# A huge project - if you're interested



## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

Now that we have access to huge cheap hard drives I decided to buy a 2TB HDD & rip my entire collection to it. I chose 2TB because it was (a) affordable and (b) I had no idea just how big my collection would be. I couldn't even estimate how many CDs I have. I ripped most of the CDs to mp3 format but I ripped the operas to .wav (because a lot of audio players put gaps between mp3 files). If I later find a gap where the tracks should segue from one section to the next, I just re-rip in .wav format. It has taken a couple of months & I'm still not finished. I use winamp for playing my music, and a nice bonus is that winamp tells me about my entire collection. So I learn that I've so far ripped 2230 CDs which amount to over 125 days of music and it's 350 GBs big.

Some of you audio purists may be wrinkling your noses at the thought of listening to mp3 but it's fine for me - my hearing long ago started to deteriorate & I now have hearing aids.

What are the advantages? There are several. Handiness (it's far easier to browse & play anything in my collection) and portability (i can take my entire collection w me when I travel - although I do need a computer to access it). But there are unexpected benefits. My 2230 CDs only take up 350 GBs so I have oodles of space. That means I can duplicate tracks without any worry of filling my drive up. So I can put the dodgy Bach cantatas (eg BWV15) into both the the Bach Cantata folder and in the real composer folder (Telemann etc). My main collection is arranged in date of birth of composer order, but I can build up other collections easily. For instance, using the Hyperion Romantic Piano Concerto series to start with, I've duplicated every keyboard concerto I have into one folder (8.4GB, 656 files), with the concertos arranged by date of composition. So I can follow the development of the piano concerto from Bach right up to the modern day. I also have two separate folders for Brahms: the first arranged thematically (all lieder in one folder, all pf music in another etc) and the second with all of his music arranged by date of composition. I took a while, and I won't do that for every composer, but it's fascinating to be able to track Brahms's development so easily. Another huge benefit was to take a compilation disc (eg motets of the Bach family) and put each piece into the folder of the individual composer. So some composers with not a single CD devoted to them (eg several of the Bach family) now have a single folder of all of their music (in my collection) gathered together into one spot. That gives me an easy way to listen to everything I have by, eg, Johann Ernst Bach and to realise that he is a vastly underrated composer (judging by the few CDs there are devoted to him). I know I could do that with my CDs, but i tend to lose track of who is on the mixed albums. It also makes it easy to spot gaps in the collection, and with Amazon a click or 2 away I can buy the missing piece there and then. I'm thinking of other thematic collections too: chaconnes through the ages; La Folia; chamber music w piano; violin concertos. My final goal, when I've ripped and arranged everything will be to wait until solid state HDDs have dropped in price & copy everything onto one. I anticipate I could get everything onto 1 500 GB drive.

One drawback is that with about 400 composers arranged by date of birth, it's difficult to remember all the dates. But I found a little free application that will list the contents of a folder (down to one level - no sub-folders) to a word file. With a bit of fiddling I hope to alphabetise that for quick reference. Until I do I rely on Google to refresh my memory if i have difficulty finding someone.

Have any of you done the same? If you're tempted to go ahead, I can recommend EAC (exact audio copy) and LAME (for mp3 conversion) for the software - both free.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

I don't quite understand your reasons for duplicating files. If you use winamp you can keep your music files however you like and the built in library of winamp will allow you to access in whatever way you wish. So you can list all of Johann Ernst Bach's music or have playlists for all the chaconnes or all the Hyperion romantic piano concerto discs. You shouldn't ever need to look at the actual folder structure.

If you tag the artist as "Bach, Johann Ernst" and the composer as "(1722-1777) Johann Ernst Bach" you can then either arrange all the Bachs together or sort by composer and have them listed chronologically.

Also a solid state HDD would be a waste of money, you don't need to access the data any faster than you can listen to it, your current HDD is fast enough to read any audio data.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Something about this reminds me of just having read, here or elsewhere, 
*"How about stopping glamorizing and exaggerating how busy we all are?"*

The time it takes to get up, put the CD back on the shelf, pull another and put it on, is about the same length of time taken between pieces at a live concert, the short break, not the intermission. That time so you can let the other piece settle and have a little breathing space before you start with the next.

I guess some people are just horribly, horribly busy and pressed for time


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## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

Well, I didn't use winamp until I was well into the project. Also a lot of the meta info is missing or corrupt. The structure of CD meta info seems to be geared for rock & pop music. So winapm show a lot of my albums with performaers as the title, or a track as the title; under performers there are other names. It's a mess. Re the solid state drive, I just like the idea of having my music on a permanent medium which I can chuck in my bag & not bother if a drop it or it gets knocked about.
Re duplicating files, I toyed with the idea of using shortcuts but that means the file structure should remain unchanged. So i didn't bother - as I said I have tons of room to play around with.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

If you duplicate files, don't do it on the same harddrive. Those things do die occasionally y'know. If I were going to move my collection to harddrives (I'm not) I would use GoldWave's batch processing to convert and save to one drive (99 tracks at a time), then copy them to a backup, stand-alone drive which then would be disconnected.


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## senza sordino (Oct 20, 2013)

My entire collection of CDs is on my iPod classic. I take it to work, I can listen to what I want there. But I have only 10% the number of CDs you own, 200 CDs. But at home I usually listen to the original CD on my stereo.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

kangxi said:


> Well, I didn't use winamp until I was well into the project. Also a lot of the meta info is missing or corrupt. The structure of CD meta info seems to be geared for rock & pop music. So winapm show a lot of my albums with performaers as the title, or a track as the title; under performers there are other names. It's a mess. Re the solid state drive, I just like the idea of having my music on a permanent medium which I can chuck in my bag & not bother if a drop it or it gets knocked about.
> Re duplicating files, I toyed with the idea of using shortcuts but that means the file structure should remain unchanged. So i didn't bother - as I said I have tons of room to play around with.


Um, one thing: an SSD is not a 'permanent medium'. They die too. Shucks, everything dies, even stars.


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

Ukko said:


> If you duplicate files, don't do it on the same harddrive. Those things do die occasionally y'know.


