Digitising CD's

[davey]

I have a few hundred CD's which I'd like to digitise as I live in two places and would like to have my music in both.

I have an iMac and Mac Laptop which I could use, also an old iPod. I have an amp and speakers in both places.

If I import CD's into iTunes, am I throwing all the quality away ? Are there settings I can use to transfer more detail ? Is there a better way to do it ?

My main music system has a USB socket and will read memory sticks etc.

Cheers, Davey

[obrienp]

Hi Davey,

you can import CD tracks into iTunes using various different encoding formats. You set them when you start the import, or you can set a default of your choice. The iTunes help guide explains the different formats but at a very high level. There are lots of on-line guides on the web that will give you chapter and verse on the differences between the formats. The better the quality level of capture, the bigger the resultant file.

If you are planning to use that USB socket for reading file off a memory stick, you need to find out what file formats the system will play, before you decide what format to use when you import into iTunes. You don't want to laboriously import in AAC for instance (iTunes default) only to find that your system will only play MP3. To be safe you might want to set your default to MP3, which is very widely supported but does involve quite a lot of compression (discards some of the detail). Personally I can hardly tell the difference but maybe my hearing and music systems are not very acute.

[Brad Bechtel]

I would argue that the default AAC format used by iTunes (file extension .m4a) provides a very good balance between audio quality and disk space. There are those who prefer the FLAC and/or OGG formats, but they are not yet supported by iTunes.

If you want the highest possible audio quality and don't care about disk space, you can just drag the AIFF files directly from the CD to your hard drive. You probably won't get the metadata such as title, author, etc. but that's definitely an option.

I would agree with obrienp that you should check your music system to see if it supports AAC files. Since it has a USB port, there's a good chance it does.

[davey]

Thanks for the info, chaps.

As a further technical query, I've noticed that CD's played through a Mac and then into a Hifi sounds worse than a CD player into the same Hifi. Is this because the CD player has a better Digital to Analogue converter or is the CD player on the Mac lower quality in itself ?

Cheers

[Michael Messer]

Hi Davey,

Your question about running CDs from the mac into your hi fi and the sound not being as good as from your CD player, is probably because you are using the mini jack headphone socket on the Mac. The audio quality from the Mac is excellent, but you need a digital to analogue box of tricks that connects via FireWire and not use the headphone socket, then you come out of that into your hi fi with phono leads.

Shine On
Michael

[davey]

Brilliant. Cheers all.

[Michael Messer]

Hi Davey,

I may be a little out of date with the latest model, but this type of thing.... Edirol FA-66 ...FireWire Audio Capture. In fact trhe FA-66 is excellent and not expensive

Shine On
Michael

[Michael Messer]

.....For even less money, Focusrite Scarlett 212....

Once you have listened to music from your Mac via one of these machines you will never use the headphone socket again.

Shine On
Michael

[davey]

HI Michael

I have no idea what those gizmos do at the moment but I'll have a study. The website describes using it as an input device for recording, i.e. analogue to digital which is the opposite thing. All very confusing at first glance.

Delving into hifi for the first time in 20 years is fairly confusing but I'm getting the feeling that everything should be digital and streamed rather than physical media. Having said that, the best Hifi shop in Coventry also has a vinyl record department. How about that ?

[slide496]

When I did that for many of my cds awhile back in 2008 on a pc I just copied the cd as is to an external drive and then dealt with importing into itunes as a second step.

Thanks to earlier in the thread apparently I have a choice about import settings.

A few were rights protected and I think I developed a work around for those - but it may not be an issue with todays technology.

[Michael Messer]

Hi Davey,

Those little gizmo box of tricks are for recording and running analogue signals into a computer, but they are also used as a way of getting a line out from a Mac without using that stupid little mini jack headphone socket. The sound and the stereo image are way better than the headphone socket.

I think that as you are just looking for a way of getting from your Mac to your hi fi system, that you could get away with a very basic bottom of the range unit. Just make sure the audio tech spec matches the Edirol one I mentioned.

Shine On
Michael

[fitchmeister]

Hi,

With anything Mac I would consider an 'airplay' device - its compression less, an apple TV will do it (limited interfaces)/Latest AV recievers, you need wireless

www.cnet.com/how-to/apple-airplay-10-things-you-need-to-know/

On another note - BBC news reported this week that sales of vinyl in the UK are at an 18 years high

Cheers

Roj

[Michael Messer]

An AirPlay, or similar type of system is a good idea, but I am not sure if it is a two way system - from the Mac to the hi fi and visa versa.

This is a good one and it is not expensive

www.amazon.co.uk/Neet®-Wireless-Receiver-wireless-streaming/dp/B00O0U37HO

It must use wifi and not Bluetooth. Wifi is lossless and uncompressed, whereas Bluetooth devices compress the files.

Shine On
Michael

[slide496]

I don't understand what you are talking about in this thread. Are you talking about playing on a hi-fi and recording devices that capture the sound from the hi-fi?

If so, Is that better than popping the cd in the mac and copying the cd and then playing in quicktime or itunes or some other music player?

I have one mac pro that plays through an m-audio interface and outputs through to a bose speaker and thats my favorite sounding set up over the new macbook set up which outputs from the macbook through the headphone jack into a bose mini soundlink and that is not as good sounding, so I think I understand the part about in /out audio vs headphone jack

[davey]

Hi

yes it's got complicated hasn't it ?

My original question was how to digitise my CD's so I can take my music with me as I live in two places and also travel quite a lot. I gather the Mac is good enought to do the job but the inbuilt Digital to Analogue converter isn't as good as a seperate one, which you seem to have discovered with your setup.

There seems to be many ways to get decent home audio these days and everyone I talk to has a different solution. I'll start with Mac - DAC- Hifi and see how it goes. Or should it be Mac- Wifi - Hifi ?