about 500 CD-singles/EP's, totally about 17,000 tracks. With the albums ripped into lossless (which I finished last week), the library is about 290GB. I expect it to be around 350GB when finished.
This is the fourth time I have ripped my CD collection. I hope, now, I will never have to do it again:
2001- All at 192 MP3
2003- All at 192 AAC
2006- All in Lossless for archive.
2008- All in Lossless for primary library.
Naturally, I keep everything backed-up on an external HD.
I get most album art these days from Google images. The sites that are mentioned here look promising for the few I was never happy with.
My rule on compilations is something of a hybird. I always hated scrolling though dozens and dozens of artists that had only one track in my library, so when I reimported, I left "compilations" checked unless I had other tracks by an artist in the library. (This also helps elimiate duplicate tracks). This keeps the album together when searching by album, but doesn't clutter up the artist list with a bunch of one-offs.
This of course is only meant to apply to "sampler" compilations. Greatest Hits or Live albums (which are usually marked as compilations) were detagged.
Thanks for the info.
I may try that.
Interesting.
Guess I have some thinking to do.
I just finished ripping my 40th CD today. I'm proud of myself.
It's not too bad right now because I start ripping a CD and then I do other work on my computer, but I can see this getting very old in the next couple weeks.
It's not too bad right now because I start ripping a CD and then I do other work on my computer, but I can see this getting very old in the next couple weeks.
If i was doing this, i would be doing it on a Seperate iTunes Library/User Account/Machine, and keep the CD's as apart as possible for done and not done, and once all the CD's are in the Done Pile, Swap iTunes libraries for the new better one.
My Music is quite low bitrate sometimes, i blame the people that rip them, because my rips are 320k (Hint Hint)
My Music is quite low bitrate sometimes, i blame the people that rip them, because my rips are 320k (Hint Hint)
It gets old ripping.
I remember my original rip of my collection. Seemed to take forever.
Just have to keep thinking about the end result.
I'm only 2 days into this process and I've already noticed that I'm missing some CDs. I don't like that. I'll be upset if I have to go out and buy them all over again.
Oh well...
Oh well...
Reading this thread made me really happy... not specifically because of all the stories about people's libraries being deleted, losing cds, or having to re-rip libraries but just because I've gone through this all myself and it was good to know that other people are as obsessed with maintaining their digital library as I am.
I'll take this one step further. Like many of you, I have now moved to ripping in lossless format. I take the CD, rip it in Apple lossless, add the relevant info*, then find the album's folder, and move it onto the desktop.
I will then re-rip the lossless copy as 256kbps AAC to keep in my library/ipod/etc. The reason I move the original folder is so that the tracks don't end up being '06 Gone Away 1.mp4'.
The lossless folder then gets renamed with the band name and year of the album and copied off to my NAS and external drive (duplicating it). The CDs get scanned into Delicious Library and then put into a box. I figure one day when I don't have a laptop I might consider making an iTunes library with all of the lossless as the default music, but for now the 256kbps is more than sufficient for what I need (even with a decent stereo system).
* The relevant info is where I might be going over-board and is likely the reason that I'll spend 5-6 days importing CDs and then stop for a week or two. After the lossless copy is imported I will add the producer, label and recording location (assuming I can find all of that info) to the Comments section and THEN add the BPM for each track. I do this to the lossless copy so that if I ever have to re-rip I don't need to go looking for/adding this information again.
I'll take this one step further. Like many of you, I have now moved to ripping in lossless format. I take the CD, rip it in Apple lossless, add the relevant info*, then find the album's folder, and move it onto the desktop.
I will then re-rip the lossless copy as 256kbps AAC to keep in my library/ipod/etc. The reason I move the original folder is so that the tracks don't end up being '06 Gone Away 1.mp4'.
The lossless folder then gets renamed with the band name and year of the album and copied off to my NAS and external drive (duplicating it). The CDs get scanned into Delicious Library and then put into a box. I figure one day when I don't have a laptop I might consider making an iTunes library with all of the lossless as the default music, but for now the 256kbps is more than sufficient for what I need (even with a decent stereo system).
* The relevant info is where I might be going over-board and is likely the reason that I'll spend 5-6 days importing CDs and then stop for a week or two. After the lossless copy is imported I will add the producer, label and recording location (assuming I can find all of that info) to the Comments section and THEN add the BPM for each track. I do this to the lossless copy so that if I ever have to re-rip I don't need to go looking for/adding this information again.
