Copying your music collection to hard drives: who else is doing this?

M3U is a media queue format, also generally known to humans as a playlist. It is the default playlist save format of WinAMP and most other media programs. It allows multiple files to be queued in a program in a specific format.

Various programs use this extension; too many to list individually. - see http://filext.com/file-extension/M3U

 

Even if I had the time, I wouldn't waste it transferring everything to a hard drive. My records and CDs are fine where they are.

 

Why do you think it's a waste? I took nearly 2000 CDs (you can imagine how much space that takes up), and transfered them to a device that is about as big as 3 paperback books stacked up. The sound quality is identical to the CD, and I can listen to in any room of my house. Even different songs/albums simultaneously in different rooms, just like you could with physical discs. And the random play! Utterly spectacular way to re-explore your music collection.

There is no downside that I am aware of.

 

I have transferred my favorites to hard drive for convenience of use.

I still keep the originals as a back-up and as a true sampling when I actually have time to just listen.


Several here and on other sites have recommended a Squeezebox and I love mine! I bought an old one used. I intend to get another one (more current model) and have it up-graded, worked over and have a tube output installed, soon.

 

You can't beat the fresh smell of vinyl in the morning...I just love clutter.

 

Couldn't agree more....

 

If you are referring to my post, I use a Kenwood Keg with a KCA-R70FM Sirius Satellite/Kenwood Music Keg adapter (it has an aux output that will fit any vehicle). I originally had a BMW Phatbox that was integrated into my car and got addicted to it. The part I like is that it announces the playlist, genre, album, artist, etc.. with the VIOT software.

I am not sure if I will continue to put it my new cars with the new iPod solutions that are available. However, it has been used a ton over the last several years. Here is some info on my setup.

BTW It does playlists, but you cannot set them up on the fly. The Phatnoise Music Manager lets you set them us as you copy files.

 

Good for you. It would be a waste of of my time. That's my only point.

 

It is really not something you have to sit and watch. You could copy CDs while posting your thoughts on the internet.

 

As I type this, dbPoweramp is running. I have a stack of CDs to the left of this laptop and an external HD and external CD drive to the right.

 

I bought a McIntosh MS750 music server and have been ripping CD's for 2 weeks now.

This thing is really easy to use. I have it hooked up temporarily next to my computer while I load all these CD's. Alls you do is put the disc in, it reads it, accesses the internet, downloads the songs and the cover art, and you're ready to go.

I just can't wait to get it plugged into my main system.

 

Who's got the friggin time to do this?

I can see CDs being ripped, but albums ripped in real time?

 

I hope I'm not threadcrapping, but what are the chances of these things happening, compared to hard drives crashing? Hard drives fail all the time for no apparent reason. It's a gamble. Of course, we're talking here of just having a digital backup of your collection, rather than ripping and selling. If that were the case, to me that's a big gamble. How many backups can you have? Backups can fail. Optical media are unstable. Etc.

In any case, stuff of mine that was hard to track down (i.e., out-of-print), I rip in FLAC and back up to DVD+/-R. Which leads me to the question: why rip to WAV? FLAC (or ALAC, or APE, etc.) is smaller file size, many tag options, etc.

 

One advantage (or maybe disadvantage, for those who are concerned with the time it takes) is that you can "fix" problems after reading CDs to the hard drive.

One of the most common problems I fix is getting mono tracks right. Usually they're a disaster on the CD, with anything from problems due to playback of the master on a stereo tape machine to phase errors between the channels in the electronics to digital dropouts on one channel or the other.

Another problem I fix from time-to-time is removing ticks from the audio. Amazingly, some CDs apparently have data errors recorded into the disc, which usually play back as a tick. I'm fairly convinced these errors occur somewhere in the production process and are recorded on the disc, because EAC reports "no errors", and the tick is consistent even when the disc is ripped on multiple drives of widely differing type. Originally, I thought this type of error was confined to 1630-era digital masters, but I've seen it occasionally in modern recordings, also. (Just yesterday, on a disc recorded this past year, as a matter of fact!)

From time-to-time I encounter CDs where the track marks are not quite in the right place, so EAC breaks the files out, usually with the "blip" from the end of the previous track at the start of the next one. So I recombine the files and split them up right.

I find that cleaning up production errors in anything from sloppily produced to "almost perfect" albums makes for a more enjoyable listening experience later..

