Hello friends, I wanted to start ripping my CD collection, over 5000 CDs. I’m moving houses and can’t take them with me. I’d like to know which program you use. I have an iMac, and if you can recommend a specific brand of CD drive, that would be great. Thanks!.
I also wanted to know if anyone has experience using an iMac as a music server. I’d like to start that way before getting a Nucleus soon. Lastly, if I may take advantage of your patience, is there a difference between playing ripped music and streaming? I have an Eversolo 8 as a source. Thank you, and Merry Christmas!
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I used XLD on mac - I set up 2 different profiles
- One in burst mode to rip amazingly fast, but making sure to configure AccurateRip to make sure the rip is “accurate”
- Another one with much more secure ripping (multiple reads and compare them to be sure all reads have the same value) - only when AccurateRip shows errors in burst mode or when the CD is not present in the AccurateRip database I fall back to this profile.
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One more vote for dbPowerAmp. I’ve used it to rip all my past and present CDs on my Mac.
I use my Mac Studio as a Roon Server and it works great. I do have plenty of memory on it so I don’t run into any bottlenecks using Roon + other software. Depending on your iMac specs your experience may vary.
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If this is not years in the future, probably no other chance than to search a ripping service provider and send your discs in to get the job done in time. If you do just that you may still have to check and correct metadata eventually which may already take a lot of time on its own. Software like SongKong might help here.
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Thanks a lot for your help. Honored
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Thanks!!! Very useful.
XLD is great at MacOS and i like it too. It is free software and has accurate rip.
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There should be no difference in quality between these options, unless the rip is not exact or lossless
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Oh and speaking about CD drives: I use the LG WH14NS40 I got from Amazon. I use an external enclosure and connect it via USB to my Mac. It’s a good drive if you want to rip CDs and other physical media.
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I used dB Poweramp. It took long enough to do circa 500 or so CDs. I’d get cracking if you’ve got 5000 to do. That’s a full time job.
Hi, I ripped about 1000 CDs (destroyed 2 CD drives)! It took about 8000 minutes!! Once, but never again😱
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I ripped somewhere around 3500 CD’s using an iMac and dBpoweramp. I made good progress for a year then slowed down a bit. It took about three years all told.
I use an LG optical drive - not sure which model it is.
For 5000, I reckon if you do an hour per day every day it’ll take about 2.5 years.
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The beauty of rippers that use ACCURATERIP, such as dbpoweramp, is that almost any drive will work. In fact having a couple is a good idea. A cd that has trouble on one drive may be fine on another. All my drives are cheap or throwaways from old PCs. Again, the beauty of accuraterip database matching. Ive ripped over 5,000 CDs with dbpoweramp.
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Many thanks my friend!!
What a fright. Honestly, I’m trying to figure out how to do it professionally because I’m already 55 years old, and I don’t want to reach 75, if I even make it, ripping CDs 
Hello Javier, that’s a hard job! There are companies that do the typing for you!! But for 5000 CDs you pay about 4500€😱
I hope you have a nice time
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One advice I’d like to share with you. Use dBpoweramp and maybe something like mp3Tag in addition to create proper metadata for your files. Don’t be confused by the name mp3Tag, it handles lots of different file formats and allows batch-like changes. Both applications look rather like from the 90s or early 2000s, but they are extremely powerful tools.
I strongly recommend putting all the wanted metadata into the files themselves. roon won’t do that even if you use the integrated metadata function. It never writes back to the files but into its own separate database.
Putting the data right into the file you have maximum flexibility regarding the data itself but also using the same metadata in other music applications.
This work can be quite annoying and fiddly, but no metadata source on earth is even close to perfect.
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Sound advice from @maddib.
I’ve not used mp3Tag myself but it is very popular. There are lots of other metadata editing software but the one I use is Metadatics as I found it the easiest to understand. It may not be as fully featured as some but it does everything I require.
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Maybe worth noting: if you’re on a Mac, and intend to stay that way, the path of least resistance/friction may be to use the Apple Music app to rip your CDs. This will give you Apple lossless (ALAC) files rather than the more-portable FLAC format, though.
If your collection has a large proportion of classical music and you’re fanatical about having well-organised and consistent metadata, based on my experience I’d budget quite a bit of extra time, maybe doubling the overall time to process each CD. That need might also mitigate against using a commercial CD-ripping service.
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I put 4 DVD drives in my PC and used the DBpoweramp batch ripper to rip 800 CDs and store them as FLAC.
An intact CD took 90-120 seconds, making it almost difficult to keep track and change CDs.
The more DVD drives you employ, the faster you are of course.
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