Ripping CDs to FLAC: Some General Questions

[Pietercape]

Hi Richard
Allow me to add to this thread. I am not a technical person but just a music lover whose collection (90% classical) became unmanageable and who was lucky enough to find MM and the unmatched support available from the moderators and contributers to the forum. In my initial excitement I ripped my entire collection to MP3 using encoding level 2 (high quality) as I was focussed on using my computer/earphones/buds as my primary listening source. I use good quality earphones (Sennheiser Classic II HD) and my buds are also Sennheiser and even in MP3 what I hear is as good as I have heard.

But soon I was thinking of those playlists and how great it would be to be able to use my component system and get even greater value from the hours invested in MM. And MP3 is just not good enough when you try to use it with your HI-Fi.

After hours on the Forum and reading the very good posts from MMan on the subject I realised that the only way was to have the most flexible and secure database as the starting point because that will allow you to use the database in any way that you may like. Who knows what possibilities lie in the future.

After experimentation I am now re-ripping my entire collection and this is what I have found works the best with my equipment:

1. I am using EAC to do the initial rip and validation storing the ripped file in a temporary file in WAV format.
2. I then import the file into MM and access it through the Composer tab as very, very few classical cd's (in my experience) are usefully tagged and almost never have the composer correctly tagged. It will be listed as "Unknown" at the very top of the list. If it is not there I check "Genre" , most often it will simply be tagged "classical" and I use a wide range of descriptions in the "Genre" field.
3. I then use the Tools/Convert Audio Format command to rip to FLAC with Volume Levelling turned off and designating the target folder on the hard drive. I found that doing the conversion to FLAC in MM is much faster than doing a simultaneous rip and conversion in EAC.
4. You probably share my frustration with the totally inconsistent tagging amongst the different labels. Perhaps my requirements are too exacting but it is a good idea to decide what info you want before starting. Much of what can be done later depends on the initial tagging. I have settled on (in no order) :

Title/Artist/Composer/Conductor/Album/Genre/Path/Filename/Length/Track#/Bitrate/File size.

These seem to provide all the info or clues that I have needed thus far.

For me getting the tagging right was the biggest job and still is but it leavs many options available if the basic data is correct.

I use Properties to correct the tags that are common to all the tracks and then edit the individual tracks as needed using copy and paste for the common items.

Important here is to ensure that the track #'s are correct and in sequence. I often find the tracks jumbled up which results in incorrect playback. With some CD's I have to resort to renumbering the tracks in Properties to ensure correct sequences.

All of this is time consuming and the possibility of losing this data is unthinkable. Advice in this forum has been to spend some money and have a duplicate copy on a second drive. I am running a full copy on a 320gb Seagate Go external drive (about $120) and I sleep well.

In addition I am keeping my original MP3 database as I also use a Zen portable and I found converting from FLAC to MP3 is taking too long for my liking as I change the music on my Zen quite frequently and do not have the patience for this process. Dumping to the Zen from the MP3 database is very quick.

My final objective is to be able to play my music via my Component System (another topic) and that is why I am re-ripping to FLAC. I have just finished the "B" composers so have a long way to go but I am getting way, way more pleasure from my collection now and am rediscovering music that I have forgotten about (despite an independant catalogue) thanks to the magic of MM. Enjoy the Ride!