Downloaded 3000 CD's To External Hard Drive

I would pay for a database tagging service for the month that you plan to rip disks. dbpoweramp had a service with allmusic that pulled the metadata down into the flac tags. You can also use dppoweramps accurate rip which checksum compares your rip to a database of rips and verifies your exact cd rips fidelity (data wise.

Your JRiver database will be functional after this and then you can customize.

if your 3 K discs are classical... there are some recomondations out there about the right database to use for tagging.

Thank you....

I just went to the website....this is EXACTLY what I was looking for. You (a total stranger to me) just helped my whole music experience thing. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Wow, you plan to rip 3,000 cds in three weekends? It has taken me a LOT longer to get up to 3,100 (still a ways to go). It takes a fairly long time to rip each CD if it is being done at a speed that insures absolute perfection. Also, if one has to do a lot of metadata editing, that really takes time (a necessity with a lot of classical recordings). Given the number of CDs involved, do some planning ahead on how you will classify the CDs by music type for purposes of easily browsing your collection--too few categories mean too many CDs lumped together, too many types mean having to browse too many files to scan to make selections.

I rip to WAV because I heard a demonstration of WAV vs. FLAC (WAV sounded better), and because being in a relatively unaltered form I don't have to consider re-ripping because of a subsequent "discovery" about a defect in the process.

Larry....points well taken. I will want to do a lot of editing, but I can do some of that while it's being ripped. Sub-genres will be helpful and I'll want to use "release date" instead of just the "year". Feeding my neurosis comes with a heavy price sometimes.... I have three monitors, so I can actually do some work at the same time. I can sit in my office and watch The Masters while I'm doing this.

I have to agree with Larryi; plan on MONTHS if you properly rip them and edit. It took me 6 months to rip 500 albums, granted it took me a bit longer because I was also up-sampling each song to 24/96 with Triumph's iZotope program. Nevertheless, not a weekend project.

Take your time! Start with 10 or so cds.

Rip in dbpoweramp as FLAC. FLAC by far is the easiest to tag. FLAC is identical (bit perfect) to WAV. dB will bring in metadata/cover art.

Cover art will show in the music directory as folder.jpg. Every album folder will have folder.jpg.

Missing cover art can be found at albumart.org

In JRiver you can click on tags. You will see how db tagged the music by default. Get a decent idea of what the major fields mean.

Take your time and have fun. I ripped 2000 cds in a relative short period of time.

I agree 100% with Larry WAV sounds much better on my Mac
My question is how to do metadata with WAV Ive been doing 2 rips per cd 1 in aiff the other in WAV eating space and taking twice the time
Thanks

There is a really good overview of cd ripping strategy on the Computer Audiophile site. It's a good read and includes ideas like keeping an archive copy and a playback copy. It also includes recommended software and settings. I think it's really well thought out.

Search for the computer audiophile site and look under the "CA Academy" section.

Good luck!