Music and the 1 Terabyte Hard Drive. Complete.

I have had a series of posts about my ongoing CD ripping project started 1-1-07 and finished today 3-6-07 after 65 days of work. The first post is here, but you can see them all by using the labels (tags) feature.

The final result is 10,629 songs for a continuous playing time of 29.8 days -- this represents 773 albums and 252 artists*.

As I said in my original post, I've always wanted to have my complete library available to me, and now I do. I've ripped everything except spoken word discs

I used either 160 or 192 and in a few rare cases 320 bits depending on the recording. Most are being done at 160 because when they were recorded any real difference wouldn't be noticeable, and as a result I saved tons of drive space. Newer discs were done at the higher rate for better quality. My calculations for total space were way off because I took a typical CD and used that for all calculations, but most older albums are much shorter. Back in the LP era, an album could hold 45 minutes of music. The new ones hold 70 to 80 minutes so I ended up using half the space I expected. I also did the calculations before factoring in disk space shrinkage for using smaller bit rates. It was all done at 320, so my 1TB hard drive still has a lot of space which means I can buy more CDs.

I still wish iTunes let you have real dual libraries -- that is you could have two open at the same time and move songs back and forth. That would please me and it would make my project of removing any remaining illegal tracks go faster. I'll start updating tags which should be done later this year. And I'm slowly adding artwork too, because I'm anal that way.

* Sort of. Some albums a multi-disc set counts as "one album" and on others it counts as "two albums" depending if iTunes recognizes it as "Title" or "Title (Disc One)" and "Title (Disc Two)" but that is a minor quibble. Also for artists, it's the same thing "Elton John" is not the same artist as "Elton John & Billy Joel" so the count isn't perfect. Use the iTunes browse feature to get this information..

Terrabyte HD and the CD Ripping Project Update

In three previous posts to date: one, two, and three, I've commented on this project. As of right now, I'm at 23.5 days of continuous music, representing over 8300 songs and counting. I'm on the Soundtrack section and this one's interesting because I'm wondering exactly why I even bought some of these. Yeah, a good track here and there, but do I really need the entire Empire of the Sun soundtrack? And why do I have both London and Broadway cast recordings of Cats?

The one that will be really fun (insert sarcasm here) is my multi-lingual collection of Les Miserables soundtracks. I have a lot of these and I'll have to encode them so they don't register as duplicates. Won't take too long.

I'm still trying to keep up the pace but it's hard to stay with it; I'm probably done for the week and will try to resume this weekend. But I maintain that I'll still finish this project by June. I started New Year's Day and figured it would take 4 to 6 months.

After soundtracks, there's nothing much left except my Elton John library. I've saved that for last. I will not be including my spoken word CDs; that seems sort of pointless to include CDs containing interviews and such.

After it's done, as I said in post one, I'll slowly check my original playlist, and remove songs that are in my master list. I want to make sure I legally own everything. Then I'll go on a shopping spree to buy whatever I may not legally own. Yay. Then, I get buy new stuff. Watch my Amazon wish list later this year!

Advice, suggestions, and help solicited for this way-cool ongoing project.

In My Ongoing CD Ripping Project

In a previous post or two, I've commented on this project. As of right now, I'm at 20.5 days of continuous music, representing over 7400 songs and counting. I'm on the Classical section and it's slow going because of various discrepancies in the process that don't happen with Rock/Pop CDs. With all the foreign names, I'm having to check the spelling and accentuation of each composers name before I rip.

Also the people who've uploaded them have often included the composer's name as part of the title track. Like "Beethoven's 9th" instead of "Ninth Symphony" with the composer as Beethoven, so everyone has to be hand edited. It's really slowed me down. Some the artist is missing a first or last name. I've been on Google and Wikipedia quite a bit to clean everything up.

I'm trying to keep up the pace but it's hard to do and my motivation has dropped. But I will still finish this project. It's quite the challenge and I've learned a lot too.

As far as Classical music goes, the Baroque period is clearly what I like the best. Must be the romantic in me or something. It certainly doesn't fit my character.

iTunes has a bug, BTW, where it doesn't properly calculate the disk space. It rather insists all these songs only take up 40gb. A look at the disk information window (or even at the iTunes folder) clearly shows otherwise. Ah well.

