external hard drive

RayP · 15010

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Offline Noskipallwd

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Reply #15 on: March 27, 2012, 08:20:38 PM

2) You rip enough CDs on any drive and it will wear out. Personally, I do not like the Apple Superdrive since it is so slow and use an external drive to burn everything. The best thing Apple did was pull the Superdrive out of the Mac mini...much rather have an extra hd.
3) Yes, some drives are better in that they are faster and of a higher quality...just compare the specs.

If you are using a Mac then your USB drive will blow away your laptop CD drive.

I agree, I have a 27" IMac and a Macbook Pro. I took the superdrive out of the macbook pro and installed a ssd in it's place. I bought a high quality firewire enabled external optical drive I use for both macs. Faster and more reliable. As far as external HDs I am using an OWC external ssd for my squeezebox, very happy with it, when I add to my library the rescans take no time at all. They are expensive but IMHO worth it.

Cheers,
Shawn



Shawn Prigmore


Offline 2wo

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Reply #16 on: March 28, 2012, 01:07:58 PM
Hi Ray, Your biggest challenge is tagging and organizing Classical music. Most programs do a fair job with Pop, Jazz etc. but the data bases for Classical kind of suck. You need to decide whether to tag by composer or artist and be consistent or you'll never find what you are looking for and forgot about the album art, unless you want to do it manual. I have had a server for a few years now and I still don't have much Classical on it but I'm not much of a computer guy...John         

John S.


Offline Noskipallwd

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Reply #17 on: March 28, 2012, 03:36:21 PM
 There are some good wikis on tagging classical as well as all other genre on the slim devices forum. Even if you do not have a squeeze device of some type they are very informative. I think the most important rule for tagging files is to remain consitent.

Cheers,
Shawn

Shawn Prigmore


Offline RayP

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Reply #18 on: March 31, 2012, 04:09:40 PM
I have been ripping and ripping with JRiver and have reached Bartok's Bluebeard Castle, (a real toe tapper that one). I must admit I did Schubert along the way as an experiment.

It's been interesting. I would say about 80% of my CDs have been identified but the other 20% have to be filled in. I believe I have been consistent and I seem to be able to find things using the composer, conductor, orchestra, artist and genre tags.

For the unknown CDs, I've found it useful to look up the CD on Amazon and if I find it, to copy and paste the track descriptions into JRiver. What really annoys me is where I have a few versions of let's say Schuberts Die schone Mullerin that aren't recognized. I've got to paste the same track stuff in every time unless there is a short cut that I don't know about.

ray

Ray Perry


Offline RayP

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Reply #19 on: May 31, 2012, 02:09:12 AM
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.

ray


Ray Perry