I will put this more strongly: hard drives _invariably_ die. If you have data you care about, it needs to be backed up. Preferably twice, preferably off-site.


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

Yes to use winamp's features to the fullest you do need accurate tag information which can be a slog to get right and it isn't consistent in online tagging databases. You can create a playlist and save it as an .m3u file of all violin concertos etc., but that does require the files not being moved about.


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## samurai (Apr 22, 2011)

PetrB said:


> Something about this reminds me of just having read, here or elsewhere,
> *"How about stopping glamorizing and exaggerating how busy we all are?"*
> 
> The time it takes to get up, put the CD back on the shelf, pull another and put it on, is about the same length of time taken between pieces at a live concert, the short break, not the intermission. That time so you can let the other piece settle and have a little breathing space before you start with the next.
> ...


We should all give ourselves--and the music to which we listen--time to breathe and come to life, rather than rushing from piece to piece in a frantic, almost lemming like manner. For me, this seeming need to categorize and store works on such a massive scale robs the music of any of its inherent beauty, almost making it a task one has to endure, rather than a pleasure to which one looks forward. I don't know, maybe I am just getting too old and set in my ways, but that's how I view it. After all, it's not--or shouldn't be, anyway-- a race against the clock to see how *much* of anything we might reasonably listen to without losing our understanding and appreciation of it, or is it? In any event--at least for me--it's not.


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## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

Thanks for the reminders to back up - which I do of course.
re the ipod suggestion - maybe when they hold 500GB! On the other hand, as I said I'm going rather deaf and wear hearing aids. When I was getting fitted for them I found out I have very narrow ear channels and am comfortable only with the smallest bud. If I started to listen to music through earphones I'd either have to have over the ear ones which are uncomfortable for long periods (unless they've improved in the last 20 years) or I'd have to find extremely small buds. Do they make them like that? I haven't yet seen any although I've not looked to hard. In either case I'd have to take the hearing aids out, which leads me to the biggest problem: do portable devices such as the ipod allow me to boost the higher frequencies so achieve the same effect as my hearing aids?
Re taking time to get at the music, I'm retired so have all the time in the world. But I do find it easier to act on the spur of the moment to choose a piece of music from the screen rather than the CD collection. I lose the spontaneity when I'm standing in front of my shelves. I'm listening to stuff now I haven't heard in ages - it's quite liberating.
Which brings me to another benefit of my scheme: by putting every CD I have through the process I'm reminding myself of much that I'd forgotten I had.


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## Guest (Jan 27, 2014)

I am sympathetic with what the OP has done with his CD collection. I have done much the same thing with mine, as described on another thread recently.

I also mainly use EAC. Out of convenience, I use MP3 as the compressed format, as it is so much more convenient than the others in terms of compatibility with other useful applications. I cannot tell any difference between high bit rate MP3 and "red book", except only on some material and even then only by using more expensive hi-fi kit, which I seldom use anyway. 

I have tried several different media players. I am sorry to say that I do not like Winamp, itunes and several others. None of these suits the way I like my CD collection set out. The one I like best is by Creative Labs, which I use in conjunction with WMP. 

I find that I use "Mp3tag" quite a lot for re-tagging the metadata to suit the way I like things. I am also a frequent user of "Audacity" to adjust files in terms of volume levels, run-in times, gaps between movements, and to clean up unwanted sounds in live recordings where this is desirable and possible.

Regards the dubious "Bach" cantatas, I have allocated the works to whichever composer is thought to be the most likely, whether it is Telemann or Kuhnau. In other cases, if there is complete uncertainty, as seems to be the position with some of Haydn' and Handel's work early work, I simply stick "attrib. to ..." next to the composer's name.

As the OP states, this kind of exercise is definitely worth the effort, the more so with very large collections. I find it so much easier now to find material, some of which I had completely forgotten about. The moral is if you've got it, log it.


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## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

Partita,
Thanks for the support. I'm glad to find I'm not the only person to have done this! The reason I went for winamp was purely for its play facility - all the other media players I tried had a maddening habit of fading up at the start. Ok maybe for some types of pop music but most certainly not for classical. I didn't twig winamps organisation functions for a while, and then it was too late.
I'll explore the other tips you mentioned - tks


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

I have done something similar to the OP also, using EAC and storing the FLAC files on two seperate PCs with 1TB and 2TB hard drives respectively - I doubt even the 1TB disc is going to run out of space any time soon. I have around 500 CDs. I use Foobar2000 which can be customised to suit requirements for tagging, classification etc. I should really look at further backup options too.

Like you I found that ripping everything drew my attention to lots of music I bought 25 years ago. However, the most interesting stuff is from before I used CDs (before 1989) and is on LP and to a lesser extent MCs. Using an ADC, Audacity and a programmme called 'click repair' I have digitised some 30 - 40 LPs but I find you can either have clicks and pops or subtly degraded sound when you over-process the file (even I can hear this). So after a bit of experimentation I have started to look for professionally digitised downloads instead. 

Incidentally I also have hearing loss (especially high frequency hearing loss) and as this has progressed I have all but abandoned ear bud phones in favour of closed cup Sennheiser headhones which I can use in conjunction with my hearing aids - the obvious requirement being that the headphones should avoid physical contact with the hearing aid which my HD 418s just manage.


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## Guest (Jan 27, 2014)

I use iTunes and mp3tag. The WMP database is poor, Winamp interface is too tiny and fiddly. I rip in 320k mp3 format.


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## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

Hi Turnabout- thanks for the tip. Are they the noise cancelling type? 
I'm afraid I gave away my LPs years ago, as I did a bit later with all my cassettes. It's with mixed emotions that I look back to the money I spent...
Btw I like your username. I have very fond memories of the Turnabout label. Martin Galling and Brendel (!) were the house pianists. They were the Naxos of their day, and introduced me to some rare (for the time, for me) repertoire. Hummel! Scarlatti! And the covers were all delightful (and not a bad price also, IIRC)


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## Guest (Jan 27, 2014)

kangxi said:


> Partita,
> Thanks for the support. I'm glad to find I'm not the only person to have done this! The reason I went for winamp was purely for its play facility - all the other media players I tried had a maddening habit of fading up at the start. Ok maybe for some types of pop music but most certainly not for classical. I didn't twig winamps organisation functions for a while, and then it was too late.
> I'll explore the other tips you mentioned - tks


The two applications I mentioned were "Mp3tag" and "Audacity".

