Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Programming IT Technology

Using Automated CD Duplicators as Mass MP3 Converters? 14

Posted by Cliff from the why-hasn't-someone-thought-of-this-yet? dept.
RobotmanipulaTor asks: "I have a large CD collection I want to convert to MP3 and so do my friends. The last thing we want to do is to manually insert the CD into a drive and convert it. We want to get an extremely basic automated CD duplicator like this and use it to feed CDs to the drive. We could then write some simple software to automate the process, let it run, and presto... MP3's for all. It seems there is a standard control set for the robotic arms, but I can't find any documentation on this. Has anyone done a similar project, or written autoloader software that could be modified?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Using Automated CD Duplicators as Mass MP3 Converters? More

Using Automated CD Duplicators as Mass MP3 Converters?

Comments Filter:
  • Not sure if this would work, but there are MUCH, MUCH cheaper CD-ROM changers out there that could be options.
    I know that about 5 years ago, NEC had a 6- or 7-disc SCSI unit that used multiple LUNs, giving each tray its own device (or drive letter in windoze - that's all I used it with then on a work system). You could then write a basic script that rip/enc'ed the 7 discs, after which you could replace them. (Unfortunately, I can't remember if you can replace CD's while one is being accessed.)
    It's not quite as fancy, but 5 years ago, this toy was only about $350. A quick check at Pricewatch [pricewatch.com] in the "CD-ROM | Changers" section lists some as low as $45, but most around $200 or so. (The $45 one is probably junk or a misprint.)
    On a related note, I ripped about 1000 cd's (all my own...) to an mp3 server, and it took a while, but was not unmanageable with Grip [nostatic.org] - I highly recommend it!! (CDDB/rip/enc/ID3, etc.) Good luck!!
  • Even after you split the cost, it's still totally absurd. I have almost 400 discs, and I just did them by hand, one at a time. Just get a nice ripper, something like 20X+ and take it slow. Plus, you're going to have to deal with the CDs that have software extra junk, and the ones that have scratches, and the ones that just plain dont rip right. It's a long process, but once you're caught up, it's only the new ones you get that you have to do.

    Just as a word of caution, I'd be afraid of doing a ton at once. Miss one mistake, and now you've got to do it all again.
  • If you've got a few hundred CDs, you'll run out of drive space during an automated rip anyway, so the $3000 you plonked down on a cd replicator (and the countless hours you spent writing software) that you'll probably only use a few times will be even more wasted unless you buy gobs of diskspace to store all the MP3s.

    - A.P.

    --
    * CmdrTaco is an idiot.

  • Not to discourage anyone from doing something really cool like this, but I've ripped a couple of hundred CDs myself and it's NOT that time consuming. I would imagine it takes longer to work your job to get that kind of money ($300-4000 by different accounts), write some kind of automated script, and then get everything else working. Once you do have your files, you can automate the m3us, ID3s, file naming, and SFVs with CD-Tag [customer-a...iation.com] a handy-dandy little tool (it's for Windows).

    Just whatever you do, please rip them in true stereo at bitrates at or above 192kbps. Then share them.

  • It works great and it doesn't take a lot of your time. Once you've got it configured to your preferences and naming setup, you just insert the CD, verify that the online database has the name and tracks and then you leave it alone. Go do something else until it starts playing the music off of the CD. Then put in the next...

    It's almost as easy as watching the Olympics and drinking beer at the same time.
  • Eek. God no.. not audiocatalyst. Use exact audio copy: www.eac.com instead. It uses lame for the mp3 encoder and is free.. have a look at the comparisons between encoders, and what is the best rippers at http://r3mix.net. Lucas
  • I agree with everyone else - the money you'll spend on the CD changer is a complete waste. It would be worthwhile if you wanted to rip thousands of CD's, but you're not going to do that.

    Just get some ripping software that has built-in CDDB access and can spawn an mp3 encoder. An excellent, free pacakge that I use is CD2MP3 PM [cam.org].
    --

  • Here's my setup:

    • cdparanoia
    • lame
    • perl
    I wrote up a few scripts myself. One polls a directory for *.wav files and launches the other to do encoding. The other waits for the *.wav file to finish being pulled, launches lame, and then cleans up the resulting .wav automatically. All I do is launch the monitor in one window and cdparanoia rip in another.

    But then, getting a pack or two of Lego Mindstorms and making an arm to remove the CD once ejected and putting in a new one would be a very cool hack to do.

    The code I have will be on PerlMonks soon.

    ---
    Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com." The purpose of that site was not known. -- MSNBC 10-26-1999 on MS crack

  • [disclaimer - being the author of software can make you biased towards it]

    If your CD duplicator is a bunch of drives hooked up via a SCSI bus, you'll find abcde extremely handy for this.

    http://frantica.lly.org/~rcw/abcde/page/ [lly.org]

    Command-line based, can be non-interactive, has support for all the major encoders + distmp3 remote encoding support, does cddb, playlists, id3 tagging, customizable output filenames, etc.

    Some people use it with autocd [freshmeat.net] for that truly hands-off feel.

  • hmmm....I think that link for the encoder is wrong, not sure though, what is bad about audiocatalyst? I don't know much about it....thanks so much for your help!
  • It would be cool to set it up to rip 6-10 CDs then burn it to one CD(DVD). Then this CD would go into your library. Build a server that could do chaching and look ahead loading on the CDs in the library.
  • You want to convert all your CDs to MP3s and inserting the CD into a drive is the LAST thing you want to do? So, instead, you want to buy a CD autochanger, set up autofeeding of the CDs, sort out software for it to work, just so you can convert both the CDs you own that are any good into MP3s?

    You're the ultimate in geek, I salute you!

    .iMMersE
  • What do people recommend to use for ripping? I use Xing AudioCadalyst, but am wondering if there is anything beytter/faster out there or people's opinions on this ripper? Thanks in advance.
  • I just finished up the same task. I converted my CDs to MP3 format for use in a home-jukebox type application.

    I think that a CD changer would be far too expensive for such a limited task (unless you're going to start a business doing it for others). The best bet is to find a fast encoder and flip disks by hand.

    I found that CD2WAV32 (found here [biglobe.ne.jp]) worked the best for me. I did manage to stumble on the gogo.dll, which encoded MP3's in very short order. I had been using BladeEnc to start, and was waiting more than an hour per CD. GoGo was fast enough to cut that time to about 15 minutes/CD.

    The other major issue that bugged me was the CDDB process. In most cases CDDB information is correct (properly spelled, formatted, etc). In other cases, some fool had misspelled things or put everything in lowercase characters, which caused about 25% of CDDB info I recieved to need editing.

    It's not simply enough to rip the tracks. You need to preserve some sort of information about the tracks. If you're a (near)perfectionist like me, you'll want the info to be correct...

    J

Slashdot Top Deals

A penny saved is a penny to squander. -- Ambrose Bierce

Close