Converting a lot of CD's to digital media

We just moved and found all our old CD's which we threw into a box and those cd binders. I am planning on doing a distributed audio system to play music throughout the house and would like to have access to all of our content.

So I am wondering what is the best way to convert 300+ CD's to mp3's? Should I setup multiple computers so I can do more than 1 CD at a time? What should I use to backup the data, I don't want to go through this process to lose all of those files.

I think I have enough parts to put together 4 or 5 computers with CD drives to rip CD's even with that many computers I am looking at a pretty long time to get all that content.

Want to know the best way too. I have at least 200 CDs that need to be converted over too. I haven't felt like camping in front of the PC for a few days converting

Pay a 9 year old kid in Mtn Dew and pizza?

What I do is put a stack of 10 or 20 next to the computer. Then when I sit down to check the email or kill some time at GRM and these wonderful forums, I just pump a few through the ripper each time. You get there.

Slow and steady wins the race. I just did one at a time everytime I sat down at the computer. It only took me 6 months without any real effort. You could easily do 3 a day with minimum effort. Wake up, throw one in. Get home from work, throw one in. About to go to bed, throw one in.

There are also commercial services that will do this. But when I first went digital, I simply ripped while I worked on other things as described. I did it at work - many more than 3 per day

Because I'm pedantic, I have to point out that CDs are digital media.

Do you have a laptop? Put it on the couch next to you as you watch TV and let it crank away while you change discs every couple of minutes. Modern PCs can rip a CD pretty quickly, it won't take you as long as you think. I originally ripped all of mine back in around 2000 or so, then re-ripped them 3-4 years ago at a higher bitrate. I probably have 250 or so. Took me a week or two, but I got through them.

Yeah, like the others said, just do them a few at a time. I think I did 5-10 at a time.

I keep my files on a NAS drive, and that has the ability to back up to an eSATA drive, so I got one of those also, and set the NAS to backup whenever the eSATA drive is detected. Then I just turn it on after I add new files.

Also, you might consider ripping to a lossless format (FLAC) and then creating mp3 files from those and keeping the lossless files as an archive. Then you won't have to re-rip if you decide you want a different format or bitrate later.

A program like dBPoweramp can rip to multiple formats at once, also.

These:

They were the hot ticket a few years before the iPod was launched, and now can be had for $150 on Ebay. They hold 300 CDs. You could just wire it into the system, or see if you can wire it to the computer and walk away for 300 hours or so.

I'm still using the rip function of iTunes.....

Yeah, tweak the setting in iTunes, have it rip automatically, and keep feeding it discs. I have a second monitor so I can do fun things like watch a movie or browse the web while doing such things.

Tom_Spangler wrote: Because I'm pedantic, I have to point out that CDs *are* digital media.

I love pedants. They make my life richer.

What ripping app are you guys using? I used to use audiograbber and mkw

http://etree.org/mkw.html

http://www.audiograbber.org/

depending on the level of control you need, i use CDEX

Keith Tanner wrote:

Tom_Spangler wrote: Because I'm pedantic, I have to point out that CDs *are* digital media.

I love pedants. They make my life richer.

Here's one that made my life poorer. I bought my wife a real pretty emerald pendant not long after we got married. I learned you never want to buy emeralds, they are more expensive than diamonds.