● Transferring Music from CD's to a Music Server

Extracting music from your CD's and transferring the files to your computer or music server can be very time consuming, assuming of course that you care about sound quality and you wish to do a good job—and if you listen to classical music it can be especially time consuming. So if you would like to set up a music server but don't want to spend the time necessary to get your CD library transferred you can simply call us and we will take care of getting it done for you. The cost for professional music transfer from CD to hard disk is delineated here.

However if you wish to devote untold hours to doing so yourself here are some suggestions:

Inspecting your CD's

First it is recommended that you inspect the playing surface to see if there are any dirt, scratches, or plating defects. Even new CD's can come out of the box either with minor scratches and/or with dust particles on them--and occasionally you will see plating defects where the plating didn't cover 100% of the playing surface. Obviously if there is a plating defect you would need to return it and get a replacement.

Cleaning your CD's

If your CD's are new then you can simply blow any residual dust off with a photographer's bulb-type air blower. But if you CD's have some fingerprints and/or dirt on them you can run them under water and use your fingers to sweep them radially. Then use a smooth, soft, clean, lint-free cloth to dry them by sweeping radially from the center to the edge.

Note: It is important to always use a radial motion rather than going around in a circular/circumferential motion when moving across the playing surface.

If you can't get them clean that way then there are commercially available CD cleaning kits that you can obtain.

What about any scratches on your CD's?

If you have scratches they might or might not interfere with the laser properly reading the data. Radial scratches or deeper scratches of course can indeed be problematic. You can tell if there is a problem if you are doing an EAC-type of ripping if there are synch errors during the transfer process.

If you are having your CD's ripped by a top-notch professional ripping service they will undoubtedly have a special resurfacing machine that buffs the CD playing surface. Alternatively if you are transferring your CD's yourself then you can ship your CD's off to a company that performs CD resurfacing.

Alternatively you can try doing it yourself as follows: Noxon metal cleaner applied with a lint free cloth, and in this case a small circular motion works best—then wipe clean from the center out. However this may or may not produce the desired results. And if in doubt we would advise don't do it!

CD/DVD Computer Drives for Ripping

Unfortunately there are no high-end CD drives for computers that we are aware of. Though obviously some drives are better than others. We have had pretty good luck with a Plextor PX-880SA drive—although there certainly could be some unit-to-unit variability so YMMV (your mileage may vary). Once in while though you may find a CD that won't work in the Plextor PX-880SA, or whatever drive you are utilizing—so if you have an older CD-ROM (not DVD/CD combo drive) you might find that though it is slower it might work on those problem CD's. If you have more than one computer of course you can try ripping on each of them and see which one has the drive that does the best job reading the CD's. You will also find that some drives rip more quickly than others.

Computer Hard Drives and SSD's for Music Storage

For SSD's (Solid State Drive) we are currently using the Intel MLC versions with good results. The data that we are aware to date has shown that the Intel SSD's are the most reliable and so that is the brand that we have been utilizing. The Intel SSD SLC versions, while longer lasting, are quite a bit more expensive so for most people they aren't cost effective for storing music files at this time. However as of late 2011 the SLC versions of the Intel SSD are being discontinued and have been replaced by HET MLC drives. However these are still more expensive than the Intel consumer level MLC SSD drives.

With every passing year hard drives are continually getting larger. Already in 2011 there are 4TB drives—with 5TB and larger drives on the horizon. However you should know that drives larger than 2TB should only be used in the newest, most up-to-date hardware/firmware/software configurations,.ie. UEFI-based motherboards, etc.

Currently we are recommending enterprise grade drives such as either the Western Digital 1TB RE3 WD1002FBYS hard disks or the Western Digital 2TB RE4 Western Digital RE4 WD2003FYYS hard disks for storing music files with good results. [Note: RE stands for RAID edition and that is one of the reasons why we are utilizing these two particular models. They also support TLER (Time-Limited Error Recovery) and RVS (Rotational Vibration Safeguard) which may be worthwhile for RAID arrays in a NAS.]

We have also had good success with the consumer grade 3-platter Samsung F4 2TB hard drive. However because this is a 4K sector drive you should know that there is a firmware update for it if it was manufactured in 2010—and there is no way (that we are aware of) to tell what version of firmware is installed without going through a somewhat convoluted process of re-flashing the firmware.

