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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
tomaswv
209 posts
 
I sent my collection of about 800 CDs off to be ripped about two years ago. I had them send the CDs back to me, but after hearing the flac files, I threw most of the CDs away, keeping about 100 SACDs and higher quality CDs. Much better listening experience o with the flac files.
Now here’s the thing: a year ago I switched from Spotify to Qobuz. At a minimum, Qobuz is as good as a CD or flac file. Most of the things I listen to are higher res in Qobuz, the difference is easily heard. Bottom line, if I had had Qobuz three years ago, I probably would have just put my CDs in the attic and called it a day.

And, I used to buy on average 3 to 5 CDs per month.  In the last year I’ve purchased a total of 3: Ron Carter—The Golden Striker (mine was scratch as was the ripped file); Pittsburgh S.O.—Tchaikovsky/Leshnoff; Cleveland S.O.—A New Century. 
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,413 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.
soix
8,908 posts
 
What are you using to listen to streamed music now?
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. 
I’d give a big thumbs up to that idea.  The Zen makes it child’s play to, um, transfer your CDs to its internal storage, and then you’ll have access to all your music at the push of a button in any order you want, make playlists, etc.  Disc drives are fast becoming today’s buggy whip, and since you already have discovered the considerable benefits of streaming you’re already mostly there anyway so might as well just, er, rip the bandaid the rest of the way off.

BTW, I’d consider giving Qobuz a try — I found the interface better than Tidal, sound quality comparable, and I believe it may even still be cheaper — and none of that ridiculous MQA nonsense to worry about or deal with.  Anyway, FWIW...

johnss
566 posts
 
if you embark on this task, what ever you do, make a daily back up copy of the files you have ripped, or copied. I did this with my 2k CD collection a number of years ago. Got half way through and the HD crashed. Had to start all over from the beginning. also don't try to sit down and do it all at once. Pace yourself, go for 45 min then quit and do something else. otherwise you will get fatigued and make mistakes. and a break is a nice change.
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kijanki
4,413 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.

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