Ripping my CD collection

[guggas]

I plan to re-rip my cd collection and get things a little more organized on my computer for easy playing over my living room system. My reciever is not a network reciever, but my network Panasonic Bluray player is DLNA compliant, so i was thinking I would store my music on my PC and use my BR player to play/send music to my reciever. I'm assuming FLAC is the format yall would recommend. What is a good program to use for ripping FLACS ? Right now my bluray player is wired into my router (cisco e3200), but my desktop is connected over wireless to the router. Will i loose any quality streaming flacs to my BR > reciever? or would it be worth running a ethernet cable to my desktop from my router? Also will this method produce CD quality sound? Any suggestions you guys have is appreciated.

 

[its phillip]

I use EAC to rip my cds (and I do rip to flac). You shouldn't lose any quality streaming however you choose to do it.

 

[sholling]

If you have a ton of CDs to rip then I like dbPowerAmp Reference ($38) because once you define the filing system and naming convention all you have to do is feed it CDs. It'll automatically identify each disc by artist and album and then file, name, and tag everything just the way you want it. Once you finish ripping your collection you can then have it make a copy of the FLACs in MP3 or AAC formats and file those away in a separate area. I love it because everything is automated. FWIW I use Drive:\Music\Artist\Album for my filing system. Think through the naming convention as well because you are limited to 256 characters including the full path. You also need to include the track numbers before the song titles so that they play in the correct order. Three naming conventions that I've used over the years are:

• Artist - Album - Track Number - Song Title
• Album - Track Number - Song Title
• Track Number - Album - Song Title

If you don't have a huge quantity of CDs then Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is a great free option.

Not all DNLA servers will serve FLAC so you'll need something that does. I used the full (pay) version of Media Monkey as a DLNA server for a while and it works. It's also a decent ripper. Personally I dislike DLNA and use a media player that allows me to access my server as a share. I just find it easier to navigate shares - especially since I have multiple versions of some CDs (like Dark Side Of The Moon) and DLNA gets confused by the duplicate names.

 

[Grador]

I put in a second vote for EAC, though it may not be quite as automatic as dbPowerAmp [which also is a great program] it will in fact create a folder structure for \artist\album as well.

I also dislike DLNA, I've found it to be very finicky and often very limited in capability. Given that you have a DLNA streamer I would give it a try before going to something else, you never know it might work for you.

 

[guggas]

Personally I dislike DLNA and use a media player that allows me to access my server as a share. I just find it easier to navigate shares - especially since I have multiple versions of some CDs (like Dark Side Of The Moon) and DLNA gets confused by the duplicate names.

Ok, Can somebody expand on my options other than DLNA? I'm not familiar with this.
I downloaded EAC and ripped a CD and put it into my music folder and the FLAC files are not showing up through my BR player DLNA client, I also tried serving them through PlayOn and that didnt seem to work either. It seems I may need a program like media monkey that sholling mentioned. However if there are better methods I'm interested in that, I just don't know what they are.

 

[sholling]

Ok, Can somebody expand on my options other than DLNA? I'm not familiar with this.
I downloaded EAC and ripped a CD and put it into my music folder and the FLAC files are not showing up through my BR player DLNA client, I also tried serving them through PlayOn and that didnt seem to work either. It seems I may need a program like media monkey that sholling mentioned. However if there are better methods I'm interested in that, I just don't know what they are.

For my systems I have a PC that I use as a server and setup a network share on it - but a cheap NAS device will work fine. To access that I use a media player, for now that's a Netgear NeoTV 550 but a Western Digital TV Live will work fine to. The player connects to the receiver over HDMI and your TV acts like a computer display and it just accesses the share on your computer's drive. If you're not familier with Windows shares then we have some homework to do.

Optionally you could rip to your PC and make a copy on an external drive which you can then plug into a USB port in either of the devices that I mentioned above. That would have the advantage of giving you a backup copy. That's what I used to do, and I would copy new CD rips to the external drive across the network.

The latest version of the WDTV Live is limited to CD quality FLACs but has a lot of other features, the NEOTV 550 can play rarer 24bit FLACs (bought online) but doesn't have netflix or much else.

Here are some reviews.
AnandTech - 2011 Media Streamer Roundup : Netgear NTV550, A.C.Ryan PlayOn!HD2 and the Boxee Box
Western Digital WD TV Live Review | StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews

 

[guggas]

[/QUOTE] The latest version of the WDTV Live is limited to CD quality FLACs but has a lot of other features, the NEOTV 550 can play rarer 24bit FLACs (bought online) but doesn't have netflix or much else.
[/QUOTE]

the neotv 550 seems nice, i don't even know if i could hear good enough to enjoy 24bit flacs, but i would like to be able to try...

 

[Grador]

the neotv 550 seems nice, i don't even know if i could hear good enough to enjoy 24bit flacs, but i would like to be able to try...

If you have no DVD-A disks and have little intention of getting any then you'll have no 24bit flacs.

 

[sholling]

the neotv 550 seems nice, i don't even know if i could hear good enough to enjoy 24bit flacs, but i would like to be able to try...

Unless you have really great speakers and golden ears you probably won't hear a difference but who knows. I don't have golden ears but I buy them from HDTracks for the heck of it. For most people the latest WDTV Live is a better deal because of the online content but I bought the NTV550 because I have 24bit music and 5.1 multichannel FLACs (from DVD-A). I don't recall if the WDTV Live supports gapless playback if you need gapless I'd do some research. Gapless is for music that flows from track to track without breaks like Dark Side Of The Moon or many classical works.

Media players are still new-tech so there is no perfect player yet.