Best CD Ripping Service?

November 30, 2005 8:54 PM

RipperFilter: What is a CD Ripping service you've been happy with?

I know there are lots of services out there and any thoughts you had would be appreciated. Share nightmare stories too...

I have an iBook with a Lacie external drive (internal drive got a graham cracker stuffed in it=busted). Is it somewhat simple to add the songs to iTunes once you get the, I'm assuming, DVDs back?

posted by UncleHornHead to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

I'm guessing you mean ripping programs? If so, I've had great success with CDex.
Also, I think there have been previous AskMeFi questions along the same line that you might want to search for rocking answers.
posted by jmd82 at 9:01 PM on November 30, 2005

I think he means a service where you mail your CDs, and they mail them back with a DVD full of MP3 files. (I've never used one.)
posted by hartsell at 9:06 PM on November 30, 2005

I never really considered a music ripping service. Isn't it enough that you already paid $15-20 for that CD? But then, it took me two months of time elapsed to rip my 500+ CD collection, so maybe you're on to something. Time is money, after all.

I searched on google for "cd ripping service" and came up with a bunch of good articles; some of them had reviews, but I don't have any experience with the services, sorry.

I will make one recommendation: get your songs in FLAC format (Free Lossless Audio Codec). Once you have your DVDs, recompress your flac files into whatever format you prefer - aac, mp3, ogg - and at whatever bitrate you prefer to listen to. Yes, this is extra work for you, but once you have the programs set up to convert your flac to mp3, it's completely unattended - assuming you have enough hdd space and you don't have to swap out dvds. FLAC compresses audio to 30-50%; an hour long album will be 350-500megs.

The real bonus is that once there are improved audio compression algorithms and you want to update your music collection, you'll already have 100% of the data that was on the CDs.
posted by cactus at 11:40 PM on November 30, 2005

Sorry for the late posting. I used Awaken to rip about 150 CDs. Prompt service, and very professional. They charge an incrementally extra amount for ripping to multiple formats - i got mine in FLAC and ~192kbps VBR with LAME.
posted by zergot at 10:34 PM on December 1, 2005

If you're still checking, you might find this Slashdot thread useful which links to & talks about CD ripping servies.
posted by jmd82 at 8:58 PM on December 15, 2005

See also this Slashdot article
posted by Sharcho at 9:24 AM on December 16, 2005

Also this article:
CD Ripping Services Compared (via lifehacker)
posted by misterbrandt at 7:37 PM on December 17, 2005

My brother also used Awaken to do his CD's like 200 or something. They loaded his hard drive for free and I think they had free shipping too. I was pretty impressed everything came back so well with art and everything. I held off on ripping mine thinking he would get it for me for Christmas, but no luck! Got a new basketball hoop instead.
posted by lonestar at 10:31 PM on December 28, 2005