Best Method for Automated CD Ripping?

OzPeter asks: "I have a need to rip about 200-300 CDs in the near future, and I am not looking forward to being a slave to the computer every 4 minutes in order to change the CD in the drive. I have been looking around for automated ripping systems but in general have not been impressed by what I found. This question was asked, 4 years ago, and the best advice to come out of it seemed to be to hire a local teenager to be that slave. Have things improved, or does the advice given in that article still stand? What is currently the best way of automatically ripping a significant number of CDs?"

Comments

Well

[OverlordQ]

What is currently the best way of automatically ripping a significant number of CDs?"

There isn't one. If you were mearly duplicating, there's plenty of robotic/automated (albiet expensive) solutions, but since you're wanting to rip, you can either hire that teenager, or send it off to these people.

Re:Well

[paeanblack]

there's plenty of robotic/automated (albiet expensive) solutions

Keep in mind the hidden cost of not investing in automated ripping hardware: you need to invest in a more robust storage system or pay the ripping fee again when drives fail.

However, if you spend a few hundred dollars on a 200 disc changer, like a Starmatix Powerfile, you don't really need to bother with a RAID. This factor needs to be considered when pricing the whole deal.

Re:Well

[SydShamino]

Trying reading the 278 comments when this was last discussed in December 2005:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/16/011224 9

Really, that was a good discussion, and this is basically a dupe of that.

AllOfMP3

[Ahnteis]

Download it off AllOfMP3.com.

Probably end up being cheaper then a teenager.

Seriously though, for such a specialized situation, there isn't going to exist any reasonably priced automated solution.

Better Than a Teenager

[Bios_Hakr]

The only thing better than a teenager, is to get two computers and hire two teenagers.

Honestly, why go for an expensive, complicated solution when a simple solution is already at hand.

5 minutes per CD gives about 12 CSs per hour.

That's 25 hours to rip 300 CDs.

$5 per hour comes in at $125. Buy a pizza for lunch over 3 days brings it to just under $200.

If you borrow a laptop or two, there is no reason one guy can't swap out CDs in 3 computers; it's be done in a day. Offer a local teen $150 + pizza for a day's work, and they'll jump at the chance.

So, unless you can come up with something less than $200, you are just shooting yourself in the foot.

Re:Better Than a Teenager

[Dachannien]

Offer a local teen $150 + pizza for a day's work, and they'll jump at the chance.

Or you could offer a local graduate student just the pizza, and save yourself $150.

Re:Better Than a Teenager

[StikyPad]

Or just gladly promise pizza on Tuesday for a ripping job today.

Outsource It

[xCepheus]

Have you looked at hiring a cd ripping service like MusicShifter? A lot of these places will rip you collection for cheap because they have massive digital libraries of pre-ripped music. Once they receive your cds instead of actually having to rip all 300 of them there is a good chance that 250 or so are already stored in their library resulting in a relatively cheap and fast service ($.79 per cd from Music Shifter).

(I'm in know way affiliated with any cd ripping services - I've just heard good things about them.)

Re:Outsource It

[cfulmer]

If that's true, then MusicShifter is infringing copyright -- this is exactly what mp3.com got spanked for a few years ago (with mp3.com, you didn't send in your CD, you just put it in your PC to prove that you had it).

Re:Outsource It

[4D6963]

So, your solution is about getting something ripped by someone else of some other CD just because you got the same one

If you push that logic further, you'll realize that it's exactly the same thing as downloading your 300 CD's off P2P : there's a very good chance that 300 or so are already shared in the network resulting in a relatively free and fast service.

So don't use some cd ripping service, get em from P2P networks. What's the difference between the two? They both give you the rips of the CD's you have except it was ripped before by someone else with the same CD's as you have, so there's no difference really, besides the price and the convenience.

What's the rush?

[anomaly]

I was able to do this over a period of a couple of weeks with a similar number of CDs. This was not rocket science. I simply kept a stack of media to be ripped near the Mac, then configured iTunes to auto lookup, rip to mp3, then eject CDs when done. If i walked by the laptop and there was a CD sticking out, I'd replace with another and keep going with whatever I was doing.

