CD Archiving 5: Milestone A
Posted on | November 12, 2009 at 7:00 pm | 5 Comments
I’ve just reached a milestone in my CD Archiving project. You didn’t think I was still doing that, did you? Actually, with everything else going on, that kind of got put by the wayside. I’ve been starting it back up again lately. And guess what… I just finished archiving all the CDs from bands whose names start with the letter “A”! ABC through Aztec Camera. Actually, it’s even better than that, since I’ve also done the ones from bands names that start with a number, like 13 Engines, 22 Brides, and 54-40. I used to file those under the spelled-out numbers (example: “13 Engines” was filed under “T” for “Thirteen”), but when I got partway into this project, I decided that was pretty hokey. It just caused too many sorting/archiving issues. So I had to rearrange my CD collection a bit.
So… where does that put me on the progress bar? That’s 158 titles out of 4128. Note I say “titles” instead of “CDs” or “albums” because some of those are actually double CDs, so in reality I’ve ripped more than 158 discs. Anyway, that’s 3.8% of my collection. In a little over three months.
(Note that my CDs are stored in plastic sleeves instead of jewel boxes, so there are many more in the picture above than it would appear.)
My original plan was to try to average around 6 discs a day, which would take me around two years to complete. My real average has been about 1.6 discs a day, but like I said, there were extenuating circumstances. I think I went probably a whole month or so without ripping a single disc. If I keep that lower rate, it will take me 7 years, and FLAC, MP3, and probably PCs, will all be obsolete by then.
Also, remember that I’m not buying any new CDs, just buying new albums in digital format only, so I don’t have to worry about never catching up with the physical collection. Once I’m done, I’m done!
One interesting statistic is that there was only one CD that I could not get a perfect copy of (Aztec Camera’s Dreamland). On every other CD that I had problems with, I was always able to switch to a different drive (I have a CD and a DVD drive on the PC) and it would work. But that one disc had issues in both drives. Nevertheless, the archive it made from the disc is perfectly listenable. It only had problems with the first track, and I can’t distinguish any actual sound problems with it using my tired old ears. So even though EAC took an incredibly long time to rip the track and kept getting read/sync errors, it was still able to error correct it enough for me to not tell the difference. Most excellent. I don’t expect that to always be the case though. I’m sure at some point I’ll run into some discs that are so degraded they won’t rip.
Latre.
Pet Peeve of the Day: The fact that downloaded digital songs are always so much louder than files made from ripped CDs. Thankfully we have ReplyGain (or iTunes Soundcheck) to even things out!
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “unbearable on coke”.
Videogame(s) Played Since Last Blog Update: None.
Comments
5 Responses to “CD Archiving 5: Milestone A”
November 12th, 2009 @ 8:25 pm
You should outsource this project. You don’t want to risk shipping your CDs, so you’ll need to hire an offshore resource (also known as a person) and fly them over to do the work. They can live in your basement and you can feed them nothing but Ramen noodles. If they meet there daily quota!
November 13th, 2009 @ 10:41 am
Yes, I know. There/They’re/Their. Ugh.
November 13th, 2009 @ 10:51 am
No one I could outsource this to would be as anal about it as I am.
November 13th, 2009 @ 11:52 pm
Edited: No one… could be as anal… as I am. ha ha ha. I crack me up.
December 28th, 2009 @ 2:03 am
Maybe if you outsourced the blog…? I know some guys in Mumbai. (well, I work with a guy from there)