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CD Ripping Services Compared
RX8 writes "Designtechnica compares a number of CD ripping services and talks about the differences in services, price and which formats they will rip your music to. The guide compares 6 different services, all of which are somewhat different in what they do. Ripping services are gaining in popularity because they make it so easy to convert (a.k.a. rip) your entire collection into MP3 files for your portable media device."
I'd be interested to see how the sound quality compares if the CDs are scratched. Given that many people won't be sending in new discs, this should be an important factor.
For one thing, ripping an entire CD collection in a row is a great way to ruin your CD drive. Those things have moving parts and they heat up real fast, especially in laptops. I even ruined my desktop's CD drive this way. For another thing, the ripping company only has to rip one copy of each CD and then they store it on a server. So you are basically just showing them that you own the CD and then they give you a legal copy digitized in your format of choice. It is a pretty sweet deal if you think about it.
I used RipDigital (yes, I could do it myself; no, I didn't) and while it was mostly useful, I still spent a lot of time fixing the tags. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is annoyed by the inconsistency in the Gracenote DB. Sometimes it's "J.S. Bach", sometimes it's "Johann Sebastian Bach", and sometimes it's "Bach, J.S.". Nine Inch Nails albums are variously classified as rock, alternative/punk, and electronica.
I found myself wishing that RipDigital had built a local version of the DB with consistent artist names, album titles, song titles, genres, etc., adding new CDs as customers submit them for ripping. In other words, check local DB and if absent, use Gracenote to get the initial data, scan the tags for format, make edits as necessary, and insert into local DB for future. Sure, it would have meant a little extra work at the outset, but pretty soon they would get to the point where each new customer was only requiring them to manually check the formatting on a handful of CDs, and the finished product would be so much cleaner.
If you have 500 CDs, I could understand giving it a break every once in a while. But for someone that has 50 CDs, I would return that CD drive for not being able to play 50 CDs, even if in a row at 100% throughput. Besides, the CD drive isn't going to be running the entire time, as it must take some time to encode the files as well. I did a test on a 13 track CD, roughly 565MB, and it took 2 minutes to copy it to the HDD. Assuming very good and consistent encoding speeds, figure at another minute, figure 30 seconds to change out CDs, enter any dialog information, etc. So, the CD-ROM is only going to be doing any work about 60% of the time, and that's if you are a machine, pumping in CD's non stop. But, I think the average person with an average person's collection and not rushing will do just fine on their own.
I'm sure its a bit more intensive than simply playing a CD on repeat all day, as you're only copying the full CD about once an hour, but it should be well within the limitations of modern CD players to handles a few hours of reading. If the drive is still overheating, there are ways to solve this problem.
In a desktop: first try moving the drive away from any other drives it may be touching or close to. If it is in the top slot, move it to the next one down to allow room for heat to escape on top. To speed cooling, put a drive cooler in the slot above the drive. Also, pull the back of the desktop off the floor and away from walls. Having your fan plugged up by carpet fibers or blocked by the wall will increase drive heat. If the problem is drastic, pull the drive out completely and set a small fan to blow on it directly. Make sure to set it on something that will allow air to flow beneath the drive.
In a laptop: Make sure there is airflow beneath the laptop. Most laptops allow a tiny amount of room. Anyone who carries their laptop around can tell you that leaving it on a cushion or carpet will cause it to overheat rather quickly. So, increase cooling by increasing airflow. You can also buy a "cold plate" to set the laptop on, to ensure that its sucking up nice cool air.
If it's still overheating, I'd move to a desktop. Ripping on a flimsy (and probably slower) laptop drive would just get annoying. If the desktop is still overheating, be it CPU/HDD/CD-ROM... seriously look at getting a new computer. If CD ripping is what brings down the box, then the box wasn't very great to begin with.
I8-D