Didn't take *that* long, I spent no cahs, and I was not a slave to the PC, either.

YMMV.

Anomaly

Re:What's the rush?

[stevenvi]

I must second this statement. I, too, decided to put my CD collection (~500 CDs) on my computer in a lossless format (flac), with little difficulty.

Your four minute estimate is incorrect if you want to make sure you're actually copying the right data. Using (in Linux) grip and cdparanoia, it was pretty easy. I just queued up a new disc each time one popped out, whenever I was in my dorm room.

Took me a few months to finish it, and for some reason I had two albums that refused to rip in Linux. (Not DRMed ones, old ones -- Foo Fighters, "The Colour and the Shape," and Meat Puppets, "Too High to Die.") Didn't cost me a dime, and because I used cdparanoia it ripped at maybe 2x, so I only had to swap discs every half hour. I didn't consider myself a slave. Nice change of pace from hammering refresh on Slashdot. ; )

Re:What's the rush?

[tooth]

That's exactly what i was going to respond with. I'm in the middle of doing this right now, done about 200-250 cds so far. Slap a CD in, rips automatically, ejects. I have a stack of about 10 "to do" cds on the left and 10 done cds on the right. When the "to do" gets to zero, i put the done stack into a box and grab another 20 or so from the cd stands. I read web sites and emails while this is happening and i never rush to change a cd. like you i often wander off and when walking past i swap out the old one and put the new one in.

A few tips:

Stop your wife/gf/so from putting the "done" stack back into the main "to do" pile. This is very temping for them, as the see a cd they want to listen to, but dont tell you they took it and then you find it days later in the car or other odd places, think you missed it (or have 2 copies) and re-rip it. itunes has a duplicate song finder, but it's not very intellingent and calls the same song on different albumns duplicates when they are not (eg songs appearing on "best ofs") ... i'd like a duplicate albumn function.

I was origionally going to use abcde to rip the cds under linux with a slot loading drive, auto ejecting done cds and non-music cds. this never worked out though as i would forget about it and only get a few cds done an hour. the advantage of using your main pc (mines a mac too) is that you sitting there anyway so the effort is less.

anyway, break it done into smaller lots, if you have 300 cds, and assuming you can do 20 a day you'll have it done in 2 weeks. And you could do 2 pcs at once if youre in a hurry, or you can listen to the music you've ripped to make it a bit more enjoyable.

Re:Software or hardware?

[paeanblack]

There are some hardware options that aren't totally insane pricewise:

MF Baxter
http://www.mfdigital.com/baxter.html

StarMatix PowerFile
http://search.ebay.com/powerfile

Challenge to /. - it's time for some hacking.

[mmell]

Look carefully at (virtually any) CD/DVD drive designed for mounting in a half-height 5 1/4" bay.

Now, open ANY cd-jukebox (I've got a 60-slot model; I couldn't afford the 250-slot model). Mechanically, it shouldn't be too difficult to fit the CD/DVD drive mechanism in place of the existing CD; it's a fairly simple mechanism (although hacking the cupholder will certainly be required,.

Fix up the data cabling to support the drive (piece of cake) and hack the front panel controls to allow for inputs from some form of computer interface (serial perhaps - gotta do something with it) (that looks like the hard part, BTW, but I also know that there are /.'ers out there who will read this and say "no, that's easy!").

I thought about building something like this for profit once, but I'll never raise the VC for it. Can Slashdot produce a hack (with free-as-in-beer instructions) to accomplish this? Or has it been done already?

abcde

[mrfantasy]

abcde works well. It's very configurable, rips to any audio format you'd want (I use FLAC) and can eject the CD when done. And it's written in bash.

My blog talks about how I used it. It can run as a daemon so I had it down to insert CD, and change it 15-20 minutes later when it ejected again (cdparanoia and flac took longer than 52x would make you think).

Re:robots

[mrzaph0d]

Home built CD changer contraption

CD-changing Lego® robot

lots of boxes!

