Ripping my CDs, again

[GH85Carrera]

I have about 120 CDs, almost all of it classic Rock and Roll.

Long long ago, I bought a stereo for my cars that would play a DVD full of music. They would read a MP3 song and I could get a lot of songs on one disc. I could make a custom disc of my favorites, but it was in the same order time after time.

Finally the units came out that I could plug in a thumb drive and a 16 gig drive held all my CDs and I could set it to random, and let it play. They were always stereos designed to appeal to 16 year olds, that liked flashing lights and I thought they looked horrible in my cars.

Finally I have found the Retrosound unit for my El Camino, and the Blaupunkt unit that looks right for the 911. Both will play MP3 or WAV on a thumb drive. They both have Bluetooth, and all the modern features, just look right in the dash.

Back in the stone ages of 12 or 15 years ago when I ripped the MP3s it was with some third party RIP software and it did a terrible job of encoding the song information. Both of the stereos often say "Unknown" or just gibberish for the song information.

Finally Windows Media Player for my Windows 11 Pro computer just makes it easy. Insert the CD, and hit RIP CD button. It downloads the info and catalogs it into folders and saves it to my hard drive.

Just copy it to a thumb drive and done. I will be able to read the song information on the stereos. So I takes about a minute per CD to do it.

My computers CD-DVD-Blue Ray unit will get a workout. It sits unused most of the time.

[masraum]

You can go in and do the edits on each song, but it's tons faster to just re-rip.

[Bob Kontak]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Back in the stone ages of 12 or 15 years ago when I ripped the MP3s....

In maybe 2000 we finally got a cable connection at the house. Songs on dial up would take minutes to download thru Napster.

So my daughter and I were ripping songs post cable modem and the stars came into alignment and a Limp Bizkit song downloaded in like three seconds. We looked at each other and our jaws dropped. I said you can get all the biscuits you want. That's been a family expression since.

[matthewb0051]

Jeez, this reminds me of deploying to Somalia and Iraq. I took a Sony Discman to Mogadishu. Huge pain to carry a bunch of CDs around but mejor que nada.

Iraq I ripped a large number of CDs and put them on an MP3 player about 3 x 3 inches. Awesome but still had some of the "unknown" song name issues.

To your point about head units: the PO of my P38 Range Rover installed some Pioneer unit. It has infinite Eq adjustment but the screen is so small I can't see it to make a difference and have to perform all adjustments at a stand still. Ditto for the radio station buttons, way too small. Dang thing has way too many controls, displays, bla bla bla. If it didn't cost about $400 for a used OE head unit I would go that route.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Finally Windows Media Player for my Windows 11 Pro computer just makes it easy. Insert the CD, and hit RIP CD button. It downloads the info and catalogs it into folders and saves it to my hard drive.

You don't want to use iTunes instead? You know it's great software!

[GH85Carrera]

The OE head unit in the El Camino was a AM/FM radio. Nothing more, and it is a 1/5 din. The new unit is lighter and looks right, and sounds great. I am finding some CDs I forgot I had.

I looked into editing each of the thousands of songs and quickly said screw that, re RIP is a thousand times faster, and more accurate.

I will rip them all, and then decide which ones make the cut to be in the car thumb drive. I just play it in random mode, and if a sone I don't care for comes on, push a simple button, and the next song is on.

I did get to listen to La Grange in the El Camino with the new speakers. It is the first time in over 30 years I got to hear La Grange at the "proper" listening volume for that song in the Elky.

[Bob Kontak]

You do know they got a lot of nice girls in La Grange.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by Bob Kontak

You do know they got a lot of nice girls in La Grange.

A how how how.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Bob Kontak

You do know they got a lot of nice girls in La Grange.

I live about 25 miles from THE "La Grange" from the song.

[A930Rocket]

I have several songs I downloaded from Napster 20+ years ago, but I can no longer get them to play on my laptop. I suppose it has to do with some kind of licensing.