They are both well-known, and well regarded. "Audacity" in particular is a vital piece of kit for anyone who has done a lot of ripping and wants to make sure that volume levels etc are all OK. I have only ripped CDs and not vinyl. In the case of vinyl, I would have thought there's an even greater chance to do some cleaning up using Audacity. You will likely need some practice in order to get the hang of both of these pieces of software, which are both "free".

If you are happy with the tags as they are at present, there's no need to play around with them. But if not, "Mp3tag" is very good, This should be found easily on the net and it's simple to download and unpack. Once opened, click on file. You can add a whole directory very easily, with no need to identify the separate fies. There is a range of different columns to choose from. Right click on the top bar and a "customise columns" list will appear. I have: composer, filename, conductor, artist, album, bit rate, length. You can edit the various tabs individually or block edit a whole raft of them at once by using the edit "select all" facility. One of the things I do is to align filename and title. To do this, clickon "convert", then select "filename-tag" and in the dialogue box that opens up type in: %title%. After clicking OK it will harmonise all "titles" to be same as the corresponding filename, which is useful feature on some media players which only work with "titles".

With "Audacity", that's a rather more complex ball-game. Leave that for another day perhaps. Useful things that can be done are to check the volume level by using "effect, amplify", to adjust gaps by using the "generate" silence option, or simply to cut out unwanted delays. If you know what you are doing after some practice, it's possible to get rid of some noise irritations, if they bother you. Noise bothers me and I'll make some effort to get rid of it, especially audience coughing in between movements, and very long applause at the end. Be warned: it's very easy to mess things up badly, so caution is important here. Do come back if you need any advice on this.


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## apricissimus (May 15, 2013)

kangxi said:


> Which brings me to another benefit of my scheme: by putting every CD I have through the process I'm reminding myself of much that I'd forgotten I had.


I'm doing something similar (re-ripping all my music), and I've found this to be a pleasant side-effect as well.

I'm actually ripping into FLAC and entering all the metadata by hand to get it exactly the way I want it. Needless to say, this takes a very long time. I've been at it for about three years now, and I have no idea how much longer it will take me. I'm maybe halfway through my collection (which continues to grow!).

I often have to do a little bit of research when I enter stuff by hand, and I learn a lot in the process. I retain more when I input stuff myself than when I just read about it in the liner notes or on the Web.

I used to despair at the thought of never actually finishing, but I'm okay with it now. I actually enjoy the process, and I've got quite a nice collection of sortable music on my computer, even if it isn't my whole collection. (I use quodlibet as my player, which is a great piece of software that lets you sort very easily on any piece of metadata that you can come up with.)


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

By the time you finish, the world will switch to another medium...several times


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## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

*thanks*

Hi apricissimus (from The Adventures of Simplicus Simplicissimus by Jacob Grimmell von Grimmelshausen? Great book), Partita, MacLeod & Turnabout,
thanks for the tips . I've been spending the afternoon & evening trying to d/l mp3tag & have only just succeeded (I'm behind the Great Firewall of China, & the internet behaves strangely - and v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y - here) so I'm looking forward to playing around with it. Next up will be quodlibet if I can get hold of it. 
I might re-do a lot of my work and do as Simplicissimus did to ensure I get the metadata complete & correct; it'll take ages but what else is a retirement for? Headphones may have to wait until I return to the UK at the end of Feb although I might have a poke around the shops here in Mudanjiang if I can get into them (Ch New Year is approaching & the town is heaving).
I'll have a sniff around Audacity idc. (I'm reminded of a quote from my favourite author, Jack Vance: "The director of the lyceum was Dr. Willem Ledinger, a bland large-bodied man with taffy-colored skin and a lank lock of yellow hair which wound around his scalp in a most peculiar manner. Gersen wondered at the man's audacity thus to present himself before several thousand adolescents.")


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## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

Turnabout,
I see you're from Lancashire - a neighbour! So, are your hearing aids the same as mine - the NHS version in grey plastic with a little red or blue R or L identifier? (Mine were issued about 3 years ago) If so then there's a good chance your model of headphone wd suit me as well.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

samurai said:


> We should all give ourselves--and the music to which we listen--time to breathe and come to life, rather than rushing from piece to piece in a frantic, almost lemming like manner. For me, this seeming need to categorize and store works on such a massive scale robs the music of any of its inherent beauty, almost making it a task one has to endure, rather than a pleasure to which one looks forward. I don't know, maybe I am just getting too old and set in my ways, but that's how I view it. After all, it's not--or shouldn't be, anyway-- a race against the clock to see how *much* of anything we might reasonably listen to without losing our understanding and appreciation of it, or is it? In any event--at least for me--it's not.


My goodness you're so right, what about the member who appeared to be saying :"Make me like Mozart".
There are a lot of worthy composers that I don't listen to and I'm certainly not going to force the issue.
I listen for pleasure,I've never bought a Bach record and never will now.


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## Fortinbras Armstrong (Dec 29, 2013)

Just as an aside, I was amused when you said that a one terabyte hard drive was cheap. And I know, it's less than $100. I was amused because in 1980, I wrote a purchase order for a 178 megabyte hard drive that cost $38K, and was almost exactly the same size as my washing machine. (I remember the price because it was exactly twice my annual salary at the time.) At about the same time, we increased the RAM on our DEC (Digital Equipment Company -- then the second largest computer manufacturer in the US, now out of business) PDP 11/70 from 1/2 megabyte to 1.5 megs for $3500 -- and we discovered that PWB Unix release 2.0 would not address more than 1 megabyte of memory.

Now, I've got more memory and computing power in my cell phone.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

kangxi said:


> Hi Turnabout- thanks for the tip. Are they the noise cancelling type?


