In what format do you rip your CDs?

[ChuckM 1]

If your car has a cassette player, one of these adapters is the way to go. Much better sound quality than the FM transmitters.

[Wojo 2,453]

Cars with AUX IN are up there with sliced bread and the wheel.

Be that as it may, I REALLY needed a car on the day that I bought mine, saw a good deal, and the lack of an aux jack (or tape deck, lol) was not a deal breaker. The auto manufacturer made them standard on the following year's model. I paid to have an aux input cable connected to the antenna, but the multi-disc MP3 CD changer is still sweet for the days the iPod stays home.

I might not be able to read what the iPod says on the screen but I don't have to. Cops don't outlaw fumbling with an iPod the way they frown on texting while driving.

[Trent B 337]

If your car has a cassette player, one of these adapters is the way to go. Much better sound quality than the FM transmitters.

Agreed but do they even make those anymore? My parents SUV doesn't have a tape deck and their CD player is practically shot, need to get it replaced. However a few years ago when we had vehicles that had tape decks (and no CD player) I bought the tape deck adapter for the portable CD player so I could listen to my CD's in the car with my dad.

[ChuckM 1]

Most new vehicles don't have cassette players, no, but I tend to drive cars that are 10–15 years old.

Edit: Or were you asking if they still make the adapters? You can pick one up on eBay pretty dirt cheap.

[Marian Schedenig 8,193]

Ever failed to decompress a zip file? Usually that can be the fault of a single bit being not what it should.

So yes and no. Usually these errors are checked for, I believe FLAC and ALAC have a slew of safety nets to prevent something like that from happening. But then, ZIP files also do a lot of error checking.

Oh, that's what you meant. In that case, yes. But with the same chance you can get a wrong bit in a binary application and consistently crash your system instead of starting your text editor. With a decent file system on a decent storage medium, it doesn't usually happen. Of course, I never bothered to check the error rate on portable storage devices.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Most new vehicles don't have cassette players, no, but I tend to drive cars that are 10–15 years old.

Edit: Or were you asking if they still make the adapters? You can pick one up on eBay pretty dirt cheap.

Best Buy still sells them. My car has a 6-disc CD player so it's not too bad driving, but I'd like to use my iPod.

[BraveheartDC 0]

Apple Lossless (ALAC) for archiving purposes, then 256 (VBR) AAC for computer/iPod.

Really don't buy CD's anymore, however.

[arathornion33 0]

I use FLAC, then I use MP3TAG to do labels, then play in WINAMP. Sounds fantastic!

[Jay 37,355]

I use Audiograbber to automatically make WAVs and VBR0 MP3s with one click after I make sure all the track titles are right.

I then use FLAC FrontEnd to make FLACs out of those WAVs, and have it automatically delete the WAVs as it goes.

I then use mp3tag to make sure all the tagging is right in both formats

The mp3s go on my ipod, the FLACs sit on my hard drive and most of the time never get touched again. But I have 'em.

[Wojo 2,453]

I mostly do the same as Jay, except that Audiograbber won't work on my computer, so I use FreeRip to rip to WAV, and LAME Drop to encode to MP3.

But I usually don't bother to check the track titles before ripping. MP3Tag lets me do it afterwards, and it's not "too" big a pain to then rename FLAC and MP3 at the same time. The TNG box set was unique in that 14 discs presented 1000+ files to tag as both FLAC and MP3 while trying to maintain consistency in styles.

[Jay 37,355]

I find that making sure the tracks are correct in one place (Audiograbber) means I don't have to make sure they are correct in two places later (mp3tag on the FLACs and mp3tag on the MP3s)

[Wojo 2,453]

I rip the WAV files to a single folder on a 1 TB hard drive with plenty of space -- each album gets ripped into its own subfolder.

I then convert them to FLAC and MP3 inside each album's subfolder, and I either delete the WAV files or just move them elsewhere, in case I want to stitch tracks together later. The FLAC and MP3 files are not separated until they're totally tagged.

For large, multi-album projects or albums with long track names, I strive to tag from text files so I don't have to type. Sometimes it doesn't work so well.

I then open only the FLAC files of an album in MP3tag and edit their tags to be what I want. Then I expand the view to include MP3 files as well, and it usually works out that Track 1.FLAC is above Track 1.MP3, so I can just alternate Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V down the line to copy tag info from one track onto the next. Usually it's only title, but sometimes it's also artist for compilation albums. Other fields like artist, year, album, and genre can be easily copied to both FLAC and MP3 albums.

But if MP3 ends up on top, then I have to use Shift+Enter between lines to work up from the bottom, which is a killjoy.

Once I append album art to both FLAC and MP3 files, I rename them as either "Track Title" or "Track- Artist- Title" (for compilation albums). Then I move FLAC files into one music structure, and MP3 files into an identical structure. The FLAC files are stored in a 1 TB internal drive and an external backup, never to be touched again unless I want 128 kbps MP3s for some reason, while the 320 MP3 files are stored inside the RAID array and on the iPod.

I know it's a long convoluted process, but it's my process and I'm quite comfortable with it. It's also half the reason I'm so behind with tagging my music.

[Jay 37,355]

Convoluted doesn't begin to describe your situation, holy cow.

All I can think to say is "you're doing it wrong"

[ChuckM 1]

As far as a "process" goes. I just use Exact Audio Copy to rip my CDs to FLAC, then I use MediaMonkey for labeling and playback. Nice and simple.