RAID

RAID is an acronym for "redundant array of inexpensive disks". We recommend using either RAID 1, 5 or 6 for redundancy on your music server. Alternatively if you are using a Netgear NAS (network attached storage) unit then we recommend using either RAID 1 or xRAID.

Metadata

• Artist
• Album
• Track #
• Track Title - (song name for popular music--or movement for classical)

• Genre - (rock, jazz, classical, etc.)
• Track Time - (i.e. hours:minutes:seconds)
• Date of Release
• Album Art - (i.e. a jpeg of the album cover)

• Conductor
• Composer
• Major Soloist(s) - (for instance for a piano concerto we need the name of the pianist--or for an opera the major singers)

Note: For classical music, using dBpoweramp or Sonata (which is a proprietary version of dBpoweramp) software, both of which use the GD3 and Sonata databases, to rip your CD collection gives more fields of metadata than using Exact Audio Copy.

• Recording Date
• Remastering Date

Besides the above there are also other fields available in some music server software. You can download J. River Media Center and MediaMonkey and Sonata for free and look at all of the options, including the custom options if you wish.

File Naming in Exact Audio Copy

If you are using Exact Audio Copy here are some tips: Before ripping any music, make sure that you set up Exact Audio Copy the way that you wish your name your files. One order that is possible is:

"%A" - %C - %N - %T

"%A" = CD or track artist

"%C" = CD title

"%N" = Track #

"%T" = Track title

"-" = a dash

However the method above can sometimes result in file names that are too long. So if you don't want to do as much text editing then this is what we recommend:

%N - %T

(space dash space between the track # and the track title)

or

%N_%T

(an underscore between the track # and the track title)

"%N" = Track #

"%T" = Track title

If you use this latter approach then you need to first create a folder for Artist. Then inside the Artist folder you need to create a folder for Album. Inside the Album folder you then would have your files which would be named with Track # and Track Title.

So it would look like this:

(Artist folder) / (Album folder) / (Track #) - (Track Title)

or

(Artist folder) / (Album folder) / (Track #)_(Track Title)

Which in Media Monkey would be this:

\<Artist>\<Album>\<Track#> - <Title>

or

\<Artist>\<Album>\<Track#>_<Title>

The advantage to either one of the two approaches above is that you won't have as much of a problem with long file names, especially with classical music. If you start working ripping files and then look at them in Media Monkey (or whatever music server software you are using) you may eventually discover all of this for yourself.

But whatever file naming method and folder hierarchy you use, once you select it you should stay with it and not change it or you will create extra complications that you then will have to sort out.

Compilation CDs of Various Artists

If you have a compilation CD with a number of different artists on it then you may wish to activate the option in Exact Audio Copy for that precise purpose which is under EAC Options>Filename>"use various artists naming scheme".

File Name Length

Technically a file name should be limited to 64 characters—however in practice it seems that at least in some cases longer file names can be accommodated up to 103 characters long. However in the allowed file name length limit is also be affected by how many folders and subfolders the file is nested in and the length of the name of each folder and subfolder.

With classical music especially you should be careful to not make the file names too long. If you do you may not easily be able to rename the file to a shorter file name. Plus you may even have trouble deleting it.

If you do have trouble deleting a file because the name that is too long, you can move the file folder containing them to the trash. But first recopy the good files back to another file folder, and then you can re-rip the files that had names which were too long.

Note that if the file name is too long when you copy it to another hard drive you will not be able to do so without a tilde (~) shortening of the name which can mean that your music server software will not give you any metadata unless you have tagged the file. Then you will have to redo the original file transfer after shortening the file name or go through a process of renaming copies of the files.

To rename the files with a tilde, copy all of the files in the folder to another folder including any "good" files with names that weren't too long along with the ones that have corrupted names and which consequently have a shortened name which include a tilde in the file name. After the files are copied you can then rename the files by typing in the correct file name. Time-consuming yes, but it does work.

Note: In case you don't know a tilde is this symbol: ~

In the case of longer works which go higher than the number 9, you will find that they naturally cascade in the correct order if you use a space before the single digit ones. Here is an example:

• Mahler Symphony No. 1
• Mahler Symphony No. 2
• Mahler Symphony No.10 Adagio

Another way of doing this is to insert a zero before any single digit numbering sequence as follows:

• Mahler Symphony No.01
• Mahler Symphony No.02
• Mahler Symphony No.10 Adagio

Track Numbers

If you have 10 or more Tracks, you should pad the single digit numbers with a zero. The reason to do so is that this way Track 10 will be at the end after Track 9. In other words:

• 01
• 02
• 04
• 04
• 05
• 06
• 07
• 08
• 09
• 10

There are two ways to edit track numbers. Either in the name of each file (each album folder will have the tracks inside each of which can be and usually is numbered) and/or in the Tag itself.

