FOAK: CD to MP3

I've finally decided that I've had enough of only listening to a tenth of
the music I've got, because that's what I can find. What's the best way of
getting it all into a computer without buying it again? I'd like something
a) automatic b) that produces a decent directory structure and maybe even
finds covers etc and c) if such a thing exists, I'd like it to pick up on
scratched disks and tell me to sort it...

Any ideas?

 

http://www.apple.com/itunes/overview/

D.

--
des | 'what does it matter what he posts?'
http://www.jr.co.il/terror/israel/index.html
end the 'occupation': http://minilien.fr/a0k8xe
ukrm: 'where it's "cool" to be stupid!'
myths of islam: http://minilien.fr/a0j5qo

 

I used Exact Audio Copy and the LameEnc encoder to rip all my CD's.

 

The people I know with ipods object to itunes for Windows...

 

That's my choice to http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

 

Cdex isn't bad.

http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

 

At shit encoding rates for mp3 though.

 

Much as I hate to second a Des suggestion.... he's actually right, you
know.

So long as you're not running it on ancient hardware.

 

Isn't 192Kbps enough?

There's Real v11 which can do 320Kbps, but you may be irritated by it's
habit of running "rusched" in the background all the time if that kind
of thing bothers you.

The only annoyance I have is that should you used different tools on the
same PC then they always seem to muck-up the settings for the other one.

 

iTunes.

 

That was my thought too. There's not much I can think of that has a
better management of the media. It imports various formats and
qualities, and uses a plugin technology, so there are various ways to
add album art and song lyrics.

 

Listening to albums on CD via a hifi / the car stereo. I don't like portable
music devices as a rule (very rarely use public transport and don't like the
loss of hearing as a pedestrian), and so have never bothered with the
tedious process of getting all my music onto a PC.

 

MediaMonkey for easy cataloguing with added rippyness.

Easy CD-DA Extractor for the sheer even-my-nan-can-use-it-ness.

One's free, the other has cracks easily available.

 

That's new. It used to top out at 128K last time i tried it.

I use Variable Bitrate, with the quality set to 1. That way the
bitrate can be between 96 and 320, at any given time, depending on how
complex the track is. Average filesize is around the 5MB mark, whilst
sound quality is almost as good as a lossless format.

For my ipod I use Winamp to transcode tracks to 128K AAC on the fly as
they upload, that's more than good enough for a portable device.

I don't use itunes, at all, for anything, ever.

 

For the multiply PC'ed up or those with a penchant for not wanting to
leave the sofa.

http://ampache.org/index.php

Not of course for the technologically faint of heart but very good none
the less.

 

How weird.

 

I've used winamp for years, so just kept on doing so. It's much
lighter on resources and I find it more intuative.

 

If I hadn't already known that you're a bit of an airhead, the above
would have told me.

D.


--
des | 'what does it matter what he posts?'
http://www.jr.co.il/terror/israel/index.html
end the 'occupation': http://minilien.fr/a0k8xe
ukrm: 'where it's "cool" to be stupid!'
myths of islam: http://minilien.fr/a0j5qo

 

I've not used winamp for yonks but I'm going to have a look now.

 

http://www.rent-a-negro.com/