Well my total numbers for the past 6 or 7 weeks of ripping are 690 discs, 8669 tracks and 580 gigs of both wav and FLAC versions.  Still have a couple hundred left to do.  The Dbpoweramp program has been wonderful and very stable throughout.  In fact, the last 4 weeks have been done on the expired trial copy.  I never closed the window of the program and it has continued to work.  The puter has been up for 37 days now.  I think that a great deal of the stability has to do with the solid state drive I put the XP OS on.  I split it into 2 partitions, 60 gigs each and ripped to the second partition, then transferred batches of rips to the conventional HDs..  No moving parts involved in the ripping other than the optical drives.

Its time to buy the program and turn off the puter and move the studio work over to it.  I've played back a number of albums and very much like what I hear in most cases.  Why do I think the quality is better ?  I believe that the program treats the discs as data sources instead of being merely a playback device.  Playing a CD just involves the drive muddling through the best it can with only trying to make it from beginning to end without skipping.  There is a lot of error interpretation along the way that sacrifices accuracy for just getting from point A to B.  This program refuses to interpret the data for playability.  It insists on 100% accuracy and will do whatever it takes to read the disc right.

 rmgman wrote: 
If money is tight I'd really recommend looking at the refurbished macbooks. The last three macs I've purchased have been refurbished and they're perfect. You'll save money and get internal cd/dvd.

 buzz wrote: 
$79 is a lot of money in my current situation.

 swell_sailor wrote: 
didn't look. doesn't matter. i'm using the demo now, but i'm sure i'll be buying in less than 15 days. 

 buzz wrote: 

Dang. I have Yosemite on a seperate boot drive and have only messed with it a little. Haven't tried Nik yet. I don't really want to spend the money and I really like Nik. What's the upgrade cost for Nik?

 swell_sailor wrote: 
nope. i didn't try it as a stand alone. i never use it that way.

 buzz wrote: 
Nik stuff isn't working inside PS6?

 swell_sailor wrote: 
no problems with PSCS6 yet. had to upgrade onOne plugins and will have to upgrade Nik stuff too.

 buzz wrote: 

I segued into Yosemite Sam and compatibility issues with applications like Photoshop, etc. 

It was a tricky maneuver on my part. A bit of a stretch for this thread I'll admit. 

 swell_sailor wrote: 
with the Superdrive? no, but i think i've only stuck on or two discs in it. only had it a week.

 buzz wrote: 
Are you having an compatibility issues with Yosemite Sam?

 swell_sailor wrote: 
i just got one to go with my new iSmac

 buzz wrote: 

How could it get any better than a Superdrive?

zoom zoom

 rmgman wrote: 
Apple Superdrive is $79

 rmgman wrote: 
I'm not a big fan of the no cd thing, but at least if I ever need a new laptop I can go external. Were I looking right now I might consider a refurbished macbook with cd/dvd drive.

Researching now on getting a new Mac lap top when I get my tax return. Of course, in their wisdom, the new Macs don't have a CD/DVD drive. What external CD/DVD writer would you folks recommend to purchase that won't break the bank?

I've been using XLD (on a mac) to re-rip all my cds. It's taking a while but I have a pretty good system down. One cool thing about XLD is that I can load live music from archive.org or dead shows or other bootleg type stuff and edit the metadata manually, even adding a custom photo. This is all recognized and displayed by my player, Decibel, during playback. 

 haresfur wrote: 
After about 100 instasorries in a row I decided to give it a rest as it got to depressing.

 haresfur wrote: 
A noble goal indeed.

Went through the box of CDs in my closet and found a bunch that aren't on my computer. Of course most are ones that I was unimpressed with but I've started to add them for completeness and in case my opinion has changed.

I'm not too fussed about the quality because my ears are crap and I usually listen on crap speakers or earbuds. But I probably will go through and upgrade the early rips to better MP3. That way I can frustrate myself by loading some to the Listener channel.