Reassigning Track Numbers to Larger Works

There may be instances where you wish to reassign track numbers. For instance if a work starts in the middle of CD #1 and continues on to CD#2, then you may wish to go into the file names and manually reassign track numbers so that the files are all in a numerically ascending order. At the same time you may wish to combine all of the files into a single folder. Yes this can be time-consuming but it can make for better overall organization for searching as well as for easy playback.

As an example: In Hyperion release of Tatiana Nikolayeva playing Bach: Die Kunst der Fugue (The Art of Fugue), the work starts on track #7 of the first CD and goes all the way to the end of the second CD. So rather than start the piece on track #7, if you wish you can put the entire piece in one folder and renumber each track starting with track #1.

In addition if you are using Tags then you will wish to edit the track numbers there too.

File Folder Organization

Before you start transferring your music it is important to think about how you will organize your recordings on your music server/computer. Of course you could put everything into one folder entitled "Music". Alternatively you could have a "Music" folder and inside that you could have folders named:

• Classical
• Jazz
• Rock
• Folk

Your collection might have many more categories than just those four of course!

For instance you might wish to break Jazz into two categories:

• Jazz
• Jazz Vocal

Or you might wish to further subcategorize Jazz into something like this:

• Dixieland
• Swing
• Bop
• Modal
• Cool
• Free
• Smooth
• Fusion
• Latin

Obviously your music collection—how large it is and what it is comprised of—and how you like to organize your music will determine how far you may wish to go in terms of categorization. If you are unsure of how to categorize a recording you could always use The All Music Guide which is an extensive database of just about every musician, recording, and song ever made.

However you arrange your categories, in each of those main folders should be "Artist" folders for each artist in that category.

So for a Rock collection you might have various groups such as:

• The Beatles
• Jimi Hendrix
• Led Zeppelin
• U2

Note that in the above example the listing is alphabetized such that the "The" is ignored for The Beatles.

For a Classical music folder there could also be subfolders for composers such as:

• Bach
• Beethoven
• Mozart
• Schubert

In those composer folders could be subfolders for conductor. For example:

• Abbado
• Bernstein
• Karajan

Or there could be subfolders for soloist. For example:

• Horowitz
• Pollini
• Rubinstein

Or soloist/conductor:

• Pollini; Abbado
• Rubinstein; Ormandy
• Stern; Bernstein

Or soloist/conductor if using a comma instead of a semi-colon between soloist and conductor:

• Pollini, Abbado
• Rubinstein, Ormandy
• Stern, Bernstein

What follows are some specific suggestions and examples to get you thinking about how to organize your files:

The Naming of an Artist, Conductor, Composer, or Group

Before you start think about how you wish to have artists, groups, or composers named—especially their exact spelling and format.

For instance "The Beatles" could be under "T" or you may wish to have them under "B" for "Beatles". Note that in some music server software (MediaMonkey music server software is one example) there may be the option to ignore the word "The" in the name of a band so that The Beatles would be listed alphabetically under "B" rather than "T".

Then there is Stevie Ray Vaughan. Do you want to have this name alphabetized under the first or last name? "S" for Stevie or "V" for Vaughn? Personally I would suggest the former, but the choice is of course yours.

Or for instance there are any number of different possible ways to spell Tchaikovsky: Tchaikowsky, Tschaikowsky, Tsjaikovski, Tchaikowski, and there are undoubtedly more. Especially with Russian names it seems that there can sometimes be multiple ways to them. Another example is Tatiana Nikolayeva whose name can also be spelled as:  Tatyana Nikolaeva, Tatyana Nikolayeva, Tatiana Nikolajeva, Tatjana Nikolajeva. Of course in Russian it is: Татьяна Николаеваetc.

Also you should consider whether or not to use an umlaut as in Karl Böhm-- or an accent egu for Gabriel Fauré. You may find that it is easier to search if these are omitted. Either way though the ideal is always to use the same convention throughout your entire collection.

