CD Storage serious down sizing
 

Dealing with down sizing for the past two years. I'm now in 1/3 of the size home I used to live in. 4 car garage is now 2. Ect.

I found a great solution to my large CD collection, bags unlimited SCDGF4.

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Rip 'em all to high bitrate mp3, store multiple copies on external hard drives (or a NAS with a RAID 5 array) and sell the CDs ... Not exactly legal per copyright, but what the heck...

Go lossless with FLAC conversion using EAC (free app) or dbpoweramp. Put them on a hard drive and stream whenever you want. I did that a few years ago and have some 57,000 songs available at any time.

I have most of these burned, about 80 gigs, but I know there is compression and some loss of quality. Also, hard drives fail so I want to keep these around.

So far, i'm up to the letter "e" in my alphabetical system.

Hey Doug.....thanks for the post and info. I have so many CD's it's out of control around here! Over 1K I think. I would love to gain a little extra space while still retaining the original CD documentation. I may have to get some of these.

It's interesting that you alphabetize by first name. I never would have thought of that.

Not so, there is lossless compression FLAC (free lossless audio codec) for one....no loss in quality at all. That is why I recommend it. I still have my CDs in a tote or three. Having all that catalog of music readily available and controlled by an app on any device on my network means not having to get up and hunt for a disk. It changed my music listening drastically.

Oh, and hard drives are cheap...I have three loaded in case one craps, but none of mine have in my 30 years of computer use.

Something to think about anyway.

Mike, I will check out the lossless FLAC, I am admittedly not familiar with that. I suppose that means I need to rerip the collection.

It's a blended system, not necessarily consistent. If I refer to Bowie instead of David, I'll go B.

CDs

Thats funny

But what do I do with my 8-tracks?

That may be why I haven't bought any in the past several years. The only physical music I'm now buying is vinyl again.

I like having 'em around me in all their jewel-cased glory!

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Can someone recommend a step-by-step system to burn these to a hard drive, organize them, and then replay them? Most of my old CDs are in my iTunes library, but iTunes is so flaky that I've kept the old CDs. I'd like a trustworthy system.
Speaking of iTunes, why/how does it copy music I've never listened to and have no interest in to my library? I've heard this is a ploy to bulk up your stored data so if you back up on iCloud you have to buy more space. Sounds plausible, but really??

I just stuck all of mine in large notebooks containing CD sleeves, 8 CDs per page, 4 per side. Works fine. Kinda like this:

Case Logic, Inc CDW-208 - Best Buy

I threw out litterally hundreds of pounds of jewel cases about 8 years ago. I saved the art and was breaking out the cases for the back art as well, but I gave up on that about half way through.

I have kids that screw with things so I store them in DJ cases. I have this one that holds 1000 CDS, though probably more like 800-900 if single stuffed in sleeves.

Robot Check


Now I have started to rip all my CDs 10 different times in the last couple decades, but it is a crap ton of work. I am actually glad I never got far earlier because I believe now is about the right time to do it. Mass storage is cheap so lossless is the way to go. Id be pretty bummed if I spent alot of time ripping 128k mp3s in tha 90s for example. I have a huge collection of low bit rate mp3 and it makes me sad to listen to them on my home stereo.

Im not sure why my link is funky looking not spam for sure

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easy to store many hundred or even thousands of cds in these guys

I have followed these threads and like the idea of burning all my CD's... but honestly I just don't have the time.

Im not an expert on this, you quite litterally have thousands of options on this these days.


Ill tell you how I am doing it. I am ripping all my cds in high resolution to a giant external hard drive. I am using a free program that is popular called EAC and ripping them in lossless FLAC format. I am plugging the usb drive into my oppo 103 cd player which will allow me to surf through the directories from the remote.


Ironically, the way I am doing it is pretty old school I think. There are lots of options to do this over the network and use fancy phone operated streamers.

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300 disk Sony CD changers are cheap, like $200 bucks.


I've got a couple of them. Old school juke box.

There are many ways to skin this cat. Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is a good tool to rip CDs:
Exact Audio Copy

I use dbpoweramp now:
https://www.dbpoweramp.com/

There are others. They grab the metadata (song makers, artists, etc.) so you don't have too. They can also find the artwork. Just drop a disk in and process it in a few minutes. They can be set up to create dynamic folders to organize your collection.

I did my collection over time...trying to set aside time most nights. Literally just dropping a disk in, waiting a few seconds for the metadata to load then click once and wait a few minutes. Repeat for each disk. Surf the internet while this is going on.

Once ripped and organized, you need that drive on your network. There are many ways to do this. One of mine is connected directly to my router. At my other house I have a small plug computer (think raspberry pi) which is networked and available 24/7. Others use their Roku or Oppo or...

Now you need some way of connecting it to your amp/speakers. Here, some people use another plug computer ($50), or a network compatible stereo, or Roku, or Directv box, or Oppo type unit or some other network capable audio (or audio video) to access the music.

Control the music using your phone, tablet, computer, roku, directv remote...anything using your network. Bam!

For example, I have an old tube amp...Dynamic SCA-35 with a Squeezebox Touch in my living room for music. I also have music accessible through my Roku in my family room tied to my A/V amp which handles surround sound for TV and my outdoor speakers. I have an old Pioneer SX-1080 receiver in the garage with some JBLs with a Raspberry Pi plug computer. I can stream to all three independently at the same time from the one source hard drive tied into my router. I can listen to what I want in the garage and my wife can do her thing in the house at the same time.

I have been doing this for years and it works great. I have set up friends and family as well - all with equipment they already owned - most of them only needed to buy a hard drive and maybe a plug computer...less than $200. This is not cutting edge. Most audio/video electronics have streaming capabilities.

I still buy CDs for the ability to rip the way I want. I use flac for home and mp3 for cars.

Mike

If you want to get into details, pm me with what stereo equipment you have and what your listening habits are (or start anew thread). I am sure there are people (like me) who will chime in.

If you like messing with rapberry pi you can run volumio on the pi as a network player controllable from your phone.

It works really well. I set this up but now nearly every device has some similar functionality built in so its a sort of unnecessary but fun little project

https://volumio.org/

Yes, I am running Volumio on a couple of systems - it works great. I use it when I have the harddrive directly plugged into the pi. I am using Twonky on a high end Linn system where the harddrive is hooked to the router (Linn likes Twonky), picoreplayer on another pi used as a receiver, and Logitech Music Server on a few...all for different reasons.

Fun stuff.

Did anyone catch what I'm using as spacers between rows for my old CDs? That is another problem, though not as large.