Jriver - for ripping CD’s, managing portable devices / converting as needed for them, grabs initial tags and album art
DVD Audio Extractor - for ripping DVD-A, bluray audio
VinylStudio & Roland 4x4 - Vinyl ripping
Sony PS3 & SACD-Ripper - for ripping SACD in stereo and 5.1
Yate - Tagging for everything I didn’t rip with Jriver
Bliss - To make sure tags are in correct format / compliant (mostly used to fix old tags / artwork)
rsync (UNIX utility) - Keep all digital files in sync with Roon core (ROCK Server) over SMB from my Mac
I think that’s all I have in my digital tool chest. Landed on each after much testing for the specific functions and each does it job very well for me.
I run Roon and previously LMS on Vortexbox OS . So I use its inbuilt CD ripping as all I have to do is insert disc and it automatically starts to rip to flac direct to my NAS storage where Roon and everything else in the house connect to. Bliss automatically fills in the missing metadata if needed and runs on same PC so no interaction needed unless it can’t find the album in its database. My NAS uploads to Amazon automatically overnight so I have a backup and can stream that to portable devices if necessary but I also have a google music account which syncs from my laptop from the nas for low-res streaming on the go.
I’ve used EAC in the past but have switched to dBPoweramp, Backup to three different places (NAS, external, and internal backup). Manually populate each in-use drive and device.
Because I do a lot of photo editing and got into the habit of organization, I do most of my “syncing” manually due to needing to be more hands on, old guy don’t trust the program to get it where it should be…
