<p>My <a href="/articles/2003/12/22/ipod_arrived/">recent acquisition</a>, has meant that I need to reassess my music collection.</p> <p>The ideal solution would be to rip each CD and save the tracks with <a href="http://flac.sourceforge.net/">lossless compression</a> (thanks for that one Andy). Then as and when I want to I can encode these to MP3s, or whatever comes along in future. This requires that I have enough space on my HDDs. I don't have enough spare HDD space to do this. I have just about enough disk space to store my collection on MP3s. Now the next step is determining at what quality I will encode at.</p> <p>I took a look at <a href="http://www.apple.com/itunes/overview.html">iTunes</a>, and their ripping/encoding is fast. iTunes is hooked up to the <a href="http://www.gracenote.com/">Gracenote CDDB</a>, which I guess means they have cleaner data than <a href="http://www.freedb.org/">FreeDB</a>. iTunes can be configured to automatically rip and encode a CD on insert. iTunes can encode in <a href="http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/aac/">AAC</a>.</p> <p>So why did I choose to use <a href="http://nostatic.org/grip/">grip</a>? Because I can use <a href="http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/">lame</a> as the encoder. It also means I don't have to spend unnecessary time in Windows XP. Some FreeDB entries are a little messy - please learn to spell <em>rhythm</em> people - but the title of a song is secondary to the quality of the encoding. That was the clincher. Despite the niceness of the iTunes interface, it ultimately comes down to the music.</p> <p>Hopefully I'll get my music re-ripped and encoded in a few weeks.</p> <p>How do you maintain your music collection?</p> <ul> <li><a href="http://www.brain-dump.com/2003/10/encoding_a_cd_collection_to_mp3/">Encoding a CD Collection to MP3</a></li> </ul> My <a href="/articles/2003/12/22/ipod_arrived/">recent acquisition</a>, has meant that I need to reassess my music collection. The ideal solution would be to rip each CD and save the tracks with <a href="http://flac.sourceforge.net/">lossless compression</a> (thanks for that one Andy). Then as and when I want to I can encode these to MP3s, or whatever comes along in future. This requires that I have enough space on my HDDs. I don't have enough spare HDD space to do this. I have just about enough disk space to store my collection on MP3s. Now the next step is determining at what quality I will encode at. I took a look at <a href="http://www.apple.com/itunes/overview.html">iTunes</a>, and their ripping/encoding is fast. iTunes is hooked up to the <a href="http://www.gracenote.com/">Gracenote CDDB</a>, which I guess means they have cleaner data than <a href="http://www.freedb.org/">FreeDB</a>. iTunes can be configured to automatically rip and encode a CD on insert. iTunes can encode in <a href="http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/aac/">AAC</a>. So why did I choose to use <a href="http://nostatic.org/grip/">grip</a>? Because I can use <a href="http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/">lame</a> as the encoder. It also means I don't have to spend unnecessary time in Windows XP. Some FreeDB entries are a little messy - please learn to spell <em>rhythm</em> people - but the title of a song is secondary to the quality of the encoding. That was the clincher. Despite the niceness of the iTunes interface, it ultimately comes down to the music. Hopefully I'll get my music re-ripped and encoded in a few weeks. How do you maintain your music collection? <ul> <li><a href="http://www.brain-dump.com/2003/10/encoding_a_cd_collection_to_mp3/">Encoding a CD Collection to MP3</a></li> </ul> 2003-12-23T02:03:00-08:00 97 1 2007-05-26T15:29:44-07:00