Looking to rip my CD collection to a hard drive and wondered how people clean them before doing so?
Also can anyone recommend any good software to do this, so I don't lose too much audio quality?
Cheers 🙂

Dry cloth, breathe on, wipe from centre to edge not in a circle. As good a method as you'll get.

Most software packages will do essentially the same thing, make sure you rip it at a high bit rate (at least 192 but higher if you have a lot of disc space). Or you could try FLAC but I find their file sizes so large you can hardly call it compression.

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de .

Don't bother cleaning, if you're using the software above it will know it's extracted it perfectly or tell you otherwise (then do cleaning/scratch removing as necessary).

What is nice too is that it can do separate ripping and encoding queues – so when I redid all of mine, I'd just have a stack of CDs by the computer and when I was sat there browsing I'd just be feeding it a new disc every few minutes. Then when I was elsewhere it would be working it's way through the queue of files to encode. Lots of others do rip-encode-rip-encode track by track which takes ages.

I just give mine a quick rub with fine wet and dry paper..

Stick 'em in the dishwasher, they'll be fine. 😉
Seriously, as above, really, a microfibre cloth, and wipe from centre out, perhaps using isopropyl alchohol if there's marks that won't come off. If there's scratches, then Brasso works well at polishing them out, but again go centre outwards, you don't want radial marks.

When CDs first came out my dad (who was in the electrical trade) went to a conference where they were promoting them. They smeared jam and butter all over one then washed it off before putting it in a player to show how easy to maintain they were.

I don't think they recommend that any more though 🙂

Blow torch

simon-g
exactaudiocopy looks good, but I want to rip my cds in a lossless format and then use in itunes – can I do that with exact audio copy??

Not sure how much ( if any), Flac support is available within Itunes.

If you're planning on using Itunes anyway, why not use the Apple Lossless encoder already built into Itunes ?
( Edit, Preferences, General tab, import settings, import using, drop down box for Apple Lossless Encoder)

Chris

Sns
thats what I will probably do, its just that software looked particularly good

The software IS good – Been using it for years. It comes with a bunch of good standard built in codecs you can use but also allows you to use other downloaded codecs to rip with ( Gives you the option of using a newer version of LAME for your MP3's for example as opposed to the fraunhofer MP3 codec & other types of codecs such as Ogg Vorbis etc)

I can understand why you just want to rip lossless tracks in a conventional way, (using FLAC to same some space) & then use Itunes just as a media manager, but it's getting a suitable lossless format that works with both Itunes other than the Apple Lossless codec ( ALAC) or WAV that may be a problem.

You could always try ripping a test track into Flac & try importing into Itunes to see what happens. – I've never tried it myself.
If it starts to get messy & you have to start faffing around editing metadata (Metadata's a bit like ID3 tags which gives you the info on your player's display such as title, artist and so on). I think I'd proberbly take the easy option & just use Itunes as mentioned above.

If you look at other products you are far less limited & other options open up – Just depends how much playing around you want to do.

As for the codecs Apple use as standard ( AAC), It's actually a very good sounding lossy codec & similar to Ogg Vorbis & another called Musepack – trouble is that the lesser known ones have more limited hardware support.

MP3, although being inferior sounding to the likes of AAC / Vorbis / Musepack ( allowing for compression rate differences). Is the choice for compatibility as just about everything can play MP3's.

As for bitrates, I find AAC using 256 VBR ( Variable bit rate), to be pretty similar sounding in quality to MP3's using a far higher bitrate of 320 ( which is as far as MP3 goes).

You need to experiment to see what bit rates your own ears tell you – I would suggest starting around the 256 VBR & work from there

Proberbly clouded your thoughts even more with the above rather long-winded explanation – Sorry !

Chris

Don't use mr sheen-it's too strong.

Cheers Chris
I'm toying with the idea of ripping all my CDs to a hard drive and then listening to them through the pc via an aftermarket sound card. If it sounds good I may sell my cyrus cd player and go for a squeezebox, but would still like the option to download my tracks to my iphone/ipod.
Any further suggestions most welcome.

I just give mine a quick rub with fine wet and dry paper..

Works if you have some serious scratches, and then you follow up with tcut. Recovered a few CDs left in the dash by doing that.

Unfortunatley, I've not got a 'pod to hand ( Zen & Sansa) & I've NO chance of getting my hands on either of my kids pod's to play with.

As far as I remember, the squeezbox, using the squeezebox server software, is happy enough playing most music formats & none of the aforementioned ones will confuse it. So that's not the problem.

Problem is choosing a suitable lossless format ( codec & File/Folder format) to get all your cd's onto your hard drive that you will then be able to transfer to your iphone/pod with as little messing about as possible.

It's kinda looking like you'll be using Itunes as a one stop shop – Which isn't as bad as all that (… except for the dammed annoying proprietary file/folder format Apple insist on using).

Whichever method you settle on. Depending on the amound of cd's & the frequency you change content on your 'pod/phone is the potential space issue. Even using the Apple lossless ( ALAC) – which I believe all 'pods will play, it still produces files 'around' half the size of the cd tracks so you're 'pod will start to fill up quite quickly. If this was the case, you'd then have to import into Itunes using a lossy codec ( & 'cos I'm a fussy bugger over all things audio, I'd recommend AAC min 256vbr with Itunes as opposed to even Lame'd MP3) & that would lead to lots & lots of duplication 🙁

It could all start getting frustrating & messy !

Other options would be to look at what things like Foobar2000 can offer, as once setup, it's a pretty good ( albeit not flash looking), piece of software. & use this in conjunction with something like Yamipod ( …I 'think' this works with most 'pod's except the Itouch – But you'de need to check this out)

Easiest way would be to use Itunes – Unless you like & have the time to play.

Chris

Cheers Chris – will have a little think about this!

I worked in a HI-FI shop years ago and we always used to use "Brasso" on ours…

From centre to edge, never around the disc. Don't get it on the printed side though or the artwork will come off.

🙂

Someone told me – If scratched, put them in the freezer for a few hours.

Take them out, dry them and then play.

Always worked for me and a very hassle free way of doing it.

How does it work? I haven't got a clue…

EAC will encode to anything you like – the encoding is normally done by something else.

Personally I went with the LAME MP3 encoder , producing variable bitrate MP3s – ie. it uses as high a bitrate for each frame as it needs. That was with –alt-preset-standard, which I believe is now -V2. You get very high quality (as in indistinguishable from the CD in blind tests) encodes, at reasonable sizes (bit bigger than most MP3s, but way smaller than FLAC) and that can be played on just about any device.

I have friends who've ripped everything to FLAC so they can have a perfect lossless copy, but it takes up a load of space, limits your choice of devices and they inevitably have to transcode copies into other formats to play them elsewhere.

simon_g
so I can use EAC to encode and then use the audio with my i-pod?

Rip in FLAC using MediaMonkey, then use MediaMonkey to update the metadata and album art from one of its online sources (usually amazon). Not only is MediaMonkey a great music organisation tool, it syncs with almost anything (inc. iPods) and it's really customisable as to the way it all opperates and how things are saved ect. whilst still being really easy to use. And it's free (although the gold version does have some benefits).

Trying to use exact audio copy for ripping cds but ASAPI driver won't install -says does not recognise operating system. Can anyone help with this??
Cheers

Have 5 live play them, they will cut out any dirty bits for you.

^ only when it's a little too late….