What is the best way to add my CD library collection into room and can it be in lossless format?
I am in the process of doing this now. I have a Mac so I use dBPowerAmp to rip my CDs. I rip to 16/44 FLAC. FLAC is lossless. So yes, it can be in a lossless format.
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What John Aiello said is probably the easiest way to do it. You didn’t provide any info on your setup but if you provide the details, we can help you with more specific ways to manage the process.
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Thank you for you responses.
Meridian 218 to DSP speakers. Using Mac and iPad for Roon.
As to FLAC, my understanding for best lossless was WAV file or AIFF as it contains more metadata than WAV?
I am using MacBook Pro the latest with Apple superdrive to rip the CD’s what is this dBPowerAmp you are referring to is it faster etc.?
Dbpoweramp is a very popular cd ripping program.
Download it and take a look, see what you think.
I believe there is a 30 day free trial.
A lot of members here use it.
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WAV can contain metadata through embedded ID3 tags, but they’re not as widely supported as FLAC’s. It’s also uncompressed, so you’d waste quite a bit of storage space. I use foobar2000 for ripping.
Anthony
Like most people here here I will echo the recommendation for dBpoweramp.
The benefits of dBpoweramp is that it checks the quality of the rip against known good rips and fully gets the metadata and allows you to control the folder and file name convention.
Well worth the free trial and you will end up buying it
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WAV and AIFF are likely the worst ways to have lossless files. I recommend FLAC (or ALAC if you want to be able to play these files on iPhones/iPads).** I also recommend dbPoweramp for ripping. I’ve ripped over 5,000 CDs with dbPoweramp. Its developer is the inventor of “AccurateRip” which allows for better confirmation of bit perfect rips.
**EDIT. I should point out that I can play FLAC files on my iPhone/iPad, using foobar2000 mobile. I use this as my mobile music player rather than the APPLE music app.
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Another regular dBpoweramp user here - really a great product. FLAC is my default for Roon use, but if you are also going to play the ripped files on an Apple device choose ALAC. There is no SQ benefit to WAV or AIFF when ripping CDs, certainly in my experience (I have lots of albums in both FLAC or ALAC and WAV and hear zero difference). For standard use in Roon I haven’t come across any metadata issues with WAV files. I found the Apple Superdrive to be somewhat unreliable for CD ripping, so invested in something better.
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One major advantage for FLAC over ALAC and WAV that is often overlooked is that FLAC files automatically have embedded CRC info in each file. So one can easily run a batch test using many different software programs (dbpoweramp TEST convert, foobar2000 utilities, and many others) as to whether your FLAC files have become corrupted. I can point to the top directory of my FLAC files, run one of these programs, and come back in a few hours or the next morning, and the program will have automatically read the embedded CRC in each of my ~130,000 files, compared it to the the calculated CRC and then told me if I have any non-matches (i.e., corrupted files). One cannot do this with ALAC, WAV, or AIFF. I often run such a batch test after I’ve created a brand new backup HDD containing all my files, to make sure that after transferring all the files, nothing has become corrupted.
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Also the ability to tag is more restricted in WAV files , FLAC is pretty much extensible using proprietary tag editors. Especially for Classical music the “normal” tag set is quite limited and extending is a bonus.
Even the freebie MP3Tag allows custom tags to be created . AFAIK WAV’s set is fixed
Well worth FLAC in that case, let alone the space saving.
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In addition: if you’ve added or changed tags after the original CRC was calculated you will end up with a CRC mismatch.So the FLAC may be OK, but it’s content is changed and it should be marked for backup again.
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I use Exact Audio Copy and have ripped hundreds of CD’s with it, it works really well. Like dbPowerAmp, it also uses AccurateRip.
https://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
Sorry, this is not entirely correct. You are correct that if you edit your metadata tags, any backup program that backs up changes (based on file size, date stamp, etc.) will recognize the file as changed and re-backup. This is how my “freefilesync” program works, and I’m happy for this, as I want the edited files to be backed up, even if just a tag edit. However, more importantly, the CRC that is embedded in the FLAC file at time of ripping is the CRC of the audio content only, not counting the metadata. I edit my tags all the time and it doesn’t affect the ability of a test program to confirm that the current calculated CRC of the audio content is exactly the same as the embedded CRC. So this CRC checking is independent of tagging. But backup utilities are something different.
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I see, my bad! I use rsync for backup. Rsync doesn’t use the internal CRC but calculates it’s own and compares src and dst. I thought the FLAC CRC was similar.
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Understand. Yep, what rsync is doing is based on the total file content, including tags, not just the audio content CRC.
take the Nucleus.
Thank you all for responding with your experiences. I will try Dbpoweramp and see how it goes!
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What does that even mean? It’s a thread about adding CDs to his library. Very helpful suggestion.
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