 

I mostly use Winamp, and preview in Audition.

But, I really do not like the way just about all of these downloadable media players like Winamp and Media Monkey and others function. If I had the knowhow to program software, I would. Apparently, people who write the software that's out there have different priorities than I do.

 

I love clutter too, but when it starts to get in the way of your life, well, you do something about it. Well, maybe not clutter, but I like lots of things in my living space to feel comfortable. I'm a horrible pack-rat. Everyone in my family is...except for one sister and my father.

But, i'm guessing that all these people who don't want to back anything up aren't too worried that they could lose all their music. See, losing all my music that I spent a lifetime from the age of six building, would devastate me.

I plan on buying a Squeezebox. You can now buy them in the stores.

Not yet.

 

Almost exact, same here! Right now, i'm working on backing up Billy Joel CDs.

 

No! We are backing up the needle drops. If they are on CD-R, it's no different than backing up a store-bought CD. If I do a needle drop today, and I have several waiting to be worked on, I just save the finished work as FLAC and store them up in a folder with the album title's name on it.

 

That's why you make copies of that hard drive! What are the chances of all of your HDs going down all at once? If you take care of your drives, and buy the ones with the best track record, the risk is less. I have had good luck with hard drives. I have only ever had one fail. Right now, i'm backing up to one WD and one Maxtor, as one Seagate is all filled up. But, I don't trust WD controllers, so I will soon break out a new Maxtor which is really a Seagate inside.

I rip to FLAC because they are roughly half the size of an uncompressed wav file. I have a LOT of music! I do not really deal with tags beyond titles and maybe genre.

 

I know, you are right, Grant. My problem now is that when I bought my computer a little more than a year ago, I didn't spend more money for a bigger HDD - I have a 160. With photos, videos of my daughter, and now music (of about 50 gigs), I don't know what to do. My ideal situation would be an external HDD (preferable Seagate) as a backup of the internal, but the internal is filling up fast. So, do I get a second internal and "combine" the two? That's risky too, though, isn't it? (if one has a problem, the whole shebang is kaput) Just start all over and get a 500 gigger? And then have to re-install every damn thing? Sucks.

 

IMO, you are heading down a slipperly slope. Maybe re-evaluate and look to one of these:

http://www.infrant.com/products/products_details.php?name=ReadyNAS NVPlus

Take your PC out of the picture completely (well, except for the physical ripping). You never know if your PC and the internal drives is going to get a virus, lock up, or just have any one of those PC demons which typically come and visit.

When using an external Network Attached Storage device, you can typically setup RAID-5 failure, so if one drive dies, your music/collection never misses a beat. Just pop a new drive in, and the rebuild starts immediately. Of course you can back up the entire NAS for even more redundancy. With the Infrant-exclusive X-RAID, you get all the benefits of RAID-5, with virtually unlimited upgrade storage capacity.

http://www.infrant.com/products/products_details.php?name=About X-RAID

 

Just buy an external drive and get the data out of the computer, at least. they are fast, cheap, and plenty big. The T1 drives are coming down in price to where mere mortals can afford them without breaking the budget or maxing out the card.

After all I have been reading about RAID, I have been almost scared off by it. But, since I have an Intel RAID-ready motherboard, I can probably safely add an internal RAID array. But, there is no use in that for me, as RAID takes up a considerable amount of HD space to work. As I have said, I have a LOT of music!

 

Thanks for the recommendation, too much money for me at over $1,000. If I had a lot of music I would consider it. External drive for now with optical backups, I think.

 

You can also get Firewire add-on cards for Windows PCs. That would speed up the transfer rate. You don't use optical hookups unless it's to the stereo. You usually use USB. eSATA, or Firewire.

 

Why are you scared about RAID? I already used it once, when one of my 400GB Seagates crapped out. It was a bit scary at first, but I realized that what these things are designed for. As such, I swapped out the bad drive and went about my business.

The RAID controllers in these NAS devices are different than the RAID controllers in your PC motherboard (I use an Intel RAID device on my PC motherboard).

Grant, if you have a lot of music, you're going to need more space than what you'd typically put in a PC enclosure with a couple of drive slots. You need a NAS to do it right.

Yeah, I meant to mention that as a caveat. Going this route is not cheap, and is unlikely to decrease substantially over time IMO. The NAS is the majority of the cost, and they are actually quite sophisticated. Much more than a metal "box" that holds HDDs.