I wish there was a way to find out how many CDs this represents without counting. At 12 tracks per CD average, I could guestimate. Maybe counting them will be my next project.

More On Music and the 1 Terabyte Hard Drive

In my previous post entitled Music and the 1 Terabyte Hard Drive, I detailed my plans for this monumental project of ripping all my CDs into iTunes. It's been a much larger task than I thought but here's an update.

I am on the letter "S" today (remember, I'm only in my Pop/Rock library) and have 8.6 days of songs representing some 3600+ individual tracks. Once that's done, I have my classical, world, show tune, new age libraries. I also have libraries of Beatles and Elton John CDs which are not included in my regular rock/pop library.

I am (if you count by CD and not contents) just about 12% done. Current calculations indicate that my spoken word collection will not make the cut because I don't think the 1 TB hard drive will have space. This may change though because much of the stuff I haven't got to yet (live recordings) will be recorded at tighter bit rates and that will save space.

Music and the 1 Terabyte Hard Drive

Everyone who knows me knows I love music. I own close to 1000 CDs, all store bought. Over the years, I have downloaded more than a few songs -- most I own but am too damned lazy to go find the CD, bring it upstairs, rip a track, put it back, and then update all the info -- but if I don't own it, and I like it I buy the album. If I don't, I delete the song. I really do believe the artist is entitled to their money. As a (former) software publisher, saying otherwise would be hypocritical. It's a great way to try new music and that short snippet on iTunes just isn't long enough to make up my mind whether I wish to buy an album. And, I buy my albums at Amazon because I won't support DRM because it interferes with my use of the song. Fuck that.

So, after saying all that, I have about 400 songs in my primary play list compiled over the past five or so years. Yay. Most were ripped track by track or downloaded to try t(as I said above). If I buy the CD I don't believe there's a real need to delete the song I downloaded and re-rip it from the CD I just bought. Even the RIAA can't be that fucking stupid. Well, okay, they're more stupid than that, but I digress: the RIAA is dumber than the shit in a baby's diaper and they smell about the same.

Anyway, I've always wanted to have my complete library available to me, but at current estimates I needed around 850 GB of disk space. Yeah, that's right, nearly a terabyte. And, mind you, that excludes spoken word discs, and some of my collections of various operatic works -- they came free with my old BBC music magazine, but they're really not worth putting on disc. That's an exorbitant amount of disc space, more than my computer's two internal hard drives had, and an expensive proposition.

Until Now.

Apple Store has on sale a 1TB (a terabyte is 1,000GB) external drive which is tri-port, accepting the ever-slow USB 2.0, the very fast FireWire 400, and the new and relatively rare Firewire2 (Firewire 800). It so happens my G5 has a FireWire 800 port and this baby flies. At $549 it's a fucking steal. Yeah, that's a real bargain. It configures as a Raid 0 or Raid 1 drive so you can use it as a 1TB drive or two 500GB mirrored drives. Default out of the box, it's a Raid 0 1TB drive and the Mac recognizes it right away and the default HFS+ journalled format means you're ready to rock immediately.

I am in the middle of ripping my Pop/Rock CDs right at the moment. Middle is not the right word. I'm in the middle of the letter "B" after two hours and have 520 songs for 1.4 days of playing time, at 2.41GB. Not bad really. I'm using either 160 or 192 bits depending on the recording. Most are being done at 160 because when they were recorded any real difference won't be noticeable, but I'll save tons of drive space. Newer discs are being done at the higher rate for better quality.

I wish iTunes let you have real dual libraries -- that is you could have two open at the same time and move songs back and forth. That would please me.

When I'm all done, then I'll probably start updating tags which should be done by the end of this year. I'm figuring 15,000 songs or so will be in the library when done. Why do I have to do this? Because as great as iTunes is, it sucks at some things. Let's take Jimmy Buffet, for example, his songs get tagged as Rock, Country, Pop, and Alternative. The soundtrack to Don't Stop The Carnival (get this disc) is tagged as Rock. It's just screwed up. So it's got to be fixed. And I'm slowly adding artwork too, because I'm anal that way.

After that I'll slowly check my other playlist, and remove songs that are in my master list. I want to make sure I legally own everything. Then I'll go on a shopping spree. Yay.

Advice, suggestions, and help solicited for this way cool project.