Using Automated CD Duplicators as Mass MP3 Converters?

RobotmanipulaTor asks: "I have a large CD collection I want to convert to MP3 and so do my friends. The last thing we want to do is to manually insert the CD into a drive and convert it. We want to get an extremely basic automated CD duplicator like this and use it to feed CDs to the drive. We could then write some simple software to automate the process, let it run, and presto... MP3's for all. It seems there is a standard control set for the robotic arms, but I can't find any documentation on this. Has anyone done a similar project, or written autoloader software that could be modified?"

Comments

NEC 7-CD drives?

[psychosis]

Not sure if this would work, but there are MUCH, MUCH cheaper CD-ROM changers out there that could be options.
I know that about 5 years ago, NEC had a 6- or 7-disc SCSI unit that used multiple LUNs, giving each tray its own device (or drive letter in windoze - that's all I used it with then on a work system). You could then write a basic script that rip/enc'ed the 7 discs, after which you could replace them. (Unfortunately, I can't remember if you can replace CD's while one is being accessed.)
It's not quite as fancy, but 5 years ago, this toy was only about $350. A quick check at Pricewatch in the "CD-ROM | Changers" section lists some as low as $45, but most around $200 or so. (The $45 one is probably junk or a misprint.)
On a related note, I ripped about 1000 cd's (all my own...) to an mp3 server, and it took a while, but was not unmanageable with Grip - I highly recommend it!! (CDDB/rip/enc/ID3, etc.) Good luck!!

Why waste money?

[Wakko Warner]

If you've got a few hundred CDs, you'll run out of drive space during an automated rip anyway, so the $3000 you plonked down on a cd replicator (and the countless hours you spent writing software) that you'll probably only use a few times will be even more wasted unless you buy gobs of diskspace to store all the MP3s.

- A.P.

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* CmdrTaco is an idiot.

Re:A bit off topic but....

[ghazban]

Eek. God no.. not audiocatalyst. Use exact audio copy: www.eac.com instead. It uses lame for the mp3 encoder and is free.. have a look at the comparisons between encoders, and what is the best rippers at http://r3mix.net. Lucas

Yeah, just do it manually

[LordNimon]

I agree with everyone else - the money you'll spend on the CD changer is a complete waste. It would be worthwhile if you wanted to rip thousands of CD's, but you're not going to do that.

Just get some ripping software that has built-in CDDB access and can spawn an mp3 encoder. An excellent, free pacakge that I use is CD2MP3 PM.
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I've done something similar myself

[strredwolf]

Here's my setup:

• cdparanoia
• lame
• perl

I wrote up a few scripts myself. One polls a directory for *.wav files and launches the other to do encoding. The other waits for the *.wav file to finish being pulled, launches lame, and then cleans up the resulting .wav automatically. All I do is launch the monitor in one window and cdparanoia rip in another.

But then, getting a pack or two of Lego Mindstorms and making an arm to remove the CD once ejected and putting in a new one would be a very cool hack to do.

The code I have will be on PerlMonks soon.

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Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com." The purpose of that site was not known. -- MSNBC 10-26-1999 on MS crack

abcde can help with this

[rcw-work]

[disclaimer - being the author of software can make you biased towards it]

If your CD duplicator is a bunch of drives hooked up via a SCSI bus, you'll find abcde extremely handy for this.

http://frantica.lly.org/~rcw/abcde/page/

Command-line based, can be non-interactive, has support for all the major encoders + distmp3 remote encoding support, does cddb, playlists, id3 tagging, customizable output filenames, etc.

Some people use it with autocd for that truly hands-off feel.