Then there are options to consider like the following: For Herbert von Karajan—you could use either Karajan or von Karajan. Personally I prefer the former. However for Ralph Vaughan Williams I would definitely suggest Vaughan Williams over just Williams!

The ideal is to make sure that each musician, group, or composer is always spelled the same way—which may mean that you have to retype some of the metadata in order to make your collection properly searchable. And this is especially true with classical music collections of any size! Of course it is always a good idea to test your conventions using the music server software that you will be utilizing!

Multiple Artists & Album Artists: Choosing Punctuation

If there are several musicians playing together on a track (and of course on an album it may be that all of the tracks are the same combination of artists—or maybe not in which case each track needs to be named separately) there are different ways to separate the names. For instance you can use a comma or you can use a semicolon. Different software will use these differently though. In Media Monkey if you have two artists separated by a semicolon then they will be listed as two separate artists. Here are some examples:

Karajan; Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

or

Karajan; Berlin

or

Karajan; BPO

Whereas in Media Monkey two artists separated by a comma will be viewed as a single entity. Here is an example:

Karajan, Berlin

However you are better off using the latter approach (using a coma to separate artists on any given track) if you are using Media Monkey on your music server and as a remote control are using the MonkeyTunes app which communicates via Wi-Fi to an Apple iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad running the Apple Remote app. The reason is that if you try to use a semicolon you won't be able to click through from an artist to anything—you'll only get a blank screen with no albums or tracks listed even though they are indeed in the database.

You also have the choice of separating words with a space or an underscore. For instance the first track of Abbey Road by The Beatles could be:

The Beatles - Abbey Road - 01 - Come Together.wav

or

The_Beatles_-_Abbey_Road_-_01_- Come_Together.wav

Depending upon the software you are using it may not make any difference. If it doesn't of course then obviously the easiest approach is the first of the above two examples, i.e. without using the underscore for each space.

The main advice here is to select a particular approach and then test it using the music server software/hardware combo before spending a lot of time doing your whole collection! As trying to correct it all after the fact for a whole collection is a real chore!

Note: In some music server software there can be a differentiation between an Artist and an Album Artist.

The Naming of a Work - Spelling, Capitalization, and Punctuation Matters!

Especially with classical music there can be more than one way to spell the name of a particular work. For example Bach's St. Matthew Passion could be named in a variety of ways:

• Bach St. Matthew Passion
• Bach, St. Matthew Passion
• Bach: St. Matthew Passion
• St. Matthew Passion
• St Matthew Passion
• Saint Matthew Passion
• Johann Sebastian Bach St. Matthew Passion
• JS Bach St. Matthew Passion
• J.S. Bach St. Matthew Passion
• J. S. Bach St. Matthew Passion
• Bach- St. Matthäus-Passion
• Matthaus-Passion
• Matthäuspassion
• Passion selon Saint Matthieu

Well you get the idea—there are numerous variations on the theme!

Personally my preference is for the first version, i.e. Bach St. Matthew Passion as it is easy and uses no punctuation except the period—but whatever your preference is is fine. Though whatever you decide upon, it is suggested that you stick with the same convention. For instance putting the name of the composer in front of the piece or not, etc. One thing that experience shows is that if you have more than one version of a particular piece, it is especially advisable to spell it the exact same way so that you can find all versions of that piece easily when you do a search.

My preference for using "Bach St. Matthew Passion" also assumes that "Bach" means "Johann Sebastian Bach". "CPE Bach" or "Bach, CPE" are examples of ways to indicate a particular son of Bach. And I prefer the second approach for alphabetical searching reasons.

It is advisable to not use hyphens or colons in either the Artist or the Album field. Also colons and slashes will definitely not work in folder names when using an OS such as Windows.

For instance with:

Bach The Well-Tempered Clavier

However with some music server software it may be better to leave out the hyphen like so:

Bach The Well Tempered Clavier

The only time to use a slash (/) in working with album file naming is when you are using the "Various Artist" feature.

It is also important to understand that because different music server software can react differently to punctuation, you should understand when to use a dash, a dash with a space on either side, a semi-colon, a colon, etc. If in doubt test out your name/punctuation scheme first before doing your entire collection. Sometimes you might want, or might not want, a certain kind of punctuation in either the folder name, the file name, and/or the metadata tags.

Once again it is advisable to test your folder and file naming scheme in order to ensure that you won't have problems that you'll have to go back and correct! It can very time-consuming to refigure out and then rework file and folder names!

