What's a good setup for CD playing AND ripping?

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bbbhenko
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Joined: Tue Aug 03, 2010 9:42 pm

What's a good setup for CD playing AND ripping?

Post by bbbhenko »

I have a problem that I thought some of you could possibly help me with...

I do not currently own a CD player and all my 100s of CDs are stored in the garage. However, there are quite a few gems in there that I do not own on vinyl and that I cannot find on my streaming service (Spotify). I therefore want to buy a new CD player so that I will be able to play back those CDs again. However, I also see this as a great opportunity to finally rip my entire CD collection in lossless format, so that I won't have to fiddle with the plastic discs again any time soon. So, I basically would like to buy a CD player that can do ripping as well.

Ripping from my laptop works OK and can be automized, but the laptop is horrible as a CD player (sounds like a thunderstorm inside when the disc is spinning). Buying a regular standalone CD player would allow me to play back my CDs as I like, but essentially makes ripping impossible or extremely cumbersome.

Then it struck me - after all, it's 2014 now and a lot of people should have had similar issues. Surely there must be CD players out there that can do automated lossless ripping to USB or something?? This is what I'm looking for at least. Any hints, recommendations or suggestions are very much appreciated! :D
olan
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Location: Liverpool

Re: What's a good setup for CD playing AND ripping?

Post by olan »

Hi Fi geekery ahoy!

I use a vortexbox (http://www.vortexbox.co.uk/). This is essentially a ripping device and NAS drive. It rips and tags a CD to FLAC with metadata in about 5 minutes. It gets the correct artwork and metadata with about 98% of my CDs, but is typically flummoxed by boutique releases by bands like The Heads. In that case I simply use a free metadata editor like MP3Tag (which does FLACs despite its name). This all sounds hideously complex, but essentially all you really do is feed it a constant stream of CDs. In the end my kids (7 and 9 at the time) did most of the donkey work feeding the CDs into the machine. The machine I use is very similar to this:
http://www.vortexbox.co.uk/VortexBox_Es ... 16227.aspx
I bought it with a 2TB HDD. We have put about 2400 CDs on it thus far with very few hassles. We use it to feed a bunch of streamers (2 from Naim and one from Cambridge Audio). Nobody uses a CD player in my house any longer. As a bonus we have also boxed up all our CDs and put them in the cellar. This keeps the mess down as kids (and adults) rarely put CDs away :roll:

You can connect the Vortexbox to a DAC and avoid streaming, but then you need to buy a silent version as the one I use is quite noisy. We keep the Vortexbox in the cellar, it is connected to the household network via a powerline ethernet plug. Streaming is straightforward and if you have a wireless hub can be achieved using Wi Fi. We have a bunch of hi-res 24/96 files which are much bigger than the 16/44 CD rips which are too much for Wi Fi. TBH, wired is the way to go.
Last edited by olan on Thu Mar 06, 2014 11:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
mc
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Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 1:00 am

Re: What's a good setup for CD playing AND ripping?

Post by mc »

Nice looking piece of kit!

CD artwork geekery alert: I'm pretty sure that's R.E.M.'s "Out Of Time" half-inserted into the Vortex Box Lux on their website :)
cantona
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Location: Denmark

Re: What's a good setup for CD playing AND ripping?

Post by cantona »

I can also recommend Vortexbox but I use this http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/LIV-Zen-2Tb-V ... 3a7c9c6001 to rip my cd's. I use it with a Naim SuperUniti.My Vortexbox is sometimes noisy but only when ripping cd's.
bbbhenko
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Posts: 96
Joined: Tue Aug 03, 2010 9:42 pm

Re: What's a good setup for CD playing AND ripping?

Post by bbbhenko »

thanks a lot for the info! i'll have to check out that vortexbox :)
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