No, just simple closed back headphones with enough depth of circumaural cushion to (just) accommodate my hearing aids. I'm making no great claims for the high fidelity or otherwise of the phones, by the way, but they work for me. 'Listen before you buy' is my advice.



kangxi said:


> Btw I like your username. I have very fond memories of the Turnabout label. Martin Galling and Brendel (!) were the house pianists. They were the Naxos of their day, and introduced me to some rare (for the time, for me) repertoire. Hummel! Scarlatti! And the covers were all delightful (and not a bad price also, IIRC)


Brendel's Beethoven sonatas were the key experience here - great music at pocket-money prices! (I must've been a strange kid). My first independent interest in classical music. Turnabout Vox seemed appropriate for a nicely anonymous username on TC. Much like Ford Prefect in that respect!



kangxi said:


> Turnabout, I see you're from Lancashire - a neighbour!


 I can't claim to actually be from Lancashire. I'm a Scot in long exile. But yes, I live and work in a Lancashire city which shall be nameless for TC purposes.



kangxi said:


> So, are your hearing aids the same as mine - the NHS version in grey plastic with a little red or blue R or L identifier? (Mine were issued about 3 years ago) If so then there's a good chance your model of headphone wd suit me as well.


Oticon Sprite Zest Plus NHS digital programmable aids. I have a colour-mismatched pair in gun-metal (my preference!) and silver due to a recent servicing problem. They are great, I couldn't listen to music at all satisfactorily without them.

Regards, T-Vox


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

kangxi said:


> Turnabout,
> I see you're from Lancashire - a neighbour! So, are your hearing aids the same as mine - the NHS version in grey plastic with a little red or blue R or L identifier? (Mine were issued about 3 years ago) If so then there's a good chance your model of headphone wd suit me as well.


Lancashire is clearly a hot-bed of TC activity ...... clearly must be Sir Thomas' influence or the after effects of the (deceased) Morecambe Music Festival :lol:


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## Guest (Jan 27, 2014)

samurai said:


> We should all give ourselves--and the music to which we listen--time to breathe and come to life, rather than rushing from piece to piece in a frantic, almost lemming like manner. For me, this seeming need to categorize and store works on such a massive scale robs the music of any of its inherent beauty, almost making it a task one has to endure, rather than a pleasure to which one looks forward. I don't know, maybe I am just getting too old and set in my ways, but that's how I view it. After all, it's not--or shouldn't be, anyway-- a race against the clock to see how *much* of anything we might reasonably listen to without losing our understanding and appreciation of it, or is it? In any event--at least for me--it's not.


As far as I recall you are fairly new to classical music and have only been collecting for a few years. I don't know how much material you have acquired but if it's still quite modest I would be the first to agree with you that there is hardly any need to set up an elaborate computer procedure for storage and filing.

It becomes a whole different ball game when you've been collecting music for many years, have acquired tons of it, can't remember most of what you have, or find it difficult to play it because of the chore in locating it and placing it in a CD player. In those circumstances it makes perfectly good sense to set up a computerised system to facilitate easier access and recognition.

I am surprised that you find problems with this kind of pursuit. I very much doubt that your comments about the need to give ourselves time to listen and avoid rushing about lemming like etc are remotely relevant. In fact, the whole idea behind the OP's project is to create improved opportunity to appreciate the music he has and to avoid those very problems to which you refer.


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## kangxi (Jan 24, 2014)

Heh. I remember in the project office in Saudi Arabia in 1985 we bought a 5 MB hard disc. When it arrived in its packaging we gathered around in awe to gaze upon the wonderful beast. During the installation no-one was allowed to inspect or touch the thing except the installer (and we were a telecomms company, we were itching to play around with it). It was mounted on a high shelf out of arm's reach so no one could even touch it inadvertantly, and we tip-toed through that room in case the vibration gave thing palpitations. Within a year I was able to buy for myself a PC AT clone with its own 10MB hard drive. I can well remember the smugness with which I looked at the office 5MB, confident that my massive 10MB would be enough for everything I could throw at it.


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## Guest (Jan 28, 2014)

PetrB said:


> Something about this reminds me of just having read, here or elsewhere,
> *"How about stopping glamorizing and exaggerating how busy we all are?"*
> 
> The time it takes to get up, put the CD back on the shelf, pull another and put it on, is about the same length of time taken between pieces at a live concert, the short break, not the intermission. That time so you can let the other piece settle and have a little breathing space before you start with the next.
> ...


And here I thought classical fan elitism generally extended only as far as musical content.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

My iTunes library is about 2TB of AAC 256 VBR. A few odd MP3s I got elsewhere but mostly AAC. A media server is the best thing since sliced bread.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Partita said:


> As far as I recall you are fairly new to classical music and have only been collecting for a few years. I don't know how much material you have acquired but if it's still quite modest I would be the first to agree with you that there is hardly any need to set up an elaborate computer procedure for storage and filing.
> 
> It becomes a whole different ball game when you've been collecting music for many years, have acquired tons of it, can't remember most of what you have, or find it difficult to play it because of the chore in locating it and placing it in a CD player. In those circumstances it makes perfectly good sense to set up a computerised system to facilitate easier access and recognition.
> 
> I am surprised that you find problems with this kind of pursuit. I very much doubt that your comments about the need to give ourselves time to listen and avoid rushing about lemming like etc are remotely relevant. In fact, the whole idea behind the OP's project is to create improved opportunity to appreciate the music he has and to avoid those very problems to which you refer.


I think you and Samurai are talking past each other. A massive collection, no matter it's format, has nothing to do with letting music 'soak' after hearing it. Insufficient soak time can always be avoided by clicking the player's pause button. I often listen with the remote in my lap for that purpose. Well, it can be used to 'get it over with' too; not everything on a commercial CD is necessarily what I bought it for.


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## Fortinbras Armstrong (Dec 29, 2013)

kangxi said:


> Heh. I remember in the project office in Saudi Arabia in 1985 we bought a 5 MB hard disc. When it arrived in its packaging we gathered around in awe to gaze upon the wonderful beast. During the installation no-one was allowed to inspect or touch the thing except the installer (and we were a telecomms company, we were itching to play around with it). It was mounted on a high shelf out of arm's reach so no one could even touch it inadvertantly, and we tip-toed through that room in case the vibration gave thing palpitations. Within a year I was able to buy for myself a PC AT clone with its own 10MB hard drive. I can well remember the smugness with which I looked at the office 5MB, confident that my massive 10MB would be enough for everything I could throw at it.


