Woe is me, MP3.

Today I've been working to import my music collection. It has involved some painful decisions.

After reading several compelling arguments in favor of the Ogg Vorbis format, I resolved to import my music in said format. Unfortunately, I stored much of my music in MP3 or AAC format. Sound Juicer and similar applications are strictly CD rippers—that is, they can only extract digital audio stored in the CDDA format. The only way to get the music already in MP3 or AAC format into Vorbis format would be to burn it to CD (in CDDA format) and rip it again. This isn't a good solution because MP3, AAC and Vorbis are all lossy formats. The process I just described would further degrade the audio quality, largely defeating the purpose of the Vorbis format. I'm left with little choice but to rip what I can using Sound Juicer and import the rest as is. Now there's still the difficulty of organizing all my music.

When I last checked, I had nearly 9GB of music on my PowerBook. And that's not even all of it. There's more at my parents' house in Philly. On the PowerBook, iTunes organizes my music for me. In Ubuntu, Sound Juicer will organize whatever it rips according to the user's instructions. Beyond that, there's no easy way to put music in directories with the structure Artist Name/Album Name/Track Number - Track Name. It looks like I'll be doing it manually. I suppose this is the price I pay for being so particular about how my music is organized. My life is so hard. Cry, cry.