How the hell do I do that in a time efficient way? My current MP3 collection is a real bastard piece of work. Many different sample rates, different software used, poor tags - shambles. Once the new home theatre is in I will also have speakers run out to my deck area and I'm fantasizing about accessing any music, any time.

But back to the original question...

And yes I know I could search the 'net (and have done a little bit), but suggestions vary wildly. I want real life experience.

or just get EAC and Lame set up, and do it one disc at a time, followed by Tag&Rename to clean up all the tags.

Then you can transcode them to whatever you want whenever you want. 1200 CD's converted to FLAC should have no problem all fitting on a 500GB drive.

Not the easy to work with IMHO though.

$999 + $153 shipping for 1,000 CDs

$239 + $42.50 shipping for 200 CDs

would have never been done. It took about 2 months 4-6 hours a day to complete it (depending on how much I actually listened to) :)

And I have about 600 in my collection.

A bunch of CDs did not import very well -- with random bursts of static. So I got tired of the whole process and gave up.

So I am following this thread to learn what the best way would be of finishing the rest of my CD collection -- hopefully without those annoying errors.

-- P.

It's a bit of a PITA to setup, but once you get it setup right, it rips almost flawlessly... and it's really easy to use.

I use CDex, works well but yes, it takes time. In my reading CDex and EAC seemed to be the "best".

Software? Point me in the right direction if I get eager and want to tackle this myself... those prices are very high to have a 3rd party do it. Yuck.

Software that automates things a bit.

You've been warned... it's a PITA to get going, but once you have, it's simple to use and produces the best results you can get.

<a href="http://users.pandora.be/satcp/eac-qs-en.htm">Guide</a>

<ul><li><a href="http://www.olive.us/p_bin/">http://www.olive.us/p_bin/</a</li></ul>

...tracks.

I've also been trying to decide how to get all the ripping done (only about 600 CDs in my case), and so far think I'll pay my 10 year old daughter 25 cents each to load them.

Based on another AWer's recommendation, I'm planning to buy a Mac Mini and use its included "Front Row" software to organize all the media files. It's very slick.

&lt;tracks thread&gt;

Send them to me and I'll do it for you for a small fee.