Any alternative to giant CD changers for audiophile?

[scottmandue]

I would like to set up my massive CD collection for easy listening. So I am looking online...100...200... 300 CD changers OH MY!

However the reviews are not that stellar... dropped Cd's... scratched Cd's... marginal sound quality... Hmmm what to do.

There has to be a better way.

I am sure there is a way to copy all my Cd's onto a hard drive and play them back, but as a audiophile I fear that anytime you copy or convert media you loose some quality?

Any ideas PPOTers?

[porsche4life]

5 disc and change them manually?

[kjb]

Linn has some nice products that will take ripped music from a hard drive and stream it to your stereo:

http://www.linn.co.uk/digital_stream_players

[fingpilot]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

Copy to hard drive.

Use a lossless encoder.

Radified Guide to lossless audio compression [loss less]

Fixed it for ya!

[TSNAPCRACKLEPOP]

i just got an mp3 player....amazing!!

[imcarthur]

Nothing will beat a dedicated single play CD player. As an alternative, rip to wav files on a server and get a good outboard dac.

Any compression - including lossless - will be a compromise.

Ian

[scottmandue]

I have a MP3 player and it is OK but when plugged into my home stereo it is well... just OK fidelity wise, and I want to be able to play music for hours without interruption.

Thanks stomakemonkey...

So the alternative is to buy a cheap new PC with good sound and burn my CD collection onto it with low loss CODEC's?

What software would I use to organize my music and make playlists? What OS should I use. What hardware?

And did I mention I have hundreds of CD's? That would take weeks to load them onto a hard drive.

I'm a tech, I can build a computer, but if I could find a plug and play to save time that would be a big help.

I should point out that I am thinking of dumping my satellite TV provider... and the only thing I will miss is the music channels... so I am trying to emulate the ability to listen to commercial free high fidelity music for long periods of time.

[RWebb]

Originally Posted by imcarthur

Nothing will beat a dedicated single play CD player. As an alternative, rip to wav files on a server and get a good outboard dac.

Any compression - including lossless - will be a compromise.

Ian

I've tested that on my system and cannot hear the difference.

I doubt he will either, as my system is not cheap. Perhaps someone afflicted with much better hearing than I and using a $50,000 system could hear the difference...

I tested with Cal Icon; 6 ft. Maggies; Sonic Frontiers pre-amp...


I am slowly ripping all my CDs - I have thousands, not just hundreds. I plan to retain a few of them, just in case they someday do sound better than the ripped file, or if the HD breaks, etc.

[GH85Carrera]

I listen to mostly classic rock & roll. The phrase "close enough for rock" comes to mind. If you have a "golden ear" and listen to classical music in a quiet room, compression will add some noise.

I crammed over a 100 CD into MP3s onto one dual layer DVD. In my car it sounds fine. A true audiophile may hate it but for my ears it is great. It has hundreds of hours of my music and no commercials.

I suspect an inexpensive multi media computer would be an ideal choice for you. You can get a one TB drive for under a hundred bucks. Just burn a few discs per day. It may take a few months but it will get done. Just be sure to back that drive up

[Paul_Heery]

Three words:

Exact Audio Copy

[stomachmonkey]

Well if hard drive space is not a consideration then a CD can be dumped/copied in it's native AIFF format without any compression.

Standard CD = ~ 600 MB's

1 Terabyte ='s 1,000,000 MB's

So a 1 TB drive should hold 1,666 CD's uncompressed.

1 TB's drives can be had for $100-150 these days.

BONUS: Not dealing with a compression algorithm means you can use a less powerful PC although these days just about any new bargain basement PC has plenty of processor to deal with most CO/DECS.

[stomachmonkey]

Here's a nice cheap small PC that will fit in an entertainment center.

8 Ch audio and will take a 3.5 inch hardrive.

$140

$120 with a rebate.

mwave.com: MSI WIND PC intel 945gc chipset bare system w/ on board intel Atom 1.6ghz cpu (retail) ($15 Mail-In Manufacturer Rebate Available till 09/30/09)

[on2wheels52]

What fun is it picking an album out of a list on a computer? Don't go there Scott, the experence should be more like picking a bottle of wine.
Jim

[Eric Coffey]

Rip CD's to FLAC lossless via EAC (Exact Audio Copy). Then export via quality sound card (M-Audio, etc.) or USB/firewire DAC (unmap it from windows sound mixer).
Uncompressed WAV files would be the (theoretical) optimum, but they don't support song/album tagging AFAIK, so it wouldn't be cataloging-friendly. Even with very high-end gear throughout your audio stream, you wouldn't hear the difference anyway.

[Hetmann]

I ripped my library some time back and must admit I really enjoy having it all available at the push of a button. My audio gear is good quality and for the most part the sound is the same as listening to a CD. I must admit most of my listening is casual these days, background music for dinner or entertaining. But even when I am alone and crank things up, the sound is fine. Some people claim to be able to hear the difference, I guess I'm just not one of them or the equipment I have cannot provide the resolution needed to make the distinction. Get a PC with a decent sound board and rip at 256 bitrate or better.

[SoCal911T]

I went this route. Not perfect but an okay trade-off.
Products > iMod - Red Wine Audio

[Eric Coffey]

Here's a good place to browse if you want to get seriously audiophile about it:
Computer Audiophile | High-End Audiophile Music Servers

A few more resources:
Introduction » Exact Audio Copy
M-AUDIO - Audiophile 2496 - 4-In/4-Out Audio Card with MIDI and Digital I/O
Lynx Studio Product Overview

[myamoto1]

It's not exactly audiophile quality, but a friend has an Apple Mini as a dedicated music server for his home theater system. It's a decent system (mostly Mission speakers, I think), but not really high end gear. For casual listening, it sounds pretty good. I'd say it's probably comparable or better than your satellite music you're currently getting.

[MysticLlama]

Originally Posted by scottmandue

I should point out that I am thinking of dumping my satellite TV provider... and the only thing I will miss is the music channels... so I am trying to emulate the ability to listen to commercial free high fidelity music for long periods of time.

If this is what you're trying to accomplish, maybe you don't need to go super fancy.

For our office, where there were constant battles about exactly what music to load and who hated or loved which song, etc. we switched to using Pandora.

We play it from a Logitech Squeezebox, which just plugs into our overhead speakers. It's not super high quality since it's streamed, but I don't know that the TV channels would be either, though I could be wrong there.

Anyway, people just yelled out thumbs up or thumbs down for a few days and since then we've had weeks of happy people listening to a channel that seems to make everyone happy.

And no programming or making playlists or anything, it just figures it out.

If I'm listening to a CD, Stereo, sitting in front of the speakers with nothing else going on, I put the disc in the single tray player. For wandering around the house and doing other stuff, I've been pretty happy with the Pandora stuff.

[scottmandue]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

Here's a nice cheap small PC that will fit in an entertainment center.

8 Ch audio and will take a 3.5 inch hardrive.

$140

$120 with a rebate.

mwave.com: MSI WIND PC intel 945gc chipset bare system w/ on board intel Atom 1.6ghz cpu (retail) ($15 Mail-In Manufacturer Rebate Available till 09/30/09)

What OS would you put on there?

And what software are you guys using to playback? Windows media player? I would like to create virtual music "channels" rock, jazz, classical, electronic, etc. to play.

I listen to Pandora at work (right now as a matter of fact) but to have that at home I would have to add some sort of high speed Internet (cutting satellite to try to cut expenses)