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?"

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?

Wimp!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just ripped - according to my database statistics - 2116 albums when I combined my wife's (she was a dj) and my collection. She had probably twice the number of CDs that I had and I spent those four minutes reviewing artists and albums I didn't know in her collection using AllMusic. I learned a lot - both about my wife and the music she likes. I'd approach it as an opportunity to figure out if you should catch-up on any artists you previously liked or maybe find some similar ones that you never heard of.

Speaking of cool, old music - have you heard of Wolfgang's Vault [wolfgangsvault.com]? Try Playing Vault Radio. It is kind of neat.

Best Method for Automated CD Ripping?

[Anonymous Coward]

Build an android to do it for you.

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.

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.