I've finally ripped my classical CDs to flac using the JRiver package and I thought I would give some feedback that might be helpful to others.
I've got a bit over 1000 of them and they take about 270 gb.
I have backed them up on to an extra 1 tb hard drive. I have progressively copied the folder on the 1st hard drive to a 2nd 1tb hard drive and since there is plenty of space left over on the 2nd hard drive, I don't overwrite the old folder but simply create an additional folder each time. I take the position that either drive might die at any time. Now that I am finished, I can delete the older folders on the 2nd hard drive.
Since my hard drives are both the same model 1tb Western Digital, I have applied physical labels to them to make sure I don't mistake one for the the other.
With USB 2 connections, it takes about 11 hours to copy the lot.
There are a few CDs that my CD reader did not want to deal with. I'll try them on another reader sometime.
I found an awful lot of CDs that I forgot I have or haven't played in a long time.
You have to be physically organized to make sure those CDs you have ripped do not get mixed up with those still to rip. With a small collection, it wouldn't be a problem, but a medium to large collection takes up a fair amount of space.
A few comments now about JRiver for those thinking of using it.
When you get started, rip about 20 or so CDs to decide how you are going to do your tagging. I used genre, composer, name of track, conductor, orchestra, soloists, artist, album and date (year of recording). Once you have ripped and tagged them see if you can efficiently find the piece(s) you are interested in and then play it.
As others have mentioned, try to be consistent. This is more difficult than it sounds since the JRiver program often starts ripping before you want it to and you have to enter your tags while it is ripping. On a CD with multiple composers and artists, this can be a challenge.
Expect to spend some time subsequently tidying up your tags, particularly the artist and album tags. I suspect this is a never ending process.
It's a pity that the JRiver CD track look up does not hook into Amazon. About 25% - 33% of my CDs needed to be entered manually. I would usually look for the CD on Amazon and then cut and paste the track information into the JRiver track fields.
I could never really predict when the JRiver database would not already have the CD track info already in it. Sometimes the info would be there for what I thought were obscure CDs and sometimes there would be nothing for what I thought were well known CDs.
Everybody seems to have a different way of entering the track information. I suspect that is something I will tidy up over time in my track tags. Incorrect spellings are common.
It's amazing how many classical CDs have 15 tracks.
You will be amazed at how many composers you have in your database that you have never heard of. For example, the obscure Russian composers on a CD of Russian Liturgical Music.
I never found a way to count my CDs in JRiver. I tried a script that listed only track 1, but I didn't find a counting feature.
This is no where near as easy as ripping popular CDs. You literally have to do some sort of tagging for each and every classical CD you rip. It's a huge task.
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