Ripping a CD Collection to FLC

[kiwimagic]

1. I am new to digital audio.
2. I desire to rip my 2,000 CD collection to hard disc (considering purchasing a RAID for this task).
3. In my desire to get a reference library I am considering ripping to FLAC, as my reference archive, and then generating AIFF files which I will actually play. I believe that FLAC gives me a good way to preserve metadata and also provides the best chance that future changes will not obsolete FLAC files (i.e. a convertor is likely to be available).
4. With 2,000 CD's I would like, of course, to make the process as much hands off as possible. I would also like to create both the FLAC and AIFF files at the same time. There is a PC program named dbpoweramp which seems to have the necessary features and options to do this.
5. I am looking for suggestions for:
(a) A good, hands off, way to rip my CD's to FLAC.
(b) Suggestions for methods to "automatically" to populate both a FLAC folder and an AIFF folder.
6. If an experienced digital audio MAC user out there has other ideas (I am interested in having a long term archive and the best possible audio - I do use a very high end audio system today).

Thank you.

 

[louishen]

You dont need flac and AIFF, since flac is lossless and AIFF is just raw uncompressed audio, but no better than flac

You can always use the open source Songbird to play flac files, negating the need for any reconversion to another format


http://www.getsongbird.com/desktop/

http://sbooth.org/Max/

 

[Adric]

You might want to look into purchasing an external optical drive for this task. Ripping 2,000 CD's will put a lot of strain on your Mac's superdrive and might break it after a while (the things aren't known to be very durable).

You can buy external optical drives for pretty cheap nowadays.

 

[chas_m]

I *strongly* recommend Adric's suggestion (he has a gold star in mathematics you know!).

As for FLAC, this seems to me to be a wasted step. Ripping to AIFF will create a digitally identical copy without any loss from the original. If you were copying from 96-bit masters than AIFF wouldn't be sufficient but you're not -- AIFF is as good as its going to get. You might consider ALAC to save space but AIFF should be sufficient and plays with everything.

 

[kiwimagic]

I understand that preserving Metadata can be an issue. Are there differences in this regard between AIFF and FLAC?

Really appreciate the comments - for a newbie in digital audio, it looks like a jungle out there....

 

[chas_m]

No, there doesn't appear to be any significant difference in supporting metadata in AIFF or FLAC. Since iTunes doesn't support FLAC, and AIFF is the standard for CD-quality audio, I'd say AIFF is the clear winner here.

 

[dtravis7]

If I wanted to save space but have basically perfect quality and was using a Mac, I would convert to Apple Lossless. Just as Lossless as FLAC BTW!

 

[chas_m]

I think Kiwimagic's original concern with ALAC was that it's possible that Apple will not support it forever, which is a remote possibility but nonetheless a possibility. Luckily, users can convert from one lossless format to another without any loss either, so given that ALAC uses 50 percent less space than AIFF that's definitely another option to consider.

 

[kiwimagic]

Part of my concern with FLAC vs AIFF is that I understand that FLAC embeds all of the metadata while with AIFF some of the Metadata may be stored in an associated file. That means that you lose that metadata if you convert to another format (I believe).

Kiwimagice

 

[chas_m]

I don't see how that can be true about AIFF as it's designed to be written to a read-only medium (Audio CDs) so it would have to be self-contained. Worth checking on though.