Android Question What to do with all my music CD's

[Mark Stuart]

Hi all
I have a large CD collection that's stored away in one of those large plastic containers. Been there a long time.

I got to thinking if I burnt all the CD's to a SSD drive and created a B4A app that could access the mp3 files and play them, I'd be doing pretty good. Enjoying all those great albums.

Anyone done such a thing?
Sure would be interested in knowing how you did it.

Regards,
Mark Stuart

Ps... I've been using ChatGPT lately. Wonder if it can help to do all this?

 

[walt61]

The way I did it (your mileage/requirements may vary depending on how you want to be able to use them):
- ripped them all to my NAS
- made a backup copy to another disc on the NAS
- made another backup copy to an external disc (don't want the NAS to die and have to rip it all again - possibly overkill/paranoia )
- I play them with KODI (on an RPi - https://xbian.org/; KODI is available for other platforms too)

 

[Mark Stuart]

Thanx @walt61. I'll check into that. Obviously the ripping to .mp3 file formats is the big work - yep.
I took my question to ChatGPT and so far it (I almost said they) is doing well with suggesting a USB SSD with OTG connection to the tablet - good ide me thinks.
It is also suggesting the SAF file system access for Android 11+ devices. It originally suggested storing the album data into JSON files but then I suggested the info be stored in a SQLite database. It liked that and gave me the module and code to do that.

Just looking at my phone - where I'm using ChatGPT - it has built the B4A app, downloaded it with the following B4A .bas files, etc:
Main.bas
ID3Parser.bas
CoverArt.bas
DBManager.bas
Manifest.txt (permissions)
default_cover.jpg (place holder cover art image)

Suggested libraries to pick:
ContentResolver
JavaObject
SQL
RuntimePermissions

Includes XML layout files. I haven't tried using them. I just open them and scan the contents for ideas as to what they use on the layout, and then add views onto the layouts myself.
It sent a link to a B4A app zip file. So I'm about to see how well it did.

We'll see how this turns out...

Regards,
Mark Stuart

 

[DonManfred]

Obviously the ripping to .mp3 file formats is the big work - yep.

Yes. And you´ll probably not able to do that with B4X-Tools.

Search for a good "AudioCD to MP3"-Converter

To start searching: Google "audio cd to mp3 converter"

You need to find a profi-tool as some Audio CDs are copyprotected.

 

[walt61]

Good luck Mark; a handful of times when I was stuck with something, I thought let's give ChatGPT a go. It produced code that didn't even compile and on top of that contained comments like "here you would have to do blah blah", in other words, it had no clue how to code that bit, not even with hallucinations So I use the 'classic' approach

 

[Mark Stuart]

Yes. And you´ll probably not able to do that with B4X-Tools.

Search for a good "AudioCD to MP3"-Converter

To start searching: Google "audio cd to mp3 converter"

You need to find a profi-tool as some Audio CDs are copy protected.

What's up Don? No, I didn't expect a B4X tool to do the ripping of each CD. That's me doing that - as they say "monkey business".
Thanx for the search option for ripping CD's thou.

 

[Mark Stuart]

Good luck Mark; a handful of times when I was stuck with something, I thought let's give ChatGPT a go. It produced code that didn't even compile and on top of that contained comments like "here you would have to do blah blah", in other words, it had no clue how to code that bit, not even with hallucinations So I use the 'classic' approach

I'm using ChatGPT to build the B4A app code. So far lots of mistakes like the StartActivityForResult() call, and this: Dim inStream As InputStream = cr.OpenInputStream(uri)
cr is the ContentResolver. No such method/function in that library.
Using the FREE version of ChatGPT, I run into the "sorry, you're out of time. Check back in 24 hours".
I've typed in some text after that message and it gives me a reply. Fascinating how that works. Seems to work when I point out errors in the code. Must feel sorry for me or something.
Plod on...

 

[BlueVision]

Some recommendations for doing that (from my point of view and my experience, maybe a little bit oldfashioned). Don't go the fast way and try to convert directly from CD to MP3, this creates often crap on older CD's with some scratches.

- use Exact Audio Copy for creating high quality wav-files from your CDs (when using a good database, it will identify the tags for the tags already and write it into the file).
- use LameXP for converting to MP3 (recommendation: variable bitrate of 320)
- use wxMP3Gain to level the resulted MP3's equally (this will prevent to turn the volume later always if you switch from one album to another)
- use MP3Tag to add pictures and additional tags to the files

all programs are free and create excellent output
Lame is doing an excellent batch-backup-processing of thousands of files over night and is able to use multi-core processing
The problem is, to bring all files to an equal level of information (covers while playing and the tags displayed on your player).
And yes, backup your finally created files...

But it will need really much time and a lot of handwork doing all this, converting is "not everything" in creating HQ-MP3's...

Cheers

 

[MikeH]

I backed up my CDs to a mini pc then use https://www.mymediaalexa.com/ to play via Alexa. Cost is about £7.50 per year but I think well worth it.