In 1967, the university I was then attending got rid of its Univac 1105  (a vacuum tube machine which they literally could not give away, and yes, I ran programs on it) and replaced it with an IBM 360/25 with 64 KB of core memory and two 7.25 megabyte hard drives. And people were saying, "Wow, no more memory problems!" My son's PlayStation 2 has more memory, more disk space and a faster clock speed.

Admittedly, I was in an office a few years ago which had an IBM PC/XT with a ten megabyte hard drive that they were using as a printer server. It did that one job very well, and they had no intention of replacing it as long as it was functional.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Fortinbras Armstrong said:


> In 1967, the university I was then attending got rid of its Univac 1105  (a vacuum tube machine which they literally could not give away, and yes, I ran programs on it) and replaced it with an IBM 360/25 with 64 KB of core memory and two 7.25 megabyte hard drives. And people were saying, "Wow, no more memory problems!" My son's PlayStation 2 has more memory, more disk space and a faster clock speed.
> 
> Admittedly, I was in an office a few years ago which had an IBM PC/XT with a ten megabyte hard drive that they were using as a printer server. It did that one job very well, and they had no intention of replacing it as long as it was functional.


Anyone over the age of 18 or so - your cell phone has more computing power than existed in the entire world when you were born.


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## apricissimus (May 15, 2013)

science said:


> Anyone over the age of 18 or so - your cell phone has more computing power than existed in the entire world when you were born.


Hm... I don't know about 18. Maybe 40.


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

bigshot said:


> My iTunes library is about 2TB of AAC 256 VBR. A few odd MP3s I got elsewhere but mostly AAC. A media server is the best thing since sliced bread.


Only 2Tb ... I thought you had a huge Drobo set with something like 40Tb capacity according to a previous 'boast' post?

*Maybe audio 'really isn't really your bag' and the remaining space is for video?*

I now have more than 10 times that capacity dedicated to audio even though I listen mainly to LPs and CDs and prefer to use my ever-growing fileservers' high-quality (ie. WAV) filestores for casual listening at this point in time.

I prefer sliced bread ... though when I get too old to lower that pickup arm, onto a lump of vinyl, I may feel different hence my gowing my digital collection.


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

PetrB said:


> Something about this reminds me of just having read, here or elsewhere,
> *"How about stopping glamorizing and exaggerating how busy we all are?"*
> 
> The time it takes to get up, put the CD back on the shelf, pull another and put it on, is about the same length of time taken between pieces at a live concert, the short break, not the intermission. That time so you can let the other piece settle and have a little breathing space before you start with the next.
> ...


I'm just past '50 not out' and retired. I love the exercise and selection process as well as the ability to hold something black or silver and read an accompanying wee book. I hate the idea of 24/7 randomisation others espouse and like the sound of silence from time to time. I am digitising my stuff for casual listening atm BUT 'future-proofing' for old-age. Gosh, how pessimistic that sounds ... apologies. I was quite busy when working BUT never that busy, thank God.


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

ahammel said:


> I will put this more strongly: hard drives _invariably_ die. If you have data you care about, it needs to be backed up. Preferably twice, preferably off-site.


I use Blu-Ray having previously used DVD since lifespan of these discs will exceed mine, boo hoo. My backup lives 40 miles away 'off-site' in my 'spare' house.


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

Couac Addict said:


> By the time you finish, the world will switch to another medium...several times


Irritatingly that's what concerns me, always, having moved from DVD (then DVD-DL) to Blu-Ray backup over the last 5, or so, years as I view my latest hi-end Panny Plasma acquisition likely to be bettered by OLED (and particularly 4k OLED) inside the next 5 for a comparable sub-$5000 price tag.

I blame conspicuous consumption and our 'happy to throwaway' culture with the 'ooh yes 4k is always best' supermarket styled 'sales pitch' (even if there is little media for the format and few using it for broadcasting as yet ... still, there's always 'upscaling') and ignoring the fact that you can't see any difference on a tiny telly (um, tiny these days appears to be <50"). I remember, as a small child, when TV was 405 lines of B&W across a couple of channels on a 12-9 18" screen yet now need a 16-9 60" 3D screen and hundreds of channels I never watch (since 'movies are my bag' in that realm) ... oh, not forgetting that need for my TV to be able to recognise me (or other family members and their different preferences) when coming into the living room and for a quick wave of a hand to 'channel-hop' with even a voice command enough to shut down the thing. My home has become like something out of a sci-fi movie with noises sometimes coming from all over the place as my children wave and shout at some inanimate object or other and engage in 'arcade gaming' wearing Google glasses or somesuch and/or Bluetooth headsets. I popped into my '13 going on 30' daughter's room the other day as she cried out to a 'remote friend' "It's behind us" when all that was actually behind her was me and, considering her next words were "shoot it", a quite scared me. Her iPhone was 'out of date' after a year and she so desperately needed that fingerprint recognition at Christmas time ... I wonder what this Christmas's version will recognise other than a foolish 'late middle-aged' bloke opening his wallet yet again ;-)

I remember when VHS fought Betamax then V2000 etc ahead of Laserdisc then DVD5 and 9 followed by HD-DVD and BR. In the early-90s I still used compact cassette and open-reel for home recording, with the former for ICE, but by the mid-90s minidisc had replaced the former ahead of a brief foray with DCC and DAT which lasted a year or so until CD-R as the millennium drew to a close. My car went from cassette thru' minidisc to CD inside 5 or 6 years making the middle technology like a 'blip' only beaten in minimal longevity by DAT and DCC. LPs are again being sold in increasing numbers (a desire for retro perhaps since the idea of distorting a digital recording by playing it on a turntable is akin to listening to an AAD CD on silver-sliver player imho but 'hey ho') and have outlived all other mass-market media ... even my local shops sell vinyl, CD, DVD and Blu-Ray but all else is consigned to second-hand shops. I still happily play LPs but can't recall the time I last laced up a tape in my home so a couple of cassette decks and a beloved open-reel one gather dust whilst the DAT and MiniDisc machines are in my loft along with a couple of VHS recorders and slide projectors.

