FAQs PacificRip | CD Ripping Made Easy

Encoding

What encoding formats do you offer?

What bit rates do you offer for encoding?

Cataloging

How is the music catalogued?

How are Compilations and Classical CDs catalogued?

How does the data in the digital music library look?

What data is embedded in the IDV tags?

Ordering

What payment methods do you accept?

When is my credit card charged?

When will I get my order?

What if a CD is scratched?

Do I get my original CDs back?

Shipping

Are my CD's insured?
How are my CDs shipped?
Do you offer local pickup and delivery?
Can I dropoff my CDs?
Do you ship to AK, HI, or internationally?

Other

How much space do I need on my hard drive?

Do you keep a library of music that you burn to DVD?

Do you put identifying watermarks on the tracks?

What if I don't have a DVD drive on my computer?

How do I get my new MP3s on my computer?

How do I get my new MP3s on my iPod/MP3 player?

Can you put my music directly on my iPod/MP3 player?

What do you do with CD extras and data files?

What encoding formats do you offer?

[Our standard is MP3 because it is the only format universally supported, but we also offer WMA, OGG, AAC (AAC version m4a for iTunes/iPods), WMA Lossless, APPLE Lossless, and FLAC (Lossless). These can be selected at our order page. If you have any concerns about current and future player support, we suggest MP3.

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What bit rates do you offer for encoding?

[Our standard rate is 224kbps, but we offer encoding between 128-320kbps CBR (constant bit rate) at no extra charge. These alternate bit rates can be selected at our Order page.

Higher kbps produce better sound, but require more space on your hard drive. We find that 224kbps offers a good tradeoff between sound and storage space.

We also offer "Lossless" encoding via FLAC, APPLE Lossless, and WMA Lossless. Lossless requires many times the hard drive storage space and lacks support by many portable digital music players. For typical Rock songs, "Lossless" varies from 700-1000kbps. There is an additional charge for lossless ripping.

CBR (constant bit rate) is our standard, but we also offer VBR (variable). If you'd like VBR select MP3 under Encoding and "Other" for Bit Rate. Note your VBR preference in the Comments/Special Requests section. Questions? Email us at orders@pacificrip.com.]

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Do you put identifying watermarks in songs?

[No we do not. We add nothing to your music. Your digital music library is for your personal enjoyment and must not be shared on P2P networks or used in any other unauthorized manner.]

[We use the latest ID3v tags. The library is organized by an Artist and Album folder. Within this folder all the tracks from that CD are located (Artist - Album\Track example: "The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers\Rocks Off").

Compilations (Soundtracks):
Example: "Various Artists - Soundtrack To Singles\Dyslexic Heart"

If you have many Classical CDs please email us orders@pacificrip.com and let us know what structure you'd like.

We can accommodate just about any organizational structure--just let us know at orders@pacificrip.com after you place your order.]

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What if I don't have a DVD drive on my computer?

[Select the CD-R option when ordering and your converted CDs are burned and returned to you on CD-Rs. CD-Rs can be read by any computer that has a CD-ROM drive (just about any computer made in the last 5 years). There is a $.20/CD surcharge for this because each CD-R holds much less information than a DVD.

DVD = 55 Albums at 224kbps
CD-R = 8 Albums at 224kbps

A 100 CD order would require:
2 DVDs or 13 CD-Rs

A better option, if you don't have a DVD drive, is to purchase a plug 'n' play external hard drive (eventually, everyone needs more storage space for their music, video, pictures, and other data). When you buy a hard drive from us, we load your digital music library directly onto the hard drive and you simply plug it into your computer's USB or Firewire port. Nothing is easier!

Additionally, we still provide your music on DVDs for archival. ]

[We rip every CD individually. We do not keep a library of music. For one week, we maintain a copy of your music library on a hard drive. When we have shipping confirmation that you have received your order we delete your music. ]

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How much space do I need on my hard drive?

[Use our calculator to find out. As a quick, safe guide 100 CDs encoded at 224kbps will require approximately 10GB (or 10,000MB) of space on your hard drive. 300 CDs encoded at 224kbps will require approximately 30GB etc. For most, this leaves a little GB padding--you always want some free space on your hard drive.

How much available space do you have on your hard drive?

Windows-Open MY Computer, Right Click on your hard drive (usually local disk C:) and select properties. Under the General tab look at Free Space. This tells you how much space in GB you have available on that hard drive.

Example: 23GB of free hard drive space enables you to fit approximately 230 CDs with a little room to spare on it (MP3 224kbps).

Do you need an external hard drive?]

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What payment methods do you accept?

[We accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express credit cards.]

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When is my credit card charged?

[When you place an order with PacificRip your card is authorized, but not charged until your completed order ships back to you.

