Books, Movies, Music & Entertainment - Ripping my CD's

I am getting a Dell-Pod for Christmas so I need to rip all my Cd's to the computer. Hopefully by next Christmas I will have them all stored and sorted, at ten minutes a pop this is going to take forever.

When I was grousing about having to buy a new moving magnet cartridge for my turntable because my new receiver lacked a step-up amp for the old moving coil cartridge, a friend asked my why I didn't just burn CDs of all my vinyl. Let's see, 45 minutes or so for each album... Besides, I like the sound of good analogue recordings.

Maybe you could rip just the tracks you want.

By the way, I could find cartridges at only one stereo place in St. Louis. I took the turntable in to Best Sound where a British guy sold me a decent cartridge and, with the other guy who worked there, took my turntable to the shop and installed the cartridge. The two of them walked out of the shop looking like celebrants in a religious procession, the Brit holding the turntable as if it were a holy relic (which, being a turntable, it was). They connected it to a high end system and, after the ceremonial cleaning of the lp, put on a Frank Sinatra recording. I expressed my pleasure with the sound of the recording, musing that I could never afford the $3000 hardwood shell cartridge I had been ogling. Memorable quotation: British guy: Kids today listen to these MP3s. That's not music, that's compressed!

But each have there place. The 30gb Creative Labs Zen player holds over 5,000 of my tracks and still has 8gb left. Does it replace the system at home? No. But then a modded transport running into an autoformer and then to a 3-stage 2A3 tube amp will do that.

As to vinyl, it has an incredible quality to it, but many of the transports out there can equal it if you have some mod it. Basically remove all the junk in the signal chain of the player.

Chuck, although time consuming, the effort is worth it. When I did mine, I took piles of discs to the office and ripped them while I worked. Made the conversion much quicker.

Mp3 is to music as thumbnail is to photography.

There is a whole generation of music lovers that have grown up with the car radio as their reference point of quality. To them a 126mps Mp3 sounds great. Just as a print from their ink jet looks good because it is a little sharper than the image on their TV.

The newest generation of music buyers like music that isn’t even worthy of Hi-Fi . All synthetic base and injected distortion is perfect for Mp3. Short attention spans need gigs of content to pacify them. The new technology is a perfect match for their lower expectations.

The sad part is… their are many artists that are producing wonderful music today that deserves to be recorded on media better than CD quality offers. As our ability to produce microphones and recording equipment worthy of state of the art analog storage media, the industry has moved to digital media as the only option for the end user. The end result is like buying a coffee table book that has black and white dot-matrix (newspaper) pictures in it.

Mp3 is to music as thumbnail is to photography.

There is a whole generation of music lovers that have grown up with the car radio as their reference point of quality. To them a 126mps Mp3 sounds great. Just as a print from their ink jet looks good because it is a little sharper than the image on their TV.

The newest generation of music buyers like music that isn’t even worthy of Hi-Fi . All synthetic base and injected distortion is perfect for Mp3. Short attention spans need gigs of content to pacify them. The new technology is a perfect match for their lower expectations.

The sad part is… their are many artists that are producing wonderful music today that deserves to be recorded on media better than CD quality offers. As our ability to produce microphones and recording equipment worthy of state of the art analog storage media, the industry has moved to digital media as the only option for the end user. The end result is like buying a coffee table book that has black and white dot-matrix (newspaper) pictures in it.


What IS the definition of condescending anyway?

My big reason for wanting the player is my cd's were getting damaged at work. I would put one in the player and an hour later another person would change it and instead of putting it away they would lay it read side down, sometimes on the floor, and start piling stuff on it. Got a couple of cases busted and some nasty scratches. It will also be handy in the car. I can set a shuffle playlist and away it goes, a real "no repeat" work day

What IS the definition of condescending anyway?
I concur, FXjohn. But, WorldWind has a point as it pertains to cycling.
If I'm bust'n my ass in the sleet on a 40 mile hump, then I want some damn good music!
I, for one, can't ride without my iPod. I don't consider myself an audiophile (and don't need
24-bit, 192 kHz DVD Audio quality music like WorldWind), but simply find most MP3 compressions
too distracting (there's some weird high frequency crap going on . . . annoying :eek: ). Too get
around this problem, I would transfer my CDs at a higher bit rate. Unfortunately, this made huge
files and caused the device's hard drive to constantly spin—which, of course, shortened the battery
life (and the effectiveness of my ride).
In came AAC to the rescue: I can't tell the difference between it and the CD, it's the same size as a
128 kbps MP3, but more importantly, now I can concentrate on my ride.


:rolleyes: Errr, in your terms WorldWind, think of:
AAC is to MP3 as Photoshop is to JPEG
it may not be up to your standard, but it's what most professionals use

more info:
h++p://www.mp3-tech.org/aac.html
h++p://www.apple.com/itunes/import.html

Non the less ... and possibly more to the point from my perspective. I still can’t buy Yo-Yo Ma’s new album in a direct to disk vinyl format.

And as far as Photoshoping Jpg’s ………….. I want my Kodachrome!!!

This sounds rather snobby WorldWind.

My big reason for wanting the player is my cd's were getting damaged at work. I would put one in the player and an hour later another person would change it and instead of putting it away they would lay it read side down, sometimes on the floor, and start piling stuff on it. Got a couple of cases busted and some nasty scratches. It will also be handy in the car. I can set a shuffle playlist and away it goes, a real "no repeat" work day

Silly me, I didn't realize what I was starting here. The other people at your work sound like my son. I don't know how many times I've told him: out of the case, into the player; out of the player, into the case, and your great-grandchildren can listen to these CDs (if players still exist...probably not). I suppose your other option would be to buy songs to download, but it sucks to pay for music you've already bought once on CD and maybe before that on vinyl. Remember the line from Men in Black: Now I'll have to buy the White Album again.

This sounds rather snobby WorldWind.


Glad you picked up on that …. I don’t eat big macks either.

Glad you picked up on that …. I don’t eat big macks either.


Good for you and your health. Maybe you can pass down some more advice for us plebs, and then, we can all be part of the same herd elitist snobs with the same opinions. :D

I don't eat big macs either. I eat the double cheeseburger off the dollar menu.

P.S. ripping Commodores greatest hits right now, The Cramps are up next.