The move from 5.25" 'genuine floppy' thru' 3.5" 'not quite so floppy except on the inside' thru' CD then DVD and now BR over a quarter of a century with 360Kb-720 Kb then 720Kb-2.88 Mb then 650-700Mb then 4.7-9.4Gb and finally 25-50Gb (or even 100 Gb with triple-layer) is an example of our appetite for space and 'tech' with that period seeing me move from a twin 5.25 360Kb (no HD) PC to a cavernous hi-spec 'home-built' fileserver with satellite drives and a 17" hi-end laptop on the side. So I've moved from no HD and 360 Kb of storage (as the other drive held the 'program file(s)' in use) thru 12Gb of RAM and 20Tb of 'aggregated' HD space. I think IBM expected the PC to sell no more than 10,000 units worldwide when starting off in that market, um ;-)

I can still, and occasionally do, use the turntable I had when at University as the 80s began (Technics SL150 Mk II with SME series III arm and Ortofon M20FL cartridge) but my old 12-9 36" CRT, from the turn of the millennium, just wouldn't display today's widescreen TV properly (even with a required set-top box for those 'new-fangled' digital channel 'thingies') and the PC I had less than a decade ago would likely run nothing I use now. *Vinyl has lasted, and continues onward, and will play on 'after the holocaust' using a pin and a paper cup (since I can hand-spin the platter akin to the hand-cranked gramophones of the 1890s).*

Of course, as an ex-'hi-fi retailer' (latterly involved in 'software development' until an 'early retirement' escape from 'the rat-race'), I shouldn't complain as 'the audio trade made me a few bob' and I do quite enjoy 'tech'. I must also stop that red-wine consumption leading to rambling BUT, in my defence, I have two teenage tormentors and one of their friends running around at the moment waving some tech at one another and making the best use of my multi-room capability in a way only they know how ... please, God, let the revolution come soon BUT at least I am safe in my study or music room and after dinner things will calm down as they know their place in the same way as I know mine on weekend day-times ;-)


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

apricissimus said:


> Hm... I don't know about 18. Maybe 40.


A far less sweeping statement and probably close to realism as micro-computers were only starting to be used in schools by 1977 just as my own schooldays were coming to a close ... it was, or seemed, a brave new world where one could Concorde from Heathrow to JFK and arrive just before you set off 'so to speak'. I remember my dad had a 'phone in his car and a 'mobile' which was a wooden box about 12" square by 6" deep with a standard old-fashioned handset (as fitted to a house 'phone back then) and a 3' aerial akin to a transistor radio's one ... it couldn't play an entire music library or act as a video/stills camera or access the non-existent internet and in fact was virtually useless except as a 'phone (and I've no idea how it connected or to what since it can't have been to a 'yet to exist' network). I didn't get a mobile 'phone until about 1989 or 1990 but that had a 3" aerial (plus a 6" one for Vodaphone's 'weaker signal' areas) and was like a half-brick ... weirdly that couldn't play an entire music library or act as a video/stills camera or access the barely-existent internet and was also virtually useless except as a 'phone. Little more than a decade on I got an Ericsson T49 which was teensy but still only a 'phone until a year or so later it's T610 replacement sported a 2Mp camera plus 1Gb of music storage, on a MicroStick Duo, and the next 10 years saw an annual upgrade with increasing capacity and functionality factored in ... 'conspicuous consumption' had 'reared it's ugly head'.


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## KThreeSixFour (Sep 16, 2011)

I use a ripping utility called "dBpoweramp" 

The main advantage is that it can rip in two formats at the same time, e.g. FLAC and MP3. I like to have a lossless archival copy (FLAC) and the more universally playable MP3.

It also has four sources of metadata which you can choose from (in whole or parts) for the final metadata for the file.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

You mention you rip to WAV because of the gap issue... There's another thing to consider- the fact that classical pieces are almost always broken into multiple tracks. This means that in your media library, a complete symphony is going to consist of four separate files. Personally, I don't ever want to listen to just one movement without hearing the whole work in context, so I join the tracks as I rip, creating a single file with all four movements. This means I can easily start playing a piece from the beginning, and I can even shuffle play "by song" or "by composer" without creating a musical scramble.

When you join tracks as you rip, the correct gaps are built in. No need to worry about gaps being inserted.

Another good tip is to rip mono material to a true mono file. The file size is cut in half with no loss in sound quality, and stereo noise is largely cancelled out.

Also, FLAC and ALAC are exactly the same as WAV with 1/10th the hard drive footprint. There is no reason to archive in WAV. It just takes up space unnecessarily, and increases the chance of file corruption through data deterioration.


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## Guest (Feb 9, 2014)

bigshot said:


> You mention you rip to WAV because of the gap issue... There's another thing to consider- the fact that classical pieces are almost always broken into multiple tracks. This means that in your media library, a complete symphony is going to consist of four separate files. Personally, I don't ever want to listen to just one movement without hearing the whole work in context, so I join the tracks as I rip, creating a single file with all four movements. This means I can easily start playing a piece from the beginning, and I can even shuffle play "by song" or "by composer" without creating a musical scramble.
> 
> When you join tracks as you rip, the correct gaps are built in. No need to worry about gaps being inserted.
> 
> ...


I never trust the time gaps created by any rip software. Rather, I let whatever software I happen to have used do its thing, but always check the results of any rip using "Audacity". I am seldom happy with the gaps, either at the beginning, or between movements or at the end, that are normally created by the rip software. Instead, I re-set them manually using "Audacity" to create a standard 3-second run-in at the beginning, and a 4-5 second gap between movements. Gap problems are not necessarily the fault of the rip software, but are often inherent in the original CD because that is the way it was recorded. Often with recorded "live" music the gaps can be very variable in terms of length.

I used to keep a separate file for each part of a multi-movement work, but I rarely bother to do so these days, unless it happens to be a famous work like say a Beethoven symphony, or a Schubert late sonata, as examples. In those cases, I normally want to keep each movement separate for comparison purposes with other versions, but otherwise I do not bother and just have one file for the whole of a multi-movement work. I used to create separate files but found after a while that it was a waste of time. Not only that, but a single file avoids the occasional clicks that can be heard as the media player switches from one movement to the next.