If we have not received your CDs after thirty days from the date you placed your order, we will charge your credit card for the shipping and packaging materials that we sent you. ]

[We turnaround most orders in two days. If we receive your CDs on Monday by 5:00, we will ship your original CDs and your completed order by Wednesday. Large Classical collections, orders over 400 CDs, and collections with numerous scratched CDs may take longer. ]

[If we are initially unable to rip a CD because of dirt or scratches, we will clean it and retry. All songs that can be ripped will be. If three or more songs on a CD are ripped you will be charged for that CD. All tracks that are unable to be ripped will be noted in your TracPac Report. CD collections that contain numerous scratched CDs will take longer to rip.]

[Simply, load your DVD into your computer's DVD-ROM drive and copy its contents to your designated music folder (ex. iTunes, My Music, etc.). Step-by-step instruction are included with every order:

Remove a DVD from its case and set it in your computer’s DVD-ROM drive
If you do not have your drive’s “Auto-Play” feature enabled, select My Computer from your Start menu
Select your DVD-ROM drive
Highlight ten folders (converted CDs) by selecting the first folder and scrolling down ten folders. On the tenth folder, Press the Shift button and Left Click at the same time (If you have a newer powerful computer you can select more folders at one time or even copy the entire DVD at once.)
Right Click and select Copy
Select the file that you want to hold your music (My Music, iTunes, etc.)
Right Click and select Paste
It may take twenty minutes or longer, depending on your computer, for the 4GB plus of music per DVD to
transfer
Repeat these steps for the remainder of your DVD

Your newly converted music is now on your computer’s hard drive ready to import into your computer's software and
into your favorite portable player!]
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How do I get my MP3s on my portable digital player (iPod)?

[For the iPod: if you have not copied your DVD(s) to your computer's hard drive, yet.

First, load your DVD into your computer and open iTunes.
Select File and Add Folder To Library
From the iTunes Browse For Folder source list, select your DVD
Click OK
Your music will be copied to your iTunes library.
Next, connect your iPod to the computer. Your computer automatically recognizes the iPod and copies all the music in your iTunes library to your iPod. That's it. (If you do not have the iPod's default auotsync enabled, just drag and drop songs form your iTunes library to your iPod icon from within iTunes.) ]

[Yes. For pickups and delivery, and dropoffs there is no charge. When shipping there is a $15 charge to cover insurance and additional shipping. If you would like this service please email us at orders@pacificrip.com.]

[Yes, CDs are insured for $12 each--the charge is included in the shipping. More insurance is available through UPS/FedEx--$.35/$100.00 of insurance requested. If you would like more insurance please email us at orders@pacificrip.com after you place your order. Be sure to include your order number with your request.]

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How are my CDs shipped?

[We ship via UPS or FedEx. When you order from our website we put together a ShipPac for you. Your ShipPac is a box within a box that has everything you'll need to ship and protect your CDs--covered locking spindles, packing "peanuts", pre-cut shipping tape, pre-paid and pre-affixed UPS/FedEx shipping label, and simple step-by-step instructions.]

[ID3 tags include: Album Artist, Artist (Track), Album, Track, Track #, Year, Genre. ]

[We do data correction. Uniformity is the key to a well organized digital music library. Ripping without data correction produces ugly libraries making it hard to find what you are looking for.

1. Appearance--Databases like CDDB and freedb often return inconsistent results regarding Track and Album capitalization.

Let's look at both of these databases for Grandaddy's Sumday CD:
CDDB returns mostly capitalized track results. Three "on"s from three different tracks on the same CD are handled accordingly: "Now It's On" all capitalized;
"Lost on Yer Merry Way" and
"I'm on Standby" partially capitalized.

freedb yields:
"Now it's on",
"Lost on merry way", and
"I'm on standby." Only the first letter is capitalized for all the tracks.

Now for Sheryl Crow's Tuesday Night Music Club which has 46 words in it's titles (including Artist and Album):
CDDB--45 out of the 46 words capitalized--one random "for."
freedb--EVERY word is capitalized including the random "For" which CDDB had lower cased. freedb showed one CD with EVERYTHING capitalized and the other ONLY the first letter of each title is capitalized.

These are not rare occurrences and they make for one ugly library. These databases are great places to start, but they need a lot of help and that's where we come in.

We correct for these inconsistencies by capitalizing the first letter of EVERY word in all titles (Artist, Album, and Track) providing a clean neat appearance which enables faster and easier song location--looks great in your iPod too! (Ex: "Sheryl Crow -Tuesday Night Music Club" and "No One Said It Would Be Easy.")

2. Information--Two of the biggest problems are inaccurate or missing "Genre" and "Year" data.

All of your tracks from PacificRip will have accurate Genre and Year data--especially important if you like to build playlists based on this data.

For the most part, Artists record in roughly the same Genre but oftentimes these databases return "Rock" for one CD and "Alternative" for another by the same artist. Dire Straits' Genre is listed as "Rock" for Love Over Gold and "Classic Rock" for Dire Straits. We categorize them both as "Rock" ]