Folder Hierarchy

Below the "Artist" folder level in the hierarchical tree structure there would then be an individual folder for each "Album"—the name of which would be the name, abbreviated or not, of the album. In each album folder would be the files of the actual tracks or movements as well as the track numbers. Most people prefer to have the track numbers before the track name rather than after—but ultimately that is a personal preference.

So then a hierarchical folder tree could look like this: Music>Genre>Artist>Album

Below are some real world examples which will illustrate various aspects of categorization for you to consider:

The Beatles: Abbey Road (2009 remastered CD)

For example:

Music>Rock>Beatles>Abbey_Road>songs

For Abbey Road there are 17 songs so there would be 17 files in the "Abbey_Road" folder.

Since the Beatles albums were remastered in 2009, if you have that new better sounding remastered version then you could include that information too. So then the folder tree would look like this:

Music>Rock>Beatles>Abbey_Road_2009>songs

(Note that the track numbers can be either before or after the name of the song in the file name for each track. The method we have normally used is track # before track name—but as long as you always do it the same way you can do it either way.)

Note that in this example the remastering year and the rerelease year are the same, although there are cases when it can be different.

Bach: The Art of Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge) - played by pianist Tatiana Nikolayeva

Alternatively a hierarchical folder tree could look like this:

Music>Genre>Composer>Work>Artist>movements

For example:

Music>Classical>Bach>Art_of_Fugue>Nikolayeva>movements

[Note: There are 20 movements in The Art of the Fugue so there would be 20 files in the last folder entitled "Nikolayeva".]

There is another aspect to consider too. Let's say that you have The Art of Fugue that spans two CD's as in the case of this release—as The Art of Fugue actually starts in the middle of the first CD at Track #7 and runs through to the end of the 2nd CD. Then you may wish to put all of the tracks of that piece into one folder. If you do this then you would need to redo the track #'s for the 2nd CD so that they are arranged in the proper playing order. In addition you might wish to create one more folder for the first 6 tracks of the CD in this particular example.

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony - conducted by Herbert von Karajan

Sometimes a conductor does the same piece more than once. For instance von Karajan recorded at least 7 different performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. He recorded 4 performances in mono (1947 Vienna Philharmonic & 1955 Vienna Symphony & 1955 London Philharmonia & 1957 Berlin Philharmonic) and 3 in stereo (1963, 1977, 1984 with the Berlin Philharmonic).

So then the hierarchical folder tree could look like this:

Music>Genre>Composer>Work>Artist_date>Movements

For example:

Music>Classical>Beethoven>Symphony_No9>Karajan_1963>tracks

[Note: Here there are 4 movements so there would be 4 files or tracks in the last folder.]

Then to make things even more complicated there are remastered versions of these performances available. So you could add in the remastering date of either 1997 or 2003—(which in the following example is 1997)—in which case the tree could look like this:

Music>Classical>Beethoven>Symphony_No9>Karajan_1963_2003>tracks

You could also name the artist Karajan,_BPO which is the abbreviation for Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. (Alternatively you could abbreviate it as Karajan; Berlin.)

So then the tree would look like this:

Music>Classical>Beethoven>Symphony_No9>Karajan,_BPO,_1963_2003>tracks

or

Music>Classical>Beethoven>Symphony_No9>Karajan,_BPO,_1963_rm2003>tracks

In the example just above the rm is an abbreviation for remastering. You could also put it after the year as 2003rm.

Optionally, though it isn't necessary, you could also add in the release date if you wish so that would mean even a 3rd year designation. The reason for this is that, with at least one particular version (originally recorded in 1963) of von Karajan's Beethoven Ninth, first there was the original mastering for CD, then a 1997 remastering, and then a 2nd remastering done in 2003. However there have been more than 3 release dates as there have been a number of different CD pressings in different CD packaging.

The remastering date is the important one as that will affect the sound quality. However it isn't always easy to find out what the remastering date actually is as opposed to the release date which is easier. It depends upon how much you wish to know which version it is that you are listening to and how much time you are willing to invest in doing the requisite research.

In this particular example, at last count there were 21 different CD releases currently available that contain a von Karajan Beethoven's Ninth. You can see a listing of them all here.

Faure's Requiem - conducted by Philippe Herreweghe

Alternatively a conductor might record 2 different versions of the same piece. For instance there is an 1893 chamber version of Faure's Requiem and a 1901 concert version. The latter version was rewritten for a larger group and included more instruments.