[OneBuckFilms 319]

Windows Media Player, 320kbps MP3s ripped from the CD, and fully tagged appropriately.

I try to tag all of the files with composer, Conductor, Artist and Album Artist (Composer) filled on.

I consolidate multi-disc complete scores into albums with the following naming conversion:

The main body of the score: The MovieName

Bonus and Alternate cues: The MovieName - Alternates

OST Album Presentation (if present): The MovieName - Original Soundtrack

Source Cues are usually integrated into the correct position within the general score.

For TV Episode Scores, I name the albums thus:

Series Name - XXX - Episode Title

(XXX = sequential episode number)

In the event that tracks blend into each other, aka Star Trek: TMP, I use EAC to rip the joined tracks, combine the track .WAV files, encode to MP3s, and tag appropriately, combining cue titles with " / " as a delimiter.

[Wojo 2,453]

Convoluted doesn't begin to describe your situation, holy cow.

All I can think to say is "you're doing it wrong"

Not really. My process is the same as yours once the FLAC and MP3 files come into being. I haven't been able to get Audigrabber or Exact Audio Copy to work for years.

I just used more words to describe my process. I also don't have a perpetual internet connection, and even when I'm online, MP3Tag's Freedb cannot find even half of the specialty label soundtracks in the database.

However, I have more respect for anyone who takes the time to manually tag their music in their own system than those who simply rely on what iTunes tells them it should be.

[Ollie 1,059]

I think all of you are doing too much work.

[Wojo 2,453]

For TV Episode Scores, I name the albums thus:

Series Name - XXX - Episode Title

(XXX = sequential episode number)

Did you use that system for your Star Trek TNG Ron Jones boxset? So you just live with a plethora of albums named:

"Star Trek TNG 103 The..."

and so on?

[OneBuckFilms 319]

For TV Episode Scores, I name the albums thus:

Series Name - XXX - Episode Title

(XXX = sequential episode number)

Did you use that system for your Star Trek TNG Ron Jones boxset? So you just live with a plethora of albums named:

"Star Trek TNG 103 The..."

and so on?

I'll use that scheme once I get it.

It would be:

"Star Trek TNG - 101 - Encounter At Farpoint" for instance.

The Best Of Both Worlds would be a combination of the Ron Jones set and the GNP set, with the cues in their correct place.

For TNG, I also plan on creating a Main Titles playlist with Main and End Titles for each season, and an episode-specific archive for alternates in each episode.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

I think all of you are doing too much work.

This.

I buy the CD, put the disc in my computer, import it to iTunes, put it on the shelf. Done.

[Andy 4,126]

I think all of you are doing too much work.

This.

I buy the CD, put the disc in my computer, import it to iTunes, put it on the shelf. Done.

Yeah, same here. I don't get why it has to be difficult.

[Ollie 1,059]

Not everyone uses iTunes, although to me it's the simplest and does most of the work for you, as long as some nimcompoop doesn't screw up submitting titles to Gracenotes or whatever is uses now.

[Wojo 2,453]

For TV Episode Scores, I name the albums thus:

Series Name - XXX - Episode Title

(XXX = sequential episode number)

Did you use that system for your Star Trek TNG Ron Jones boxset? So you just live with a plethora of albums named:

"Star Trek TNG 103 The..."

and so on?

I'll use that scheme once I get it.

It would be:

"Star Trek TNG - 101 - Encounter At Farpoint" for instance.

The Best Of Both Worlds would be a combination of the Ron Jones set and the GNP set, with the cues in their correct place.

For TNG, I also plan on creating a Main Titles playlist with Main and End Titles for each season, and an episode-specific archive for alternates in each episode.

If you have an iPod Classic like me, you'll quickly find that system to be woefully inadequate. I can't tell what episode each track belongs to unless the track title makes it obvious, like "Lwaxana Gets Naked" or "Captain Borg."

I may have to add the episode name to the track titles like I did with other TV shows where I'm interested in what the episodes are. Batman TAS, Amazing Stories, etc. It helps that each episode is short, about 20 minutes of music per. The album tag will still guide the order, and the track title contains the episode; I'm far more interested in the episode name than the track title.

If I do that, I might re-combine the episodes into discs or seasons, I haven't decided yet.

I think all of you are doing too much work.

This.

I buy the CD, put the disc in my computer, import it to iTunes, put it on the shelf. Done.

Yeah, same here. I don't get why it has to be difficult.

You don't understand! A masked man with a fedora hat and a Tommy stands in the corner of my room, and compels me to organize my music so complicatedly!

---

I consider it a hobby an extension of my obsessively compulsive organizational nature to want to take such interest in being meticulous with how things are tagged. If you're not, that's great.

[Jay 37,355]

Yes, but my stuff is all meticulously tagged and it doesn't take me nearly as many steps as you

I never have to sit there and type in track names... audiograbber finds them using freeDB. I only need to make corrections if any are wrong.

I have no idea why you'd need to involve text files or ctrl-c, ctrl-ving, etc

[Wojo 2,453]

Hey, I have no idea why you'd want to be a Patriots fan either, but to each his own.

[OneBuckFilms 319]

I mostly play from my PC, as it has the best sound system in my apartment.

I'm going to implement this naming scheme for TOS, TNG, DS9, MOV etc. for all of my Star Trek scores.