1. Every time I wanted to listen to a song, I had to search for the right CD from amongst the pile of CDs in my collection-very annoying. I decided to organise it all-it was taking more time to find a song than to listen to it!
2. I set up my music system, purchased a permanent marker (Rs 20), a pen and two pads (Rs 20 each). I also bought a CD wallet for Rs 98 to store my discs, and sat down amidst the pile of CDs on the floor.
Time taken: 15 minutes
3. Now, a lot of my CDs are old, and some of them scratched, so all I had were copies, without any markings. I also lost quite a few CD cases, so I had no clue what songs were on them. When I found a cover for the CD, I just put the CD along with the inlay into my CD pouch. I first sorted all my music by genre.
Time taken: 20 minutes
4. Only when there was no cover, or when I was using a copy of the original that I had lost, that I had to use the music system to note down each track and each artist. Thus I made sure all my CDs were labeled and had track lists that I could scan through easily.
Total Time taken: 22 hours
5. I also made a favourites list; complete with details as to which CD the song was on. I now had a well organized collection that was a lot easier to sort through than before.
Time taken: 1 hour 40 mins
1. After a particularly wild party-my family was out of town-I woke up one afternoon, groggy-eyed, and screamed! All my CDs were strewn about and all the labels had even been used as tissues. Luckily Varun, a friend, had just the cure
2. He picked up all the CDs, put them all into a bag and then bundled me off to his house. Once at his place, we sat down in front of his computer and he started ripping all my CDs at 320 Kbps MP3s. At the end of it all I had 42 GB of music ripped at near CD quality! Time taken: 4 hours 30 minutes
3. Next, Varun started the Media Monkey software on his system, clicked on the Music Library option and pointed it to the folder that contained all my ripped music. The Monkey (the program, not Varun) started listing all the files. Time taken: 7 minutes
4. Next, he started weeding out all the duplicate entries and adding genres. This brought my collection down to 30 GB. I must add that all this went a lot faster because Varun knew exactly what he was doing. Time taken: 25 minutes
5. Finally, I started adding all the tags and missing information to complete my collection. Time taken: 3 hours.
And The Winner Is…
The tech way wins hands down here-not because I didn’t do any of the actual work myself, but because searching through and playing music is a snap now. It’s just so much easier to queue up all my favourite songs and let them all play one after the other. Earlier, I would have to change CDs manually and search through various albums for that one song I wanted to hear. If I have to find fault with anything, it has to be that the speakers on my computer cannot compare to my beautiful Hi-Fi music system, so the music does not sound as good.