So then the hierarchical folder tree could look like this:

Music>Genre>Composer>Work_date>Conductor>tracks

So for example:

Music>Classical>Faure>Requiem_1893>Herreweghe>movements

And then the listing for the other work would look like this:

Music>Classical>Faure>Requiem_1901>Herreweghe>movements

[Note there are 7 movements so there would be 7 files or tracks in the last folder.]

Compilations

If you have a compilation CD with a number of different artists, then you may wish to put each track into their respective artist's folder. Alternatively you may wish to include the artist name as a part of each track name, either at the beginning or end (possibly in parentheses).

Some music server software has an option which will handle compilations of various artists on different tracks. In MediaMonkey software for example the "Artist" name can be different for each track—while at the same time the Album Artist can be listed as the same such as "Various". This means that all of the tracks will show up in one album but you still will be able to see the name of each individual artist for each individual track.

In classical music there are often pairings of two or more pieces by different composers. And you may wish to leave the albums sequenced as they are. For an example when Horowitz gave a concert he had a definite idea of what order to play certain pieces in and you may wish to listen as you would in a live concert. However there may be instances where you may wish to break them into separate folders.

Final Thoughts on File Folder Organization

As you think about your collection, you may do it differently from the examples given above. For instance you might wish to further divide "Classical" into the various eras. And/or you might wish to divide "Classical" into categories such as:

• Orchestral
• Solo Piano
• String Quartet
• Choral
• Opera

Then under a folder such as Orchestral you could you have further subdivisions such as:

• Symphony
• Piano Concerto
• String Concerto

Of course you could further divide String Concerto as follows:

• Violin Concerto
• Cello Concerto
• Triple Concerto

Or for instance you might wish to rip a particular CD as one file—rather than the conventional way which is have an individual file for each individual track which then could be assembled into an album or a playlists. But however you do it, it is important to plan out an appropriate folder and file organization scheme and then stick to it. Consistency is key!

Album Art

A nice touch is to add in the Album Art as you rip a CD. You can include the album art file in the same folder as the music files so that it is easily accessible. There are several sites which you can copy and paste from in order to get album art if you don't already have it. Unfortunately many of the labels do not have good quality cover art on their websites—though hopefully this will change in the future when they understand that people with music servers appreciate nice looking, good quality cover art. If you wish you could email your favorite labels and ask them to put up higher quality cover art on their website. If enough people request it hopefully they will do so sooner rather than later. After all they don't even have to scan it—as they have the original artwork! Two examples of labels that do have higher quality artwork on their websites include Hyperion and Chandos. Listed below are some other websites where you may be able to find the cover art:

http://www.albumartexchange.com/ - excellent quality large images, mostly for popular music (Tip: for search use exact spelling)

http://www.emusic.com/listen/#/ - excellent quality - 600x600 & 1400x1400 - (site is slow & search function isn't the best though)

http://www.cduniverse.com/default.asp - many better quality images (large database)

http://www.amazon.com/  - an enormous collection of images and when expanded many are good (excellent search function)

http://images.google.com/ image quality varies greatly (average hit-or-miss search function)

http://music.barnesandnoble.com/index.asp - after drilling down image quality very good (good advanced search, site is slow)

http://www.album-cover-art.org/ - connects to Amazon

http://albumart.org/ - connects to Amazon

http://www.seekacover.com/ - inconsistent sizes

http://www.allcdcovers.com/ - large sizes

http://allmusic.com/ - quality of images not great (huge database)

http://www.coverhunt.com/ - fairly large selection, OK image quality but not great (but better than arkivmusic)

http://www.walmart.com/cp/Music/4104 - cover art tends to be pretty good (selection not the greatest though)

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/main.jsp - quality of images not very good (classical music only) (superb search function)

http://www.hbdirect.com/ quality of images not great - relatively large database

The first four sometimes have higher quality album cover images that can be seen if you click on the image to expand it—although sometimes if you click on the image in Amazon you can get good quality scans too. However the expanded Amazon scans are sometimes surrounded by a very large white border—which if you wish to perform that extra step can be cropped out in Picasa or any other photo editor.

At the same time as you add the album cover artwork you also have the opportunity to add additional artist and/or album info in text form which you can write yourself or copy-and-paste. For instance you might wish to add in the name of the label or a list of additional albums by a particular artist that you would like to eventually acquire.

