And car CD changers are rare, to say the least. I guess I'll have to burn everything to an iPod or some such damn thing so I can plug it into an aux port on a car stereo and no it's not all going on my phone.
So here is my question: how can I quickly burn all my CD's to an iPod? I plan to do a nano, if that makes any difference. No kidding, I probably have a minimum of 250 CD's and that would mean probably a thousand hours of burning at 1:1.
The cd or DVD player on your computer is probably at least a 12x, which means it will read a cd in under 5 minutes. Still a good block of time, but hours instead of months.
Well, if you aren't horribly concerned about the quality of the sound, burn it faster than 1:1. You can get good enough quality at 4x the speed. Or even 20x the speed.
Now, as to the how to do it, put the computer/burner/whatever in the garage, and when you're wrenching, burn it. Set it and forget it, and do other stuff. It may take 1000 hours, but it isn't like you only have to do anything with it for 3 minutes every hour or so. Not hard to do. Couple of months and it will be done.
I think getting the albums from a certain bay of seafaring scoundrels, with filenames and ID3 tags already neatly in place, which could be done overnight, is just as illegal as ripping those CDs you paid good money for...just sayin'.
GameboyRMH wrote: I think getting the albums from a certain bay of seafaring scoundrels, with filenames and ID3 tags already neatly in place, which could be done overnight, is just as illegal as ripping those CDs you paid good money for...just sayin'.
No it's not.
From everything I understand, you are allowed to make a "back up" copy of any media you legally purchase.
You young-uns need to explain this to me: Back in "the day" we cared about audio fidelity. We would have powerful amps driving huge speakers, playing the purest source material we had access to.
Nowadays, the kids are listening to highly compressed digital audio played through a bluetooth connection to a speaker the size of a pack of cigarettes, and it sounds like crap.
What price convenience?
z31maniac wrote:GameboyRMH wrote: I think getting the albums from a certain bay of seafaring scoundrels, with filenames and ID3 tags already neatly in place, which could be done overnight, is just as illegal as ripping those CDs you paid good money for...just sayin'.No it's not. From everything I understand, you are allowed to make a "back up" copy of any media you legally purchase.
Yeah just looked it up and it's considered fair use (surprisingly, by US copyright law standards).
Unless you happen to get caught in the act though, which is very highly unlikely, it'll be hard to prove where those MP3s came from...it would be a metric E36 M3-ton less work.
I did this about 10 years ago. I would be shuffling CDs into the computer as I was browsing the web. I was done in a couple of weeks and it was not tedious feeling at all. I used a program that went out and found the ID3 tag info and filled it in automatically, and it named the files and the folder exactly the way I wanted it. The program was free, I just can remember what it was...
1988RedT2 wrote: You young-uns need to explain this to me: Back in "the day" we cared about audio fidelity. We would have powerful amps driving huge speakers, playing the purest source material we had access to. Nowadays, the kids are listening to highly compressed digital audio played through a bluetooth connection to a speaker the size of a pack of cigarettes, and it sounds like crap. What price convenience?
Yeah most people my age don't give a damn about audio quality and will spend $300 on fashionable Beats headphones that aren't as good as a $60 set of Sennheisers...but an MP3 even at 128kbps is pretty close to CD quality, and a bluetooth connection in itself is better than a length of wire carrying an analog signal. If you're talking 320kbps MP3s or lossless formats (which are probably more common these days) then you're bordering into the Audiophile Magical Thinking and Placebo Zone.
So in short, "kids these days" have everything they need to play music at very high quality with sources at or very close to the quality of a CD, but usually berkeley it up at the last step with E36 M3ty headphones or speakers.
1988RedT2 wrote: You young-uns need to explain this to me: Back in "the day" we cared about audio fidelity. We would have powerful amps driving huge speakers, playing the purest source material we had access to. Nowadays, the kids are listening to highly compressed digital audio played through a bluetooth connection to a speaker the size of a pack of cigarettes, and it sounds like crap. What price convenience?
You make a decent point, though it's not quite as bad as you say. Compression algorithms have become pretty damn good. A 320k MP3 file is essentially indistinguishable from the source material. And many of us do still use big speakers and amps, depending on what kind of listening we are doing. But for listening on the go, being able to keep my entire CD collection on my phone and listen to it literally anywhere, yeah, I am willing to sacrifice a bit of sound quality. Hell, I used to use cassette tapes for that purpose, and MP3s are worlds better than those.
