First, I'm new to the Apple world. I have the base model M1 Macbook Air. I have an extensive collection of cd's that I want to rip and store on my Mac. I've purchased an Apple Superdrive along with the Apple dongle to do the ripping. I'm concerned about the storage as I have 192gb remaining on the internal hard drive. What's the best way to rip the CDs and then transfer them to an external drive?
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M1 Macbook Air...ripping CDs
- Thread starter zagato27
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It depends on how many cds and what encoding quality/scheme you choose. Apple’s codecs are pretty efficient. If you use iTunes, 128-bit m4a should be fine unless you have need for lossless. I bet you could fit quite a lot of cds on your internal disk without filling it up.
Otherwise just hook up a drive, set your iTunes library to use a folder there, and get ripping.
Otherwise just hook up a drive, set your iTunes library to use a folder there, and get ripping.
Superdrive comes today so I'll look at my options. I would think that if I find myself using too much storage I could just offload it to an external drive or possibly the cloud. I have an external drive that I'm using for "Time Machine", I wonder if I can store the songs on that too. Should I have created a partition on the external drive before using it for Time Machine? Can I create one now? Yeah, I'm a newbie.
Use Disk Utility to add a partition to your external drive. When it's connected, you'll see desktop icons for both drives. When you drag one to the trash to eject it, you'll be prompted whether you want to eject all. It's pretty simple actually.
Partition a physical disk in Disk Utility on Mac
In Disk Utility on your Mac, add, delete, erase, or enlarge a partition on a storage device.
support.apple.com
XLD for ripping. You can even choose the external drive as your output location.
See: https://tmkk.undo.jp/xld/index_e.html
See: https://tmkk.undo.jp/xld/index_e.html
Handbrake plain and simple...
Q-6
Q-6
Lots of options are available but I personally use dbPoweramp Ripper software - https://www.dbpoweramp.com/cd-ripper.htm. I have always had good results with it.
You should always rip your CDs in lossless format (ALAC, FLAC) and store the covers in the metadata of the files.
You can later transcode to any lossy format like MP3 (320kbit/s) or AAC (256kbit/s) to save storage on USB-Sticks or other devices.
But if you have ripped into AAC there is no way back to lossless.
I ripped about 320 CDs in ALAC and it took about 120GB.
You can later transcode to any lossy format like MP3 (320kbit/s) or AAC (256kbit/s) to save storage on USB-Sticks or other devices.
But if you have ripped into AAC there is no way back to lossless.
I ripped about 320 CDs in ALAC and it took about 120GB.
If your Time Machine backup contains any mission critical or irreplaceable information, I would use its drive for Time Machine only. Why? To reduce the possibility of non-TM use corrupting or damaging the disk. It's also good practice to make a second backup of your primary drive on its own disk, using a backup program other than TM.
Personally, if I faced your situation, I would use iTunes to rip the CDs and store the data on an external spinning HD. In my opinion, a SSD is overkill for storing and playing music. It is also good to not fill up a SSD used as a primary drive close to capacity in order to spread writes over as many memory cells as possible (each cell has a finite life for writes and erasures) and to ensure there is always enough space to execute macOS updates and upgrades.
I'm answering a different question here but: by the time you've paid for a hard drive back up, a superdrive and costed your time to rip all of your CDs you've spent a fortune and still your confined to your MacBook for your listening pleasure. Why not get an Apple Music subscription for $10 per month. Listen to everything you ever wanted on all your devices and share it with your family at no extra cost.
I use Toast by Roxio. iTunes is cheap junky software. $99 for toast titanium YOU DON'T NEED PRO.
The Audio Pro's have always used toast for CD audio ripping for high sound quality.
you can use iTunes as an audio tunes library or many other media library management software.
www.roxio.com
The Audio Pro's have always used toast for CD audio ripping for high sound quality.
you can use iTunes as an audio tunes library or many other media library management software.
Roxio Toast | Disc Burning & Digital Media Suite for Mac
Explore the comprehensive toolkit for burning, editing & sharing your digital media. Roxio Toast 20 offers complete customization for DVD authoring, an intuitive interface, easy file conversion tools & more to streamline your workflow.