Help ripping ~30,000 CDs, Was “Help digitizing […]” ;) Options

[trail]

Hey! I'm a newbie around these forums, but hopefully I'll be around quite a bit. I really like the community here, and hope I can contribute in the future. But enough introduction, here's the interesting stuff:

I work for a college radio station, and we've decided to undertake the rather ambitious project of digitizing the CDs we've acquired over the years. This is a pretty monumental undertaking, so I'm looking to make this as painless and quick as possible. We have a very rough approximation of about 30,000 CDs that we're looking to convert to digital files, and it's my job to work out many of the more technical aspects of the project.

The problem with being a college radio station is that we're on a pretty limited budget. We can't afford any sort of robot or anything like that to help the process along, nor can we afford any sort of service, so we're stuck doing it ourselves. Thankfully, we have a bunch of people willing to put the time and effort in. We also aren't terribly picky about getting every rip totally 100% perfect. But I've done a fair bit of research, and here's the kind of plan I had in mind:

Ideally, we have one pretty decent quad-core desktop that we're planning to outfit with four CD drives. We have software that allows us to rip multiple discs at once to V0 MP3s which are stored on a small RAID 1 array inside the computer. I've done some informal ripping tests, and have narrowed down the two pieces of software that seem to work best to fre:ac and dBpoweramp. I have also tried EAC and simply ripping with MediaMonkey, but freac and dBpoweramp seemed the most efficient and easy to use. Now, if I decide to use one of these pieces of software (if anyone has any suggestions, I'm 100% open to them!) how can I configure them to make them as painless as possible? Would using multiple drives be an option? I found very little information about software that provided ripping from multiple drives simultaneously, so I'm assuming this is not a common feature. If not, would using different computers be our best bet? If anyone has any other suggestions about ripping multiple discs at the same time or other ways to improve efficiency then that would probably make my life much easier.

thanks for your time!

[LosMintos]

Sorry, I didn't read all posts carefully, nevertheless, let me add/emphasize some points.

• You should insist on accurate, secure and lossless rips! You'll only do it once, do it right!
• I've no experience with real batch rippers, but ripped a lot of CDs on ordinary PCs equipped with two CD-Rom drives. You will just open two instances of dbpoweramp or EAC and it's just fine. However, this is limited in terms of keeping a clear view on open CD cases on the desk and open program instances on the screen. With four drives you'll not gain much increase in over all speed, IMHO. The computer will wait for you (rather than you waiting for the computer).
• Metadata is a crucial issue. Databases are not correct anyway and every n-th CD will not be found. Then you'll have to enter the data by yourself, the most time consuming step.

If you can't effort a batch ripper, you probably can distribute the job to many volunteers. In advance you have to agree on a standard:

• codec
• folder hierarchy
• tagging scheme incl. cover images
• what to do with unknown or erroneous CDs

When ripping manually I'll pre-sort a bunch of CDs: regular albums, sampler, soundtracks etc. This reflects my folder hierarchy and speeds up ripping in my case. You could consider things like this, when distributing to volunteers.

I see, you're not likely to give CDs away (I fully understand!). That way, a large room with many computers equipped with max. 2 drives each will help more than few computers with a lot of drives each. Just my humble opinion ;-). Such a set up will likely be outperformed by a real batch ripper. In addition a network storage might be interesting for you. And a scanner for missing cover art.

Just my thoughts, hopefully of some help for you :-)

[Porcus]

You will just open two instances of dbpoweramp or EAC and it's just fine.

Be careful. My experience with dBpoweramp is that it might from time to time switch to the most-recently-used drive. Probably not without telling me, but I have overlooked it (and gotten a few rips with absolutely wrong content). I don't think it is intended to have concurrent versions open.

pre-sort a bunch of CDs: regular albums, sampler, soundtracks etc.

Also:
- remasters, if you want to have them distinguished. The metadata sources do not.
- promos. Some of them have beeb sounds and talking interfering with the music.
- I keep classical music away from the rest -- or rather: music sorted by composer, apart from music sorted by performer.