As for ripping a bunch of CDs, I've done my collection (200 or so) twice. I first did them in about 2000-2001 at a lower bitrate, so I re-did them about 3 years ago. It takes some time, but not as much as you might think. The other thing you can do is employ multiple computers. If you have a laptop, use that at the same time.
1988RedT2 wrote: ...Back in "the day" we cared about audio fidelity... Nowadays, the kids are listening to highly compressed digital audio played through a bluetooth connection to a speaker the size of a pack of cigarettes, and it sounds like crap.
Agreed. And the latest compressed versions are the worse yet. There's one current popular song that is so badly blurred by compression I can't stand to listen to it. It would be a beautiful song, if you could actually hear the complexities.
Was listening to a classical station the other day, and they played a piece that was so exquisite I had to pull over and just listen. The clarity was distracting me from driving, and I just wanted to drink in the sound. At the end, the DJ told us we had just listened to a near virgin (unplayed) vinyl album, played in full analog. It was a sickening contrast when the next piece was done in standard compressed digital.
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/10/146697658/why-vinyl-sounds-better-than-cd-or-not Don't simply read it, listen to it. They play various compressions to let you hear the differences and hear what is lost.
I'm not anti-digital. It can be superb. I am anti over-compression. That's why I tend not to like downloading MP3s and the like, and prefer a real CD. There is much less compression on a CD usually, especially older CDs.
z31maniac wrote:GameboyRMH wrote: I think getting the albums from a certain bay of seafaring scoundrels, with filenames and ID3 tags already neatly in place, which could be done overnight, is just as illegal as ripping those CDs you paid good money for...just sayin'.No it's not. From everything I understand, you are allowed to make a "back up" copy of any media you legally purchase.
You are good as long as you own it already, and yes the above suggestion will be the fastest.
Tom_Spangler wrote:1988RedT2 wrote: You young-uns need to explain this to me: Back in "the day" we cared about audio fidelity. We would have powerful amps driving huge speakers, playing the purest source material we had access to. Nowadays, the kids are listening to highly compressed digital audio played through a bluetooth connection to a speaker the size of a pack of cigarettes, and it sounds like crap. What price convenience?You make a decent point, though it's not quite as bad as you say. Compression algorithms have become pretty damn good. A 320k MP3 file is essentially indistinguishable from the source material. And many of us do still use big speakers and amps, depending on what kind of listening we are doing. But for listening on the go, being able to keep my entire CD collection on my phone and listen to it literally anywhere, yeah, I am willing to sacrifice a bit of sound quality. Hell, I used to use cassette tapes for that purpose, and MP3s are worlds better than those. As for ripping a bunch of CDs, I've done my collection (200 or so) twice. I first did them in about 2000-2001 at a lower bitrate, so I re-did them about 3 years ago. It takes some time, but not as much as you might think. The other thing you can do is employ multiple computers. If you have a laptop, use that at the same time.
What this guy said.
It's not just me! Yay!
http://wilburland.blogspot.com/2007/12/death-of-high-fidelity.html
Edit: My apologies to the curmudgeon. I will cease my threadjack. 
For in the car / on the road---- it's awfully hard to beat mp3's / compressed music. I travel with my little mp3 player and it's great to have 150 albums at my disposal.
At home I listen to vinyl almost exclusively--- through a decent system. The difference in fidelity is drastic, but I can't really carry my record player on an airplane, or in the car with me.
Different applications for different uses.
1988RedT2 wrote: You young-uns need to explain this to me: Back in "the day" we cared about audio fidelity. We would have powerful amps driving huge speakers, playing the purest source material we had access to. Nowadays, the kids are listening to highly compressed digital audio played through a bluetooth connection to a speaker the size of a pack of cigarettes, and it sounds like crap. What price convenience?
Yeah, because the crap coming over the radio, where many of use first heard many of the songs that drove us to buy the albums, was never full of static, compression or other audio issues?
Also, since this is about listening to it in the car, you can pretty much guarantee that you'll never get a moving car (let alone a GRM'ers car) quiet enough to notice or care about the difference.
