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When did you digitize your CDs and LPs? I still haven’t...

I’m a 46 year old guy who came up on LPs and cassettes, got into CDs and then stumbled into the world of online music where I’m still trying to figure out what to do.

20 years or so ago when people started getting excited about digitizing their CD collections, I never bothered. I have maybe 900-1000 CDs and the idea of having to “rip” them never appealed to me. Heck, I never even liked the word “rip” and the action seemed time consuming and boring as heck to me. Same for LPs.

These days, I still have all my obsolete media but I’m a Tidal HiFi subscriber and have come to love streaming. Still, there’s a lot I have on CD and LP that Tidal doesn’t have and I’m wondering if it’s time to step into the present and get something like an Innuos Zen Mk III so I can stream, rip, and store at least all of my CDs.

Is it time to step into the present, or will I be fine rocking my Nakamichi CDP-2A until it dies and then just buying another CD player or transport? That certainly seems less expensive these days than a fancy streamer/server/“ripper”.
pip_helix

Showing 7 responses by kijanki

kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,411 posts
 
It is not such burden when you rip CDs when you want to listen to them.  Instead of placing CD in CDP tray and pushing play button I place it in computer tray click on the "Rip" and after first song is ripped I play whole album in Itunes (ripping program places files in Itunes directory).  Next song is ready when first one stopped playing (ripping is much faster than playback).  That way whole library will eventually get ripped without a lot of work.
According to RIAA ripping is legal as long as you keep original CD.  Even copying friend's CDs to CD-R is legal as long as it is Audio CD-R.  They want you have to have media that pays royalties to performer.  I like music on the server.  It is much easier to find and play.  It also can be protected by the backup.  Streaming is growing on me, but for now I still prefer to own the music - to be able to play without internet connection.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,411 posts
 
+1 johnss I use two backups. Every time I add more than 5 CDs I copy to one of backups (altering between them). Using two backups protects me from loss of everything in case when one backup goes wrong, like controller failure (voltage spike, virus etc) that can damage both HDs. It is extremely rare, but I don’t want to rip 2000 CDs again. Recently I bought CarbonCopyCloner on sale and it is fantastic.

kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,411 posts
 
If each CD has exactly the same checksum there will be no degradation since exactly the same data is copied each time.  Checksum of the whole CD can be verified.  I'm not sure how they copied CD - perhaps using Itunes or device that doesn't look for proper checksum of each sector or whole CD.  Either way - by using good ripping program created CD-R will always sound better than badly scratched CD since CDP will always interpolate for scratches longer than about 4mm along the track - no matter how tiny.  In extreme case CD might not even play but ripping program can still extract data (but often goes for hours).
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,411 posts
 
I can’t explain it but I get more detail than from my CD transport
Transport connection to DAC can add more jitter (noise) and also scratches on CD can force CDP to interpolate data since CDPs, working in real time, cannot re-read each questionable sector again, like ripping programs do (often hundreds of times).  Ripping program can effectively renew old scratched CD making it sound better - like new.  Even CD-R made from such rip will likely sound better than original CD.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,411 posts
 
I don't use CDP at all.  All my music comes from HD (where it is just data) and I also tend to buy CDs used, mostly from Amazon.  Audio CD-Rs create easy legal way of copying CDs from friends.  I copy such CDs to HD, but have to keep Audio CD-R copy (media that pays royalties).  

Yes, compression is very bad but often necessary.  Without compression most of the people with smaller systems or boomboxes wouldn't be able to listen.  It almost looks like we need two different media - one for mass marked and another one uncompressed for audiophiles.  Unfortunately we don't represent any buying power and things are getting worse (going toward MP3).
Why not to sell uncompressed CDs and compressed MP3s?  
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,411 posts
 
They stopped recording CD-R by burning aluminum long time ago, (burning speeds were around 2x).  Today they laser-write to photosensitive dye. 
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,411 posts
 
I’m surprised that people can hear any media induced jitter from CD or CD-R. I can understand that on the receiving end (DAC) D/A conversion clock has to be recreated from incoming S/Pdif stream, but in CDP constant linear speed is created by comparison between 44.1kHz crystal based clock and the data stream from CD. Since 44.1kHz clock is used to control linear speed (data rate) the same clock can be used for re-clocking without over or underflow errors. AFAIK modern CDPs have large FIFO buffers that clock out data at precise 44.1kHz crystal based clock. Of course there is still connection jitter, DAC own jitter etc., but CD (or CD-R) bit to bit time differences should not matter. Perhaps there are older CDPs without buffers?

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