Digital Music OCD
by Tim Faircloth on Sep 23, 2009, 10:34 am
Ever since I got a Mac (2.5 years ago), I’ve been looking for a good software package for CD ripping. For windows and linux, there are a multitude of freeware packages that are awesome, but everything I’ve found for Mac either sucks or costs at least $20. I guess most everyone assumes if you’re using a Mac you won’t mind having your mp3 library thrashed by ripping CDs in iTunes.
I’ve tried many different freeware packages, and most of them have at least one of these problems:
- It’s buggy or slow.
- It wants to take over your music library.
- It won’t allow you to fully customize the directory structure of the finished product.
- It doesn’t know the difference between an Album Artist and a Track Artist — which plays havok with my music library directory structure. That’s my main complaint with Audion 3.
- Doesn’t support mp3. I know, I know, most of you are like “Why don’t you use flac or some other lossless encoding?”. Look, I value my hard drive, and I see no point in keeping a 20 MB audio file around when I can keep a 5 MB audio file that sounds perfectly fine to me. Also, flac is not supported by my iPod, and I refuse to move to any version of “this will only play in our music player” encoding.
I say all this to let you know that I’ve found (after years of searching) what I consider to be a passable piece of software. It’s called X Lossless Decoder, or simply XLD. Gotta respect the Japanese; they know the way of the samurai.
Now I know most of you are reading this and saying to yourselves “man, this guy is anal about his mp3 collection.” Damn straight I am.
- My music directory structure is like this: ~/Music/{Album artist}/{Album}/{Artist} - {Track Title}.mp3. Compilations and soundtracks have the Album artist “Various Artists” unless something more pertinent can be specified. Some of the crappy ripping software I used would put each track of a soundtrack album in individual artist folders — when I ripped my Matrix soundtrack, suddenly there were 13 extra artist folders in my directory; one for each track of the album. I was not happy with that.
- If I have one track, I’ve got the whole album (or at least one album the track appears on).
- Very little of my music library is even questionable as far as legality. Chances are if you point to a track in my library I can either produce the CD or show you an email receipt from Rhapsody. It’s not because I fear the RIAA, it’s because I believe music is a commodity that should be purchased.
- Whenever I buy music online, I re-encode it to my specifications. If those specifications change (sometime last year I made the leap from 128 kbps to 256 kbps), I am likely to re-encode my entire library, a process that can take days.
- I hate having extra folders in my music directory. Apple software has a horrible habit of putting folders in there that don’t belong — like my folder for iTunes and GarageBand. I’ve figured out how to change the folder for iTunes, but GarageBand is incredibly stubborn.
- I back up my music folder to my media server (after putting in exclusions for the files that shouldn’t be there), and I’m anal about keeping them synced up. Every now and then I’ll delete my music folder on the server and run a full backup out of paranoia.
Flying
by Tim Faircloth on Sep 8, 2009, 4:23 pm
When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.
As some of you know, I recently received my skydiving A license. Here, for your enjoyment, is a video of my 25th skydive. Coincidentally, this jump took place exactly 3 months after my tandem jump here in Americus.
Yes, I know it’s been a month and a half since that jump. I’ve been ignoring my blog lately. I’m currently only 10 jumps (and a written exam) away from getting my B license.