PC Music Library Organisation - Advice

I want to copy my CD collection to PC for the first time.
Has anyone any helpful advice who has done this before? Is there any software I should consider? Microsoft, EAC for e.g?

Merci buckets

 

I use this

http://www.download.com/dBpoweramp-Music-Converter/3000-2140_4-10042534.html

 

Just use Windows Media Player nt

 

Thanks to both for reply! nt

 

I use Nero.

 

Make sure that you choose a good enough sound quality... it doesn't probably have to be lossless, but (in my opinion) 192 kbps mp3 files should be fine.
Even that's not good enough for some people though, but unless you're a hi-fi freak, it probably doesn't matter. If you have lots of hard disk space you can consider better quality though. I bought an external 500 Gb hard drive for my collection.

You should use some decent codec if you're ripping your collection on mp3 as well. LAME is a good choice, it's free and apparently one of the best. That's what I've been using anyway.
You may want to use some other software to copy your CD onto PC as well, I've used a program called Audiograbber. It's very simple to use, you will have to "install" the LAME codec manually though but that's easy.

Lastly, the most important thing: Make sure that you name the music files in some consistent way!
I've been using the following format: (example)
C:\Music\The Beatles\Magical Mystery Tour\08 - Strawberry Fields Forever.mp3

which is: C:\Music\artist\album\tracknumber - song title.mp3

That may all sound a bit complicated, but it really isn't, and it's better to do this right on the first time. You can't change the sound quality afterwards unless you copy your whole collection again, and the artist name/song title tags are VERY annoying to change manually.

Let me know if you need more help. Good luck.

 

back to the top + 2 more tips

BEFORE you copy your whole CD collection to PC, decide what you're going to do about band names that begin with "The".
If you want to browse your whole collection in alphabetical order, do you want to find The Beatles in bands beginning with T or B... So you may want to change it to "Beatles, The" or just "Beatles"... it's up to you, just remember to be consistent again.

Also, you probably should use two digits in all track numbers too, beginning from 01 (instead of just 1).
Otherwise some programs may not sort the tracks correctly in alphabetical order, but the order could be for example 1, 10, 11, 12, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc... You get the idea.

 

Seconded nt

 

Lossy or Lossless?

If you choose a "lossless" format (such as FLAC), you can always re-burn the files back to cd with EXACTLY the same quality.

Choosing a "lossy" format such as mp3, you will always lose quality / information and can NEVER burn the audio back to CD in the same quality as you started with.

I use FLAC and Apple Lossless.

If you are considering getting an iPod Classic, Apple Lossless is the way to go (since you will have plenty of storage space). You can also use iTunes to rip your music collection - bear in mind though, that iTunes will not check for errors during the ripping process - whereas EAC / dBpoweramp will let you know if your original cd is faulty / dirty.

What were you considering using the play your music once it has been ripped to your computer? To be honest, iTunes is still an excellent way to manage and play your music collection (even if you don't have and iPod).

HTH,
Stephen

 

RE: back to the top + 2 more tips

Or you could just use iTunes which will automatically sort your filing system if you want it to, it will find album covers and once you start using it it will compile lots of data for anal retentives - how many times you've played a track, last played etc. It's also very easy to make compilation cds and if you really want it you can override the auto systems and arrange things manually. It also makes podcasts a piece of pi$$ and allows you to burn them to cd so you can listen to them on your main system (handy if more than 1 person wants to listen.

 

Only one thing i dislike about iTunes

It would be great to burn a CD by (say) dragging and dropping files.

The only way I can find is to first make a playlist and then burn the CD from there.

 

If you want a freebie, CDex is a cute little piece of software for the job.
Other important choices are compression format - see GudjonFan's post - and file naming system.

If you are planning to play back on the PC rather than a portable device, choose FLAC. If you're looking to port them to an MP3 player or mobile phone, obviously rip them to a supported format for your portable device.

As for filenames, I find
Artist-Album-trackno-trackname.mp3
a good format - always use a 2-digit track number ie 01 02 03 to ensure devices when the files are listed alphabetically they appear in the right order (otherwise if there are say 12 tracks they will list as 1,10,11,12,2,3,4).

It is easy to set CDex to get all this info from an online database and automatically generate filenames in your preferred format.
Hope this makes sense.