I am also a pedant for checking, and adjusting if necessary, the peak volume level of the entire file, as there can be some big differences between recordings, if you just rely on the rip software. I quite often find that some source material is too low, but I have sometimes found it to be clipped. When it is clipped, my experience is that the problem is always in the source material, not the rip software. If it is clipped there is nothing one can do about that, but if the overall volume is too low it is very easy to make an adjustment. Here I am not talking about use of the "harmonise" utility in Audacity, but instead the "volume" adjustment facility that acts entirely neutrally across the whole file. The "harmonise" function works differently as it will equalise the peak volume on both channels, but I never want to go down this road as it risks being too interfering in case the correct result actually requires a different peak volume on each stereo channel.


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## RollOvaMozart (Dec 15, 2021)

I am adding uncompressed FLACs to my new 16Tb drive with a view to being lazy once the mammoth exercise of encoding my CDs and maybe later LPs


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## FrankinUsa (Aug 3, 2021)

We are all facing this issue. Continue to hang on to physically product(cd,lol,etc). Some of us are not so technically proficient. I admit to that. A lot of technical issues. Memory has become cheap. Huge amount of tetrabytes. But who owns it. I feel like I have to be a “computer” expert.


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## RollOvaMozart (Dec 15, 2021)

It appears I've gone from New member to Junior in a few hours though am quite senior so unsure if I've been demoted and whether one day or in a few more hours I'll be senior and what'd then lie beyond other than the grim reaper


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## RollOvaMozart (Dec 15, 2021)

DBPoweramp does the work and FLAC encoding allows zero compression if required whilst also allowing better tagging than WAV. The software also pulls in album artwork (well the front cover) and uses Gracenote for the track tagging so it's just a case of load the CD into the ripper (NAIM in my instance) then wait a couple of minutes and it's all done. Alas with several thousand CDs that'll be quite a few minutes and then there's the case of LP's which require a decent turntable plus arm and cartridge feeding into an additional piece of hi-end audio kit. Alas it takes the full playing time of an LP and manual track startpoint entering so that'll be a job for another day, um year, um maybe decade if I've got that long ;-)


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## FrankinUsa (Aug 3, 2021)

RollOvaMozart said:


> DBPoweramp does the work and FLAC encoding allows zero compression if required whilst also allowing better tagging than WAV. The software also pulls in album artwork (well the front cover) and uses Gracenote for the track tagging so it's just a case of load the CD into the ripper (NAIM in my instance) then wait a couple of minutes and it's all done. Alas with several thousand CDs that'll be quite a few minutes and then there's the case of LP's which require a decent turntable plus arm and cartridge feeding into an additional piece of hi-end audio kit. Alas it takes the full playing time of an LP and manual track startpoint entering so that'll be a job for another day, um year, um maybe decade if I've got that long ;-)


Most respectfully,I have no idea what you are talking about. And I am embarrassed to say that I have no idea of most of the other posts although there is a genuinely sense of sharing information. I am a Neanderthal to most(98%) of this. But that is my fault.


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## RollOvaMozart (Dec 15, 2021)

Fortinbras Armstrong said:


> In 1967, the university I was then attending got rid of its Univac 1105  (a vacuum tube machine which they literally could not give away, and yes, I ran programs on it) and replaced it with an IBM 360/25 with 64 KB of core memory and two 7.25 megabyte hard drives. And people were saying, "Wow, no more memory problems!" My son's PlayStation 2 has more memory, more disk space and a faster clock speed.
> 
> Admittedly, I was in an office a few years ago which had an IBM PC/XT with a ten megabyte hard drive that they were using as a printer server. It did that one job very well, and they had no intention of replacing it as long as it was functional.


When I started work after university I used a 286 Desktop PC with a 40Mb HD and 1Mb of RAM plus a 3.5" floppy whilst junior staff were using 8086's with 20Mb and 640Kb or twin 5" floppies and 640Kb or Dumb terminals 'dependant on their place in the food chain' BUT fast forward to now and 30 years on where HD is replaced by SSD and Mb by Gb or even Tb with CD/DVD replacing Floppy and latterly USB or SD. My first work laptop was about 4" tall with a detachable keyboard and a monochrome screen and weighed a ton but soon colour screens came and machine's shrank then Floppies got replaced by CD writers then DVD ones and screens became Wide and HD then optical writers disappeared from all but 17" screen laptops and screensize shrank to A4 notepad size whilst being flippable through 360 degrees. The history books reference computers the size of a living room with less power than a mobile phone today and everything in the home 'talks' to everything else 'in code' but listens to what we humans say and makes a decent stab at doinf what we want. It's getting gobbledegook to me a bit like the inside of a car engine compartment is now to my dad who once replaced his car engine about 50 years ago when all you needed was a set of spanners prettymuch. Still, as long as the software will do the job I want do I care about how it works ...


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## RollOvaMozart (Dec 15, 2021)

bigshot said:


> You mention you rip to WAV because of the gap issue... There's another thing to consider- the fact that classical pieces are almost always broken into multiple tracks. This means that in your media library, a complete symphony is going to consist of four separate files. Personally, I don't ever want to listen to just one movement without hearing the whole work in context, so I join the tracks as I rip, creating a single file with all four movements. This means I can easily start playing a piece from the beginning, and I can even shuffle play "by song" or "by composer" without creating a musical scramble.
> 
> When you join tracks as you rip, the correct gaps are built in. No need to worry about gaps being inserted.
> 
> ...


Actually FLAC isn't the same as WAV unless uncompressed. Any Compression will degrade the sound since it has to use sampling algorithms and whilst these may be largely unnoticeble there is a 'trade off'. Anyone who decodes FLAC at 1/10th will see a 70 min 700Mb Disc using just 70Mb of filestore and be sonically worse than using MP3 at 320Kbps. If encoding one should try FLAC at it's recommended setting then uncompressed then try MP3 at 320Kbps and compare each through one's audio system and if no difference is audible one could argue for whatever uses least space BUT 'once it's gone it's gone' so if one upgrades to a much better system then the previously unnoticeable loss might just prove troubling. Hence, with space so cheap I'd encode uncompressed as then only my ears will be to blame for any future loss ...