Depending upon your music server software you also may need to use one of the following as the name for each jpg as follows:

• folder.jpg
• cover.jpg

Also depending upon your music server software you might want to aim for a certain size. For instance high quality cover art is sometimes found in sizes such as 600x600 or 1000x1000 or 1400x1400 pixels. Some music server software will take a larger size jpg and display it as a smaller sized thumbnail. But usually it is still viewable as a larger sized photo if desired with a click or two.

Note: With most music server software each jpg should be placed in the album folder containing the tracks. Specifically if you are using JRiver music server software, here is a link for more info.

Here is tip: If your cover art size is 1000x1000, and if you are using an iPad to control your music server with an app--and your iPad has a screen resolution lower than 1000x1000, then you could try using iPeng or SqueezePad.

However sometimes you will have to scan your album cover—as either you can't find it on the web at all or what you can find are only blurry, low quality images. For that purpose you can use a flatbed scanner. In that case the scanner software used must have a "descreen" option when printed images are scanned in at a high resolution. Otherwise without descreening a distracting moiré pattern may be evident.

Tip: If the cover is part of a multi-CD box set and is basically a cardboard sleeve, it is recommended to take the CD out of it before scanning so it will sit flat. That way you may get a noticeably better quality scan at the edges without as much in the way of light source reflections.

Ripping in Windows

If you would like to use a free Windows program then we can recommend that you use Exact Audio Copy (EAC) with AccurateRip to rip your CD's to WAV files. Obviously with the large hard disks or SSD's (Solid State Drives) available today it is both unnecessary and sonically deleterious to use any lossy compression. Alternatively if you wish to use FLAC (or some other type of lossless compressed files) that is your choice. One advantage to using FLAC is for embedded metadata—however if you use Tag and Rename you can tag WAV and AIF, as well as other file types, too.

While there are a significant number of options to consider when initially setting up the program, for optimal results using Exact Audio Copy make sure at the very minimum that you set it up with the following two options selected:

• Secure mode
• "High" Error Recovery Quality

However even though we have used EAC with excellent results, you should know that there is a wizard mode for setup (as well as guides online) for configuring the numerous options, all of which need to be properly set to ensure "bit-perfect" rips. This is not a procedure that a casual user will find intuitive--and even assuming proper configuration there is still the issue of track tagging and overall metadata congruity. (Note: See "File Naming" above)

If you get a track that rips to less than 100% in terms of quality, you can always highlight that track and try ripping again after cleaning the CD playing surface. Although sometimes if CD's have been scratched there is no way to accurately transfer the affected tracks without either resurfacing or replacing the CD. And sometimes CD have defective tracks from a bad pressing or plating right out of the shrinkwrap. We've even seen brand new CD's that were already scratched when we took off shrinkwrap!

However there is another Windows program which may actually be even more accurate in terms of bit-for-bit copying than EAC, namely dBpoweramp. dBpoweramp also includes AccurateRip. Here is a page from their website with some technical information about ripping errors. Also dBpoweramp, especially for classical music which is the most challenging to get the correct metadata,  is easier to use in terms of setting up folders as well as including more metadata from the GD3 and especially the Sonata databases. Here are some links for more info:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/Help/dMC/cd-ripper-setup-guide.htm

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/Help/dMC/CDhelp.htm

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/Help/dMC/CDhelp.htm

http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/archive/index.php?s=e22d9adddc1e6ff51da0fab942519586&api=1

http://forum.dbpoweramp.com/showthread.php?24738-Cannot-get-album-art

Ripping in OSX

Alternatively if you wish to use an OSX Mac for ripping you can use XLD (X Lossless Decoder).

For XLD here are some settings that you should know about:

In addition there is a new program that as of April 2011 was still in beta form called Rip.

For more Mac music server info here is a link.

Ripping with ReQuest

Note: If you have a ReQuest music server and you use it to do ripping, you can specify a factory-set option which will achieve the same sort of high quality transfer as Exact Audio Copy. For adding a few CD's to a collection this is fine. However for larger collections you may wish to have them professionally transferred so that everything is done with consistent metadata across your entire collection.

Metadata

With regard to music files, metadata is information about various fields such as Artist, Album, Track name, Track number, etc. However it is very important to understand that there are major differences in how metadata support is implemented in various music server applications. The most important difference to understand is between Associated Metadata and Embedded Metadata.

