Ripping CDs and pasting them in: Compliments

Roon Software Discussion
11

Hey Rooners,

Here is what I determined after ripping ~ 4,000 CDs from my collection.

  1. Use dBpoweramp’s batch ripper - can support multiple optical drives. I built an 8-bay optical tower and was able to rip ~100 CDs per hour.

  2. I let dBpoweramp rip and found it was able to identify most of the CDs I fed it, including classical. Those it couldn’t identify were placed in a to-rip-later pile.

  3. For the most part, dBpoweramp did a decent job on the CD metadata, but wasn’t without error. This was especially true for multi-disc sets.

  4. The to-rip-later pile was re-ripped using XLD on a Mac - I set it up to tap into Amazon’s CD database so it had a higher success rate than dBpoweramp on properly identifying CDs and getting the metadata correct.

a) When XLD failed i.e., no metadata, I resorted to iTunes to rip the media as it was almost without exception able to properly ID the CD and get the metadata correct. I ripped my entire collection to FLAC, so using iTunes meant ALAC which was fine.

In the end, I still had to do quite a bit of clean-up work in Roon to get things right - it would on occasion get the CD wrong, and was especially weak in multi-disc sets which wasn’t entirely Roon’s fault but mostly a failing of the metadata with each CD.

I was happy to do the quick bulk rip and deal with the problems thereafter. Now, adding additional albums I am using a separate workflow. Each CD is ripped to the local machine typically using XLD. Once the CD is ripped, I look at the track metadata using Kid3 - this allows me to catch any errors immediately, especially for multi-CD sets. I’m also able to fix those rips that place tracks in separate folders when you’re ripping a various artists title. Roon really wants each track from one album to be in the same folder.

If XLD failed to ID the CD, I would use iTunes, ripped locally, checked the metadata with Kid3, then moved the CD to the library on my server.

System is now a well oiled machine.

Hope this helps for those facing a large ripping challenge. Ask questions - I’m happy to share what I’ve learned.

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