use Perl

• Ripping CDs (Score:2)

  by ziggy (25) on 2002.01.02 9:55 (#2574) Journal

  The first time I heard MP3s many years ago, I was surprised at the incredibly low sonic quality. I tried ripping some CDs about a year and a half later, but still got some pretty bad sound. Apparently, the issue revolved around bad encoders and bad encoding rather than limitations of the format.

  Once I decided to start ripping CDs, I played with a few schemes, until finally settling on a two-step process:

  • Copy the raw audio files from a series of CDs
  • Convert everything in the queue, deleting the raw audio after each CD is converted

  There are a couple of advantages here: copying a raw CD takes significantly less time than encoding it, so it's a more effective use of time when you're changing CDs. Secondly, you can schedule the ripping when you're at work or otherwise not using the disk+cpu. This also gave me enough freedom to put the id3 tags on the MP3s just the way I wanted them (munging artists and titles as required).

  Oh, I also created a playlist for each CD, a playlist by artist and a playlist for everything in the collection. The third playlist is always loaded in xmms, usually set to random play.

  The process isn't overly tedious, although I stopped at about 70 cds. Need to continue at some point...

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