Associated metadata is stored in a proprietary database or file used by music server software applications. When looking at an album within the application, users will see all the information available such as album art, artists, track title etc. For example, when iTunes automatically finds album art it only associates this art with each track of the album. The problem with associated metadata is its lack of transportability. This metadata will only be available when using the specific application that associated the metadata with the files. If an iTunes library file is lost, or an application's database of associated metadata is lost, or if a file with associated metadata is moved to another application, all the metadata is gone for good.

Whereas embedded metadata is stored inside the audio file's container such as AIFF or FLAC. Containers / file formats such as FLAC, AIFF, M4A (ALAC) support embedded metadata that is readable and writable by many audio playback applications. These containers/file formats have guidelines or standards for embedding metadata and they allocate space within the container for this data. Once this metadata has been embedded into a container/file like AIFF the metadata is there until removed. None of the three problems described above are an issue with embedded metadata. Loss of an iTunes library file or proprietary application database or moving a file to another application have no effect on the metadata. A file with embedded metadata in iTunes will display album art, artist, track title etc. without manually entering anything or without iTunes gathering the metadata from an Internet database.
 

Online Metadata Databases

In case you didn't know, there are a number of online metadata databases such as:

• AMG
• GD3
• SonataDB - (Note: This is potentially the best database for classical music)
• MusicBrainz
• freedb

Tagging & ReTagging

Assuming that you have a bit-for-bit file copies of your CD collection, the next most important thing is getting the tagging to be both correct and consistent. Consistency is very important—as you will find out once you start listening via your music server! In order to change file names and metadata there are a variety of programs available including:

For Windows you can use Tag & Rename to tag music files including file formats such as WAV, AIFF, FLAC, etc. You can also use this program to edit Tag information. This can be especially helpful for classical music as there are more than the usual four fields (Artist / Album / Track # / Track Title) including Composer, Conductor, etc. [Note: this can be very time consuming—especially if you have a large collection of classical music!]

For an OSX Mac tagging program you can use Tag.

Another program that is multiplatform for Linux/Mac OS X/Windows is MusicBrainz Picard. In addition there are some plug-ins available for those who wish to try them. Here is a review.

Also here is an article about some other tagging software which can create tags from file names.

Note: If you have a large collection it may end up that there will need to be a lot of hand correcting done. In that case if you don't have a good keyboard for typing you might wish to obtain one. In that case here is a review of a mechanical switch keyboard that you might be interested in.

Data Redundancy & Backup

It is important to have a good backup scheme. The best approach however is to employ redundancy and as well as both onsite and offsite backup.

We recommend using either RAID 1, 5, 6 or XRAID for redundancy on your music server or NAS (network attached storage) unit. In addition to the RAID redundancy you should also have at least one external backup of your music files. Ideally you would also have another backup or two offsite.

It is a lot of work to transfer a whole library of 100's or 1000's of CD's; you won't believe how many hours it takes until you try it for yourself! So make sure that you do it right the first time and back it all up properly!

How much time does it take to transfer a CD collection?

It depends on whether you have a few dozen CD's in which case it probably won't take too long. If you have 100's or 1000's or more then it might well take quite a bit of time. There are a number of aspects to consider including the quality of the data ripping (bit-for-bit?), the metadata editing, the album art, the learning curve, etc. If you have a larger collection and decide to do it yourself you will probably spend far, far more time ripping and organizing your CD collection than you would ever imagine—especially if you wish to do a high quality job! If you are retired and wish to make this a hobby or if you have plenty of spare time in the evenings and weekends and wish to use your time to do this then by all means go right ahead. If you are unsure whether you wish to tackle this yourself then you could try doing some CD's yourself and see how you feel. Make sure that you test out your results in whatever music server software you are using before you do too many as you don't want to have to redo your entire collection once you learn how you would rather have done it!

Unless you have plenty of free time though, it is recommended that you bring in or ship your CD collection to us and have it professionally transferred with proper searchable metadata and album art. After all time is a precious commodity!

Where can I obtain a robotic 100 CD autoloader?

If you would like to rip your collection yourself and would like to get a robotic autoloader here is a link:

http://www.getdigitaldata.com/ProductNimbie.aspx

However please note that this still requires a hands-on approach. In other words you can't just walk away and have 100 discs be ripped automatically. You still should look at the metadatafor each CD before ripping each one. So this may not be the big timesaver that one might assume.

How much does it cost to have a CD collection professionally ripped?

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