What is the best way to burn all my CD's to lossless audio...

If you use a Mac you could try XLD which is free. If you use a PC dBpoweramp is probably one of the best.

Rip your CDs in 16bit, or select 'same as source" in the preferences panel.

Look for the cover artwork on google images & insert at the time of ripping.

I use an apple so am in the process of doing all mine in ALAC. but FLAC is just as good.

Not sure how many CDs your looking at but the thing I've found is to set out a step by step process so that you get uniformity in your files.

Make sure you edit all the tags, you can use another program called MP Tag for this.

I'm about 15% through my collection of almost 3000 cds & my brain is fried!!! SOOOOO many more to go!

Good luck

Does the source you use (ie cd-rom) plays ANY part in the quality of the lossless recording you will get?

FLAC will probably be the best and most widely supported format if you wish to use it on smart equipment.

If you’re on a PC, use Windows Media Player, (Set it to Rip into FLAC) as it will Rip, Download the Art Work, Add the Meta Tags and create an easily search Music Database for you. (NOTE: You can set it to use your own music database if you have one already set it up)

 Hope this helps

 Bill

No.

Now that Apple has made the ALAC format open source it is becoming much more widely accepted. But FLAC is just as good, both are lossless.

This was a good article that helped me to think about a step by step process:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/309-computer-audiophile-cd-rip...

What you DONT want to do is get half way through and realise that you should have done something differently. Give it some thought before you get started (obviously you're already doing this!)

As far as I know the disc drive in my Mac doesn't make any differnece to SQ. I could be wrong here, but it's only reading digital file so why would it?

The track listings that get down loaded from the net are great, but don't trust them to be 100% accurate with tagging. Once you set up a scheme with artists / genres etc you will want to make sure that you take the time to thoroughly check this before you start ripping.

Particularly make sure that the artists names are exactly the same, one tiny spelling difference leaves you with multiple artists in your database.

& make sure you back up your files, I'm planning on buying another external & leaving it at my mums place when I'm finished.

Macced-up here, so use XLD for most computer-based ripping.

I rip to FLAC, not to save space – since setting up and instaling the 6TB server I'm not exactly short of that – but to keep the tagging nice and simple.

Then I use server software able to transcode on the fly and present it to the network player: at the moment I'm using MinimServer, since it's particularly good for classical music.

Oh, and at the moment I are mainly listening to...

which was a 192kHz/24-bit FLAC download, now being delivered to the player as 192kHz/24-bit WAV (at 9216kbps, apparently).

One of the good thing that programs like XLD & dBpoweramp have over itumes & media player is that you can set them up to rip in multiple formats & to multiple locations.

So you could for example rip copies to two different hard drives.

Also they have can "AccurateRip" where they check your Cds against an online database. This is supposed to help if your CDs have any scratches or marks. Not sure if it has any impact on SQ.

I don't think that itumes or media player can do either of these things? Could be wrong?

Not in the quality, but it may have an impact on the time spent ripping. The more stable your disc drive is, the faster it will read everything error free.

Exact Audio Copy is another possibility if you use a PC. It's free, and it also uses Accurate Rip.

Dunno about WMP but itunes doesn't, it just has a check box for error correction, and why I personally would not use it.

Ripping is a laborious and tiresome task, i only want to have to do it once, and want accurate rips, and confirmation that they're accurate

'MAX' for mac is also very good and free.. I use minimum compression FLACs.  At 250gb so far 

I then use 'Switch' for mac to convert to 320 mp3 for iTunes folder 

Which isn't the question he asked.

... but might be of interest if he plans to rip a couple of hundreds of CDs...

Thanks guys...

so for lossless in a PC environment we are talking of FLAC and NOT WAV as the former will not be able to be tagged?

Isn't WAV 100% reproduction over FLAC which is 98%?

I have also seen hardwares that you just input your CD's and do all conversion and most tagging by themselves? do you have any recommendations?

Thanks

No! FLAC is LOSSLESS!!! Look at that word and have a think about what it means. The file is simply compressed but not in a way that loses any data. It's the same as zipping a document, once it's unzipped you end up with the same document you started with.

Sure, if you really want to spend hundreds of pounds on something like that when you already have a PC that will do the job perfectly well (they're all just PCs underneath...).