[flatt]

I'd say buy maybe 5-10 ideally indentical Pentium 3-ish computers, perhaps from ebay (look for local to avoid shipping fees) or from college surplus auctions (a geek gold mine). Get one setup to automate the process as much as possible and clone hd's.

Have at it. This can be done for much, much cheaper than you might think. I managed to get 12 PCs of this type for $50 at a surplus auction and I could have had about 10 more at around $2 a piece. You could be up and running in an afternoon ripping many cd's at once. Go down the line every 10 minutes or so while you hang out/read a book/watch tv and you'll be done in no time. Plus, when you're done you'll have all sorts of goodies to play with for other projects.

Just be nice to your circuit breaker.

Re:ripping vs encoding

[notanatheist]

FWIW, Audiograbber does just as well as EAC IMHO. YMMV. As for unattended ripping, are you seeking accurate tags or not? Are you willing to sift through everything later if something didn't work right? As for myself, I'm in the midst of re-ripping my entire CD collection (only about 200 right now) to MP3 with LAME via Audiograbber with "V 0 --vbrnew" for near lossless quality. (all you purists can just STFU, I'm aware of compression and how it affects things. I can also tell you I'm only human and my speakers didn't cost more than my car). Why re-rip? Greater compatibility across devices. Everything is presently VBR OGG which I've been very happy with but can't easily throw 5 albums on a disc for my car or load up one of those black or white fruit things with songs. So, sit down, shut up, properly tag and encode in one pass. Do what I do, rip while you work. Pick up where you left off. If you're in a hurry send somebody else your collection and let them do it for you.

Build one

[kinema]

Check this out. The guy built exactly what you are looking for. Here is another one.

Seriously.

[Ayanami Rei]

It's funny because I've done exactly that. I'll be at work and need a obscure bunch of tracks for a mix CD for someone in the office. Shit... my CDs are at home, of course. But sure enough, AllofMP3 has it. Do I pay a dollar to save the hassel of lugging around and flipping through a CD album? You bet I do, especially when I get to pick the encoding technique.
The day is saved! Huzzah!

Re:Software or hardware?

[scragz]

That Baxter, while exactly what is being asked for, is ~$800 and only works with their proprietary ripping software. The Powerfile route looks a little better, but preliminary research has me a little bit worried about its scriptability.

Robotics.

[OgGreeb]

I've been researching this for the last several weeks because I'm thinking about offering CD ripping as an additional service. I've found that the makers of the DVD/CD robotic duplicators are just now getting the hint that these devices can be re-tasked to rip disks and make them some more sales, so they are coming out with solutions.

For low-volume ripping, there is a device called the Baxter that goes for about $800 from various resellers. It will hold 25 disks at a time in its hopper and comes with the excellent Riptastic software bundled. Go in with a friend to get one of these and it makes the cost cheaper. Sell it on eBay afterwards and make most of your money back.

The biggest problem with small-capacity units is that they run out of disks too soon -- you can't load enough to let them run overnight.

The larger capacity (250 to 600 disks at a time) robotic units come with PCs built into them (they were designed for duplicating and the software is only beginning to catch up with them). They run from $3300 up to $5500 depending on capacity and number of CD drives used. Even with the higher cost, it can make sense if you get together a bunch of buddies to chip in. Say you charge your friends $0.50/disk simply to cover the cost of the machine (you're not doing it as a business). Pooling the money of 6-8 friends and then selling it on eBay afterwards might cover the cost.

The vendors I spoke to said that they get questions about these boxes every day. The biggest problem is making the Riptastic software (or other similar software) work with multiple simultaneously ripping drives. So we should see some announcements on this in the next several months.

Any of the robotic devices used for ripping also have the advantage of being duplicators of course. They also help make excellent DVD backup devices, since you can start the backup and walk away, letting the robot flop the disks for you.

Disclaimer: I don't represent any of these vendors -- I'm just doing the research necessary to purchase some to offer a ripping service. You could of course ask me to rip them for you... 8-).