audio disc images and iTunes
 

Hello all.

I have quite a few (original / legitimate) CDs, and I would like to save images of them onto my hard drive such that, when mounted, iTunes will recognize them and allow me to import them as whatever file format I'd like.

I have Disk Utility, and CCC, but cannot find a method to make iTunes recognize the mounted images. Was there a limitation built-into iTunes that it needs to have a hardcopy disc inserted into an optical drive before it will allow import?

If not, what software will I need to accomplish this task?

I'm concerned that I may not have access to the original discs in the near future, and then I'll just be stuck with whatever file format they are currently in.

Have now also tried SimplyBurns, but the ripping mode results in files called "image_session1.bin" and "image_session1.toc". I have a feeling that these can be used to eventually get what I need, but how to do that exactly is not clear.

Toast by Roxio might do what you want. I think it used to do this a few versions back.

You could always drag and drop the songs from the CD to a disk image or backup disk. iTunes should be able to import if you use a standard Mac format for your disk or image. Then you would lose some album metadata though.

It's true that Disk Utility prevents you from making a disk image of audio CDs. I don't know whether the underlying Terminal commands would have the same limitation.

(Similarly, in earlier versions of OS X, you couldn't do a screengrab while a video was playing, but the Terminal command screencapture worked.)

At $80 USD, Toast is going to be the last option I look into.

Sorry, that just does not seem to work. The OS will recognize it as being mounted, but iTunes 10.6.3 will not.

Getting digital audio data off a cd is rather different than getting digital data, so it's no surprise it's not behaving.

What is your end goal here? Saving the original CD will consume even more space than PCM audio (uncompressed), and it's a lot harder to index it. Hard drives may be cheap these days but storage space is not yet infinite.

I'm probably going to lose access the original discs in the near future, but even if I don't, it's actually quite time consuming just putting the CDs into the optical drive, and taking them out again (x100).

If I can get exact copies of the CDs onto my HD, it'll eliminate that step and save time, not to mention that, as long as the HD is working, I won't need to touch the original discs again.

As it is now, I have been re-importing them all as AIFF format, but if I changed my mind later and wanted Apple Lossless format instead, I think I'd need to re-import from the hardcopy discs.

I want to keep my import options open for the future while also reducing the amount of weight and bulk just in case I have to ship the HD off somewhere.

You shouldn't need to re-import to go from AIFF to Apple Lossless. AIFF is uncompressed PCM audio and AL is compressed PCM. You can probably find scripts to batch the conversion for you. Or, if you're already putting the AIFFs into iTunes, have iTunes do it. (What made you think you'd have to re-import?)

You'll save a significant amount of space by going with AL over AIFF, so I'd look into that.

And if you're interested in getting exact copies of the audio data, look into using XLD (X Lossless Decoder). It will compare your rips to an online database to ensure that the audio data matches and it'll rescan hard to read sections and discs that don't have checksums in the database. It's the Mac equivalent to EAC (Exact Audio Copy).

Well, I have the AIFF versions sitting in my iTunes library and the only option for converting them that I can see is "Create AIFF Version". A bit redundant. I know that it's possible to create smaller sized versions automatically when syncing to an iPod, and that's a nice feature, but doesn't help me locally on the Mac. If you know where I need to look for creating MP3 or AAC files from these AIFF versions, please tell me.

Thanks for the other info! I'll have a look into those a bit later on.

You need to change iTunes import settings (the "Import Settings…" button is under the iTunes general preferences) to the format you want to convert to. Afterwards, change it back AIFF.

That's the answer!

…and it's such an intuitive implementation.

Okay, that takes care of my problem… as long as I have the AIFF files on hand, I can make lower quality versions of them with iTunes. Pretty good, but would still like to get the image thing working too.

Even if the images won't appear in iTunes like CDs would, can't you mount the images and simply drag from the song files from them into iTunes?

I'd still recommend converting everything to AppleLossless. For one, you'll save space. Two, it'll copy the metadata tags to the actual files. Right now, any artist / album / etc. data that you have for the AIFF tracks is stored in the iTunes database. If you move the files or want to work with them outside of iTunes, you'll lose all the tagging data.

When I ripped my CD collection I wanted something similar to you (an "image" of the CD) and what I settled on was a single FLAC file for the whole CD and a CUE file containing the track break points and tags. If I was starting over I'd go with one file per track and the CUE file as a backup. I might even use Apple Lossless as that would give me a format that is native to iTunes. As it is, I use custom scripts to convert to AAC when I want to add something to a device.

Oh, and any CDs that were mixed mode with bonuses I just made copies of the bonus content in folders.

Basically, I realized that a mountable image didn't personally give me anything useful that I couldn't get by just archiving the lossless data and bonus files.

Hmm, that does work, but then when I want to get the track names, there's an error message displayed because the file isn't considered to have been imported using iTunes. That becomes a big deal breaker when dealing with more than a couple of discs.

In Preferences > Advanced, do you have Copy Files To iTunes Media Folder disabled?

Yes. Just enabled that and tried again. Same message comes up when trying to get track names.

Did you re-import the songs (it's not clear if you did)? If not, iTunes is still referencing songs on a disk image.

I don't see the difference. One way or another you will spend a few days shuffling CDs. The image route will require an extra Terabyte-class drive as intermediate storage.

The difference is that I'll only have to do it that one last time. If I had done it 5 years ago, I would have saved myself loads of work when I upgraded all my stuff to 256 kbps, then would have saved myself loads of work going up to AIFF (which I've gotten about halfway through). Who knows what I'll want to do in the future as new compression variants are released.

Tried it a couple of times with different tracks. Doesn't seem to make a difference either way. It doesn't want to get the track names when "importing" a song using the drag-and-drop method unless, I think, the track is dragged off of an actual CD.

Why exactly do you care about creating an audio CD image?

I know you mentioned not having to rip from the CD again, but if you import as lossless you wouldn't need to. You can easily convert between AIFF, AppleLossless, FLAC, AAC, MP3, whatever (though it's not a good idea to go from lossy to anything else as you'll loose quality each time; stick to lossless to anything else). Plus, if you pick a compressed lossless format you'll save quite a bit of space over using uncompressed AIFF. And the lossless files can then already have the tags as well.

What does the mountable image get you?

Also, one way around the issue of not being able to look up the tags for those dragged files is to tag them with MusicBrainz Picard. It'll look up album data by analyzing the audio fingerprint and comparing with the MusicBrainz database.

Let's just call it assurance against unforeseen future circumstances. As I've discovered during the course of this thread, there's a lot that I didn't know about music formats, and there's probably much more that I still don't know. I also think that it's safe to assume there will be further changes to the technology in the coming years. For example: What would happen if Apple released a revised version of their lossless format, but I no longer had the CDs on hand to re-rip them? Maybe I could use the AIFF files, but then what if…

Nobody can predict what might happen in the future.

One would presume that iTunes v28 would still PLAY "original" Apple Lossless files, as well as Lossless2™.

If it didn't, Apple have open sourced the Lossless format, so there would certainly be a market and means for anyone to write a conversion utility.

Right, based on the goal of ensuring that you have access to your music even if Apple changes formats or drops support, you should be fine with just storing Apple Lossless files (for iTunes compatibility) or (if iTunes isn't critical) use another open source format like FLAC.

Bottom line, there isn't any reason that you should need to store a mountable image. You'll almost double your storage requirements (lossless compression is typically around 50-60%) for no benefit and increased management efforts.

I don't think the image is worth it.