It's odd; I listen to mostly hard rock or classic rock on the radio in the car. There is one channel that I'll listen to and 4 out of 5 times, the song just jumps out and grabs me. The channel is a 60s- early 90s rock station so I've literally listen to most of this music for all of my life, but when Led Zeppelin's "Good Times Bad Times" (or similar) comes on, my hair on my neck stands up. Weird thing is, it's only this one channel. I could hear the same song on a different station and it doesn't get the same effect.
turboswede wrote: Also, since this is about listening to it in the car, you can pretty much guarantee that you'll never get a moving car (let alone a GRM'ers car) quiet enough to notice or care about the difference.
If played through a Kraco radio and a pair of Sparkomatic specials for speakers, perhaps.
But in all of my cars, and even my truck, with stock radios and speakers, the difference is very noticeable.
To kids growing up on MP3 players, where they've never heard quality audio in the first place, it usually doesn't matter to them. All they want is the bang of a drum and to be able to tell someone is playing a guitar.
Some of us want to be able to tell which drum you hit, because they actually sound different. To be able to tell you brushed the cymbal, not simply smacked it. To be able to count the number of guitars playing.
A compressed violin never sings, and is all but indistinguishable from a viola. I want to hear that violin sing and cry, not simply squawk a note.
It's the classic "golden ear" argument that's been going on for as long as there's been recorded sound. To be blunt, some people notice the difference and some don't. Fortunately, there are options for both. Don't like compressed audio? Don't buy it. Don't like dealing with CDs and LPs? Use compressed audio.
This reminds me of all the discussions of speaker wire affecting sound quality back in the day.
In reply to GameboyRMH:
When I was your age, if I wanted to steal music, I'd have to go to the store and shoplift it myself!
Get off my lawn.
You guys are overstating things a bit. But that's how audiophiles like it 
There's a difference between compression and overcompressed. And remember that a CD can only carry about 700 MB of audio. I can buy a 160 GB iPod. That's enough room for more than 234 CDs - uncompressed. So you can easily keep your audiophile street cred and listen to music via iPod.
BTW, there's an error above. It doesn't matter if you read the CD at 1x or 12x, that's just the speed of data transfer. It's the compression that will affect audio quality. There's nothing at all to be gained from reading at a slower speed. Remember, a CD is not a record, it's just ones and zeros. Computers can read those ones and zeros a lot faster than you can listen to them.
GameboyRMH wrote:z31maniac wrote:Yeah just looked it up and it's considered fair use (surprisingly, by US copyright law standards). Unless you happen to get caught in the act though, which is very highly unlikely, it'll be hard to prove where those MP3s came from...it would be a metric E36 M3-ton less work.GameboyRMH wrote: I think getting the albums from a certain bay of seafaring scoundrels, with filenames and ID3 tags already neatly in place, which could be done overnight, is just as illegal as ripping those CDs you paid good money for...just sayin'.No it's not. From everything I understand, you are allowed to make a "back up" copy of any media you legally purchase.
we were always (legally) able to transfer our vinyl to tape … it's just as legal to transfer CD's to other media … as long as you're not then selling the transferred product you're golden
Silly Keith----- you can't keep your audiophile street cred by listening to CDs. Vinyl is where it's at! 
Yes, I'm one of those weirdos that prefers analog recordings to digital. What Tom Spangler said holds true. Some folks can notice a difference, some can't. If you prefer digital recordings or even the sound of an MP3-- more power to you. I'll happily stick to tube amps and vinyl when I want a satisfying listening experience. By the way, if you haven't ever heard clean vinyl played through a tube amp and high quality speakers, you are missing out. It's like you are listening to an entirely different album. Oh wait.....kids don't listen to albums anymore......
In a car though----- I prefer the versatility of a CD or MP3 player. There is usually too much ambient noise in my cars to notice too much of a difference. There is a difference mind you.....it's just doesn't bug me as much as there are other sounds competing for my earholes.
I was tempted to say something about the CD being held up as the audiophile standard, yes. There's nothing quite like the pop and hiss of a needle in vinyl 
I like good quality reproduction, but I don't let it dictate what I listen to or when. I like music, so I listen to it constantly. That means I have a big capacity iPod with me pretty much all the time. At home, I can use the big system. But I'm more interested in having access to my music than trying to recreate the live experience. Heck, I've worked as a musician and there's nothing like being right in the middle of a big ensemble. That's difficult to arrange on a regular basis, so I strike an acceptable compromise between fidelity and access. To me, that means lightly compressed digital music.
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