Vinyl/cd to music-server

[BirdArvid]

Ladies and Gentlemen, Hello! I joined this forum to ask you all a question: I live in Germany with my family, but we are planning to swim the pond in a rough years time and move to the states. We have a cd-collection of roughly 1500 cd´s, and somewhere round 2500 LP`s. The costs of freight are, sadly, prohibitive, so I am looking for alternatives: What is the easiest and best way of putting it all on a music-server or hard-drive? I`d like to keep my best LP`s on 24/96, and don`t want to loose quality on the CD`s. (quality already lower than my LP-setup..) Would prefer ONE box, which, I think, already excludes most dedicated music-serdvers. What about itunes and a large hard-drive? Please help!!:16:

[Ajani]

Apple Lossless Compresion and a very large hard drive (and Backup hard drive!) would probably be the best way to go....

[Feanor]

Apple Lossless Compresion and a very large hard drive (and Backup hard drive!) would probably be the best way to go....

I have ripped 500 CDs using iTunes to Apple Lossless (ALAC) format. This I've done with error correction enable and results have been excellent. I hear no noticable diffence between CD playback and playback from HD via iTunes or Foobar2000.

Apple Lossless creates files about 1/2 the size of generic CD, i.e. WAV, files. As I recall, my 500 CDs have used about 150GB of storage. I would allow 1 terabyte for 1500 CDs in lossless format. But ... ALWAYS BACK UP your files to a separate hard drive because these devices all eventually fail.

24/96 is another matter. Here the bit rate is 24x96000x2 bits per second = 4.608 megabits/sec. which translates to about 14 gigabits or 1.75 gigabytes per LP. Thus 2500 LPs would require about 4.5 terabytes of uncompressed storage ... rather a lot.

[BirdArvid]

Thank You, gentlemen. Food for thought... 4,5 terabytes is a heckova lot...!! think I`ll just go Apple lossless for the whole shabang. Anyway, glad for comments! Björn

[pixelthis]

Thank You, gentlemen. Food for thought... 4,5 terabytes is a heckova lot...!! think I`ll just go Apple lossless for the whole shabang. Anyway, glad for comments! Björn

You can also try f.l.a.c (free lossless audio codec) which I used to rip 300 CD's to a 320 gig HD.
I also put 25 gigs of videos on there, and a bunch of albums I downloaded from usenet.
I have 179 gigs left.
I acheive 60% compression with Flac, and the quality is analogous to the original:1:

[Luvin Da Blues]

You can also try f.l.a.c (free lossless audio codec) which I used to rip 300 CD's to a 320 gig HD.

Pix, I have to agree. This is how I have done my rips and downloads. Cheers

[filecat13]

It's true that flac is a nice, open-source alternative. If you go that route be sure that you've got devices that will play the files.

http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html#hardware

It's simple enough on a computer from a hard drive, but taking the files with you can be discouraging if you cannot play them in your car, on your portable player, etc. Yes, you could convert them to another mobile format, but then that's another step.

If all you'll do is use them at home served from a hard drive, then no problem.

[pixelthis]

It's true that flac is a nice, open-source alternative. If you go that route be sure that you've got devices that will play the files.

http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html#hardware

It's simple enough on a computer from a hard drive, but taking the files with you can be discouraging if you cannot play them in your car, on your portable player, etc. Yes, you could convert them to another mobile format, but then that's another step.

If all you'll do is use them at home served from a hard drive, then no problem.

Thats all.
It was a hard decision, if I ever get another media player for the car I will have to rip everything again, probably. But I REALLY LIKE THIS CODEC
Thanks for the link, nice to know that there is some support for this codec, now all I need is a media player thats portable...:1:

[pixelthis]

Pix, I have to agree. This is how I have done my rips and downloads. Cheers


Glad we finally agree on something.
I generally get more support for computer stuff than audio on this forum:1:



PS, nice avatar