Hi there. After just reading for many weeks now, I've decided to post. I recently decided to re-rip my entire physical CD collection, which consists of about 2,500 discs. I currently have a mishmash of questionable quality, poorly tagged rips that are frustrating me to no end. After looking around, I decided to try the "[illegal sharing group ripping standard]". Reading these forums, it seems that the EAC 0.9 beta 4 and LAME 3.90.3 recommendations are a little old, but I'm trying that method anyway. First question - Is that dumb? I'm going to spend the next 1-2 years working on this, so please tell me if sticking to these old versions is ultra-stupid....

I don't actually intend to do any file sharing at all with these rips. I just want very high quality rips and I like the sound of the results so far following the [illegal sharing group ripping standard]. I don't think I can afford the size of doing this project in FLAC, and I want as much portability of the files as possible. I also want a consistent organization for the files, and even though their method is strict, at least it's something I can follow and be consistent. I also like the AQScript enforcement of the standard.

I do have one Major Question about tagging/naming, and that has to do with YEAR. If an album came out in 1979 and the CD came out in 1995 (exactly the same as the album) which should go in the YEAR field? I can't find opinions on this either by searching these forums or reading the Uber docs. If a CD has extra material, the CD release year seems best to me. Opinions?

Thanks for any feedback. A preview of the work ahead: CD Collection

Moderation: removed name of some [illegal sharing group ripping standard].

[illegal sharing group ripping standard] is overrated IMHO.

Just follow the recommended HA settings and you should be fine. Have a read through this page from the wiki: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=LAME

I'd also suggest reading through the fb2k page, especially the masstagger section since this is the most powerful music organising tool in existence (also, IMHO )

Moderation: removed name of some [illegal sharing group ripping standard].

I've been doing this for years now, and I've never heard of the [illegal sharing group ripping standard]. What the hell is that? Is there a standard that is better than rip with EAC, and encode to lossless, or LAME APS?

Edit: ahhh, is that a tagging standard? I'll have a look.

Moderation: removed name of some [illegal sharing group ripping standard].

Helium Music Manager has support for a "Recording Year" and "Release Year". I tried digging into it, and according to this page the ID3v2 fields for these are TRDA and TORY (with ID3v2.3), but according to the field inspector files are tagged with TDRC (a ID3v2.4 field) in ID3v2.3 standard and no use of TDOR or TORY at all. However you could give it a try

I'm not too sure what should be the difference between 'album' and 'CD' here. are you talking about the first release and some later pressings / remasters?
anyway, I would just chose the year the CD was made you ripped the track from. you could still add the original release year in the comment field or somewhere else. a matter of taste I guess so just do it the way you want to have it.


it's a proposed standard from ripping, encoding, tagging and other fields altogether. AFAIK it's purpose at that time was to try to establish a sole standard for (warez) 'scene'.

I read a little of the recommendation:

For discs with only light scratches you might really be better off using Burst mode and AccurateRip (or "Test & Copy tracks" to get a matching CRC if you have discs missing in the AccurateRip database). I didn't realize this until I HAD ripped all my CD's.

Why, you may ask?
Because Burst mode gives ripping speeds approx 20x, while my experience with Accurate mode are 2-3x.

My procedure was to rip all the discs in burst, and put the failed discs away for later rip in Accurate mode.


Just to inform you: IF (very rare) a disc has a hidden track before TRACK 01, this will not be ripped in single-track mode.


Suspecious positions does not nessesarily indicate an error, and if the rip was matched with itself or AccurateRip database, it was ripped perfectly.

This is not the recommended version by the developers (my oppinion: old and poor quality compared to newer releases). See this page.

Personally I'm using preset fast extreme (fast activates the new optimized (also quality-wise) VBR encoder) for archiving. Rips are still around 220-230 kbit.

As for tagging It's hard even for me to specify a standard I'm satisfied with.

Edit: I suck at quoting. This must qualify as the most messed up post ever!

I suppose it matters how you're going to use the year tag. Are you going to make mixes/playlists based on the music's "era"? Then go with the original release date.

That seems to *me* to be the most sensible approach. Of course, sensible approaches vary.

-brendan

Thanks for the thoughtful responses so far. The database I use for my CDs (Music Collector) which is great btw, allows for many fields - recording date, original release date, and CD release date. Using something like Helium, or even MP3 Collector, could let me add both fields, even if that info was stored in a DB and not in tags themselves. That might be best. I think you're right though - what I really care about is when did the album come out originally - and what album came 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. So I should probably just use the original release date.

Sounds like the consensus on the [illegal sharing group ripping standard] is that it's out of date and overly obsessed with one method.

Moderation: removed name of some [illegal sharing group ripping standard].

Why has the name of the standard been removed? As far as i could see it had no references to anything illegal

No direct references anymore on the public site maybe but nevertheless there is a sharing network around it and I'd rather we have no association with such things.
Googling for the name you will find how to sign up. Therefore it was removed.


Just a note: In the future you should ask such questions privately as explained in TOS 7.