As I am in the process of ripping all my CDs to mp3's, I have some reflections on the software available:

I have two programs: Windows mediaplayer (WMP) 11 and Roxio Easy Media Creator 10. I prefer the mediaplayer.

The Roxio rips very slowly, it's probably at half the speed compared to WMP. I can not edit any of the text-info, I have to accept whatever someone else has added. It does not add a composer field into the mp3.

On WMP, it rips fast, and also directly into a music library. I can edit all of the text-info. It has a separate composer field. I also get an picture of the CD-cover on many CDs.

The problem with WMP is that is has a smaller database of music than Roxio. There are many of my CDs that are not found, and most of them are found on Roxio. That is not fun when there are dozens of tracks to type in manually...

The quality of the CD-info is not always good. Instead of giving the info on each track, it can  give you ten files with act 1. Also very common is to add composer and the full name of the music on the begining of each track. I dislike that, and always edit that out.

Multi-CDs are also a problem. Only a few of my multi-CDs are recogniced beyond the first CD. It is very common to get the first one correct, and the you get the same info up on the remainder of the CDs.

On WMP it is common that it recognices another CD than the one I have inserted. There is a search facility that is quite good, but it is held back by the smaller database of CDs.

My general feeling is that these programs are ment for pop-music, and not for classical music. Especially Roxio who doesn't have a composer field.

I like very much the WMP music library, and I find it easy to navigate and find my music. It is also very user-friendly to use it with my Creative mp3 player.

A few thoughts for now, more later.

Hi and welcome to my blog!

I have just created it today, 2. september 2007. I will write about my classical music moments when I get the time.

At the moment I am creating mp3's out of my 3000 CDs. It might take a while...

Tore