[Baz]

I can relate.

I swapped out the stereos in both the Silverado and Volvo and installed the same Pioneer that plays from a flash drive, CD, DVD, radio, and also has blue tooth.

I use the DVD function to play surf movies and the flash drive for MP3 files, which I store in my desktop in folders and just throw whatever I want in my playlists - changing them up on a regular basis. This morning I added about 12 new songs in one them and used that flash drive for the stereo on my ebike. And later used it in my Volvo. So mush easier than CD's.

I only use the radio for talk radio. There's a conservative station I keep it tuned to.

I have not done anything with the Porsches. The tub still has the factory radio, the teener an aftermarket cassette that is not hooked up, and the SC is under restoration right now.

I mostly drive my Silverado and Volvo right now anyway - because they are air conditioned!

[mocha07]

Originally Posted by Bob Kontak

In maybe 2000 we finally got a cable connection at the house. Songs on dial up would take minutes to download thru Napster.

So my daughter and I were ripping songs post cable modem and the stars came into alignment and a Limp Bizkit song downloaded in like three seconds. We looked at each other and our jaws dropped. I said you can get all the biscuits you want. That's been a family expression since.

NAPSTER !!!! Haven't heard that word for a long time!!!

[rattlsnak]

Why dont you guys just stream your music?

[Baz]

Originally Posted by rattlsnak

Why dont you guys just stream your music?

I only like listening to music that I select.

I don't see how streaming is better than what I'm doing right now.

Change my mind!

[GH85Carrera]

Same here. I listen to Pandora all the time in my garage, or at my computer. While driving I like to listen to the CDs I bought over the years. I have a lot of CDs I almost never hear some of the “deep cuts” of my music on streaming services.

I do on occasion stream Pandora to my car stereo, but usually just my music.

[Ayles]

I only listen to music i select on Spotify. Its what puts it way above pandora. Making playlists or just playing the whole album is great.

I have several hundred cds sitting in my basement that havent been touched in over a decade and at this point all but the most obscure metal and punk in my collection are on spotify.

How do you like the pioneer unit? Thinking of putting something with car play in my wifes outback.

[GH85Carrera]

About 1/2 way through the RIP part. It is funny, weird, that some CDs rip really fast for each song, and some are a bit slower. It is not just the length of the song, or the number of songs. Just like the CD itself is slower. 5.8 Gig so far.

It is fun to see some of the old CDs and the memories of buying them and coming home to listen to them. I had a 6 CD changer back then. I would get home from work and push play, and let it run.

[Flat Six]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

. . . I almost never hear some of the “deep cuts” of my music on streaming services.

Yup, exactly.

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

About 1/2 way through the RIP part. It is funny, weird, that some CDs rip really fast for each song, and some are a bit slower. It is not just the length of the song, or the number of songs. Just like the CD itself is slower. 5.8 Gig so far.

Usually due to error correction. Some CDs are harder to read because of age, surface condition, or quality of the initial disc stock. These will often play okay because buffering happens faster than playback. But at 8x, 10x, 16x+ speeds when ripping, these tracks need to be reread a lot to get a clean, error-free image to save.

[rockfan4]

4 or 5 years ago I ripped a bunch of my CDs for a road trip. Loaded all of them on USB stick and plugged that into the wife's car. I don't know if some of the CDs had some sort of copy protection on them or what, but they did not rip well. Sounded awful. I ended up having to skip over the whole CD, it wasn't just one song. The other issue I had was if you shuffled the songs, some of them were really loud, and some were quiet, like the CDs weren't all created at the same volume level.

There were also a couple audiobooks on Youtube that I wanted to listen to, used a app to download the audio from them, but the volume was so low on them that even with the volume all the way up on the car radio, you couldn't hear them. Not sure what went wrong there.

[HobieMarty]

How do you rip a plastic CD? A tape I understand, but a CD?

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