Just FWIW, I was doing some more blind listening tests at the weekend. I ripped one track from a CD multiple times in each of the following formats:
MP3 16kbps
MP3 32kbps
MP3 64kbps
MP3 128kbps
MP3 256kbps
MP3 320kbps
AAC 16kbps
AAC 32kbps
AAC 64kbps
AAC 128kbps
AAC 256kbps
AAC 320kbps
Apple Lossless
AIFF
WAV
Fifteen rips in all. I then named the tracks as above to clearly show their encoding and stuck them all on my iphone.
Listening (using my new in-ear 'phones) was quite a revelation. I created an on the go playlist which always contained the Apple Lossless rip and one other. I set the playlist to repeat and started listening. I'd then rapidly hit FF a random number of times without looking at the screen and start listening. Maybe 10 seconds in, I'd hit FF and start listening to the other track. Hit FF again and back to the original - and so on, back and forth, a few times. I'd then try to figure out which was the lossless one.
I was good up to MP3 128kbps (constant bitrate): I could identify lossless 2 out of three times - but it was a close thing. Above that bitrate I couldn't tell the difference!
It's also very interesting comparing the 16 and 32 kbps rips of MP3 and AAC. You can definitely hear that AAC is better - something that isn't so easy to discern at the higher bitrates (for me, anyway)
Definitely worth trying this yourself. It takes about an hour to set up. If nothing else, you get a set of very useful reference rips stored in your itunes library. And the next time someone asks you, "what's the difference between 128 and 256", you can say "here, listen."
About a decade ago (before I had any hardware capable of ripping CD's) i lost about 30 CD's --- i left the case on the trunk of my car
I can sympathize. I went away for college in Hawaii and after 2 years came back home. I remembered most of my stuff - save for the 200 CD organizer I originally took with me. Needless to say, it was fully stocked with original, store bought CDs by the time I left. This was in 2001 and I'd say 30% of the albums are now out of print.
I have done that myself. Not quite as extensive as your tests, I only used AAC and went with 128, 192, 256, 320 and Apple Lossless. I didn't even do a full track, just a 30 second clip of a song I knew really well. I played the clips on my grados, my in-ears, portapros, my laptop, my apple hifi (yeah that's right, i bought one of those), and my home audio system. It was awhile ago so I can't remember exactly what the results were but the conclusion I drew was that I could tell the 128 rip (at least frequently enough to rule it out) from the rest but other than that they all sounded comparable. Occasionally I got the lossless right, but not enough to make me think I could really tell. In the interest of picking a middle ground I went with 256. I figured that 320 was overkill but for whatever reason still couldn't drop it down to 192.
I did something similar, but not quite as extensive. Surprising at the results.
I ended up settling on MP3, 256Kbps, True Stereo.
Wouldn't it make more sense to do the extensive info tagging and cover adding before you log in to your second account and then just manually add the new lossless folder to iTunes (switching off "adding to library" for the moment), re-rip the files to AAC and delete the lossless files afterwards? I think this should preserve the tags and cover images, just in case you lose large parts of your AAC library.
As to ripping, you can change the setting to
- rip when disk is inserted
- eject cd when done
Use a firewire external DESKTOP optical drive. Much quicker. Typically few minutes per cd.
You need better speakers.
- rip when disk is inserted
- eject cd when done
Use a firewire external DESKTOP optical drive. Much quicker. Typically few minutes per cd.
You need better speakers.
I was trying to delay having to re-tag 6000 tracks (I'm lazy - "never put off till tomorow what you can do the day after
) The lossless library would serve primarily as insurance that if an original CD is lost or damaged I'd be be able to make a perfect copy. Insert rip, insert rip, insert rip is all the time I can spare right now.That said, your suggestion got me thinking. How about I duplicate my current (lossy-but-perfectly-tagged) library into the special MusicArchive account and then rip losslessly over the top of that to preserve current tags?
Alternatively, I could just leave the lossless library with messy tags for however many years it takes Apple to release an iphone that can hold it all in lossless. At that point, I'd discard my losdless library (it was just an insurance policy, right?) and rip in lossless over the top of my everyday-listening (lossy) library.
Bottom line: I'm lazy. I want insurance, and I don't want a lot of work. And I want as much music on my phone as possible
Bottom line: I'm lazy. I want insurance, and I don't want a lot of work. And I want as much music on my phone as possible
I am sure we all do.
That's why I'm glad you went Loseless. Imagine doing this again in 2 or 3 years if you had went with 256 kbps AAC. Just do it right the first time and don't repeat again hopefully for a really long time.
I'll let the people who know the answer give you the proper answer but for some reason I would think it would depend on the player you use? That's an interesting question. Obviously with ALAC you'd only be able to use iTunes, but I wonder if an AIFF file would sound different if played by iTunes, Quicktime, VLC, etc etc (assuming that all the cables, etc remain the same) from a technical standard. I'm sure any differences would be almost imperceivable but I wonder if there actually would be a difference.