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## Oldhoosierdude (May 29, 2016)

As to the original question: yes I did this some time back. I had a mixture of cd and digital. I ripped everything to mp3 with the stock windows music player. 

My collection was probably smaller than yours. It takes up 175GB space. I have it in three places. Phone, external hard drive, and online storage. 


CDs were sold or given away. 

I organize by composer nameand do something different with compilations.

Did the same for my jazz. Although it is much smaller in size.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

RollOvaMozart said:


> Actually FLAC isn't the same as WAV unless uncompressed. Any Compression will degrade the sound since it has to use sampling algorithms and whilst these may be largely unnoticeble there is a 'trade off'. Anyone who decodes FLAC at 1/10th will see a 70 min 700Mb Disc using just 70Mb of filestore and be sonically worse than using MP3 at 320Kbps. If encoding one should try FLAC at it's recommended setting then uncompressed then try MP3 at 320Kbps and compare each through one's audio system and if no difference is audible one could argue for whatever uses least space BUT 'once it's gone it's gone' so if one upgrades to a much better system then the previously unnoticeable loss might just prove troubling. Hence, with space so cheap I'd encode uncompressed as then only my ears will be to blame for any future loss ...


It is *not* true that 'any compression will degrade the sound' ... there are two types of compression, lossy such as MP3 and AAC, and lossless, your comment is only true of the former. FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is, as the name says, a lossless compression algorithm which produces a file which can be reversibly decompressed to be identical to the original WAV file. I don't know where the talk of 1/10th came from, typically a FLAC compression will be about 45% of the original. You can conceptually imagine a lossless compression algorithm as being somewhat akin to taking all the furniture in a 1200sq.ft. house and packing them into a 300sq.ft. storage space. Nothing is changed and everything can be restored exactly as it was before.

While FLAC does support multiple compression levels, they are all equally reversible, the difference is the number and types of methods it uses for packing the data, so is basically a trade-off between compression time and storage size. (Yes I can store this table here but if I turn it upside down and lift it up, I can put it into that currently unused space!)


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

The OPs first mistake was converting the music to mp3. Trust me, I made a huge mistake using mp3 and I have since deleted all of the recordings I've ripped to my computer in this audio format. I only use 288 AAC now (I could bump up to 320, but it's not a noticeable difference in sound quality). I can tell a huge difference between AAC and mp3 on the other hand. AAC, although not lossless, gives music more information to work with then mp3 in terms of depth and overall soundstage, but also it brings out more of the instruments you would hear in a full quality recording.

Anyway, I have found mp3 inferior to AAC on all fronts, but I do understand that mp3 is more easily manageable in terms of going from computer to computer as not all computers accept this format. I only use Apple computers and this is their own music encoding. Do consider switching to a better audio format. I think you'll be rather shocked at how good this format sounds in comparison to mp3.


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## AaronSF (Sep 5, 2021)

I transferred my CD collection to mp3s long ago before there were lossless alternatives. Now I usually start with FLAC files. 
Because I currently use Apple Music to store and play, I have to convert FLAC files to ALAC, then import to Apple which converts to m4a (I'm not sure if m4as are exactly the same as ALAC, but the sound quality is certainly better than mp3). I don't have super high-end audio equipment (DAC, pre-amp, amp, and good headphones).

I've been using Apple Music (formerly iTunes) for so long that way back when I started creating playlist folders by composer and then storing works individually as "playlists" by name within the composer folder (e.g., "Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 is in the Beethoven folder). It entails considerable work, but it works for me. Tags on classical recordings are so terrible that I use and app called "Tag Editor" to fill in a lot of the missing information. Then I have to double check everything once it's imported into Apple Music to make sure everything transferred correctly. Typically I have to make some corrections.

Also I use "MediaHuman Audio Converter" to convert FLAC to ALAC.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

I am not converting anything, just spinning my CD'S / L.P'S and DVD'S


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## Neo Romanza (May 7, 2013)

AaronSF said:


> I transferred my CD collection to mp3s long ago before there were lossless alternatives. Now I usually start with FLAC files.
> Because I currently use Apple Music to store and play, I have to convert FLAC files to ALAC, then import to Apple which converts to m4a (I'm not sure if m4as are exactly the same as ALAC, but the sound quality is certainly better than mp3). I don't have super high-end audio equipment (DAC, pre-amp, amp, and good headphones).
> 
> I've been using Apple Music (formerly iTunes) for so long that way back when I started creating playlist folders by composer and then storing works individually as "playlists" by name within the composer folder (e.g., "Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 is in the Beethoven folder). It entails considerable work, but it works for me. Tags on classical recordings are so terrible that I use and app called "Tag Editor" to fill in a lot of the missing information. Then I have to double check everything once it's imported into Apple Music to make sure everything transferred correctly. Typically I have to make some corrections.
> ...


M4a is just another name for AAC and, yes, it sounds damn good.


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Becca said:


> It is *not* true that 'any compression will degrade the sound' ... there are two types of compression, lossy such as MP3 and AAC, and lossless, your comment is only true of the former. FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is, as the name says, a lossless compression algorithm which produces a file which can be reversibly decompressed to be identical to the original WAV file. I don't know where the talk of 1/10th came from, typically a FLAC compression will be about 45% of the original. You can conceptually imagine a lossless compression algorithm as being somewhat akin to taking all the furniture in a 1200sq.ft. house and packing them into a 300sq.ft. storage space. Nothing is changed and everything can be restored exactly as it was before.
> 
> While FLAC does support multiple compression levels, they are all equally reversible, the difference is the number and types of methods it uses for packing the data, so is basically a trade-off between compression time and storage size. (Yes I can store this table here but if I turn it upside down and lift it up, I can put it into that currently unused space!)


Yep. FLAC can be uncompressed into a bit-perfect copy of the original WAV.

Maybe RollOvaMozart meant by "FLAC isn't the same as WAV unless uncompressed" that a FLAC doesn't sound the same in its compressed state? I don't know what this really would mean in practice, though, because any player that plays FLAC decompresses it and holds it in a buffer during playback.


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