.flac files

[Beatmatcher247]

I just started messing around with .flac files and they sound amazing. If you haven't listened to a few of these yet, you are missing out. I can't believe I've waited so long!

 

[bikemig]

I got rid of my CD player some time ago and have never looked back. A computer playback system has CDs beat in terms of ease of play and the SQ is great using a lossless format such as flac or alac.

 

[Beatmatcher247]

now the only problem is buying 12 Terabytes worth of hard drives to store it all. lol

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

now the only problem is buying 12 Terabytes worth of hard drives to store it all. lol

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136764&nm_mc=OTC-Froogle&cm_mmc=OTC-Froogle-_-Hard+Drives-_-Western+Digital-_-22136764

or get it ready:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822186302&cm_re=12tb-_-22-186-302-_-Product

 

[Pyrrho]

...A computer playback system has CDs beat in terms of ease of play ...

When did it become difficult to put a CD in a CD player?

 

[bikemig]

It never has been difficult to put CDs into a CD player. But it is even easier to queu up digital files and it is a whole heck of a lot easier to manage a large collection of CD if they've been ripped. I'll take a database manager like itunes anyday over having to hunt for a CD.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Btw 12Tb worth of flacs is about 37000 of CDs

 

[sholling]

Btw 12Tb worth of flacs is about 37000 of CDs

Okay so just about enough for an average audioholic music collection.

Seriously a $50 1TB drive should easily hold a good 1500-2000CDs woth of flacs. I'll never go back to playing CDs just as I rarely read paper books anymore (Kindleholic/audiobookaholic). It's 2011 and CDs are soooooo 1980s tech.

 

[ChrisFox]

Okay so just about enough for an average audioholic music collection.

Seriously a $50 1TB drive should easily hold a good 1500-2000CDs woth of flacs. I'll never go back to playing CDs just as I rarely read paper books anymore (Kindleholic/audiobookaholic). It's 2011 and CDs are soooooo 1980s tech.

Agreed and though I'll never go back to straight CDs, having a hard drive fail and then have to re rip your whole collection for the 6th time is no fun.

 

[Beatmatcher247]

I like to host parties and like to queue up music and visualizations with winamp so i can enjoy myself. I wish itunes would let you put Flacs on your ipod. That possible?

 

[sholling]

Agreed and though I'll never go back to straight CDs, having a hard drive fail and then have to re rip your whole collection for the 6th time is no fun.

Been there, done that, have the dunce t-shirt. That's why you need backups. I store on my desktop PC and keep a copy there then use an application to copy any changes (new albums) to my server and to an external drive attached to a WDTV live. Double redundancy and both my main PC and server have RAID redundancy so I guess you could say I have quintuple redundancy. Eventually I'd like to start keeping a copy off site as well.

 

[bikemig]

My bank gave me a free safe deposit box. The only think I keep there is a portable hard drive, . I rotate it once a month.

 

[ratso]

I like to host parties and like to queue up music and visualizations with winamp so i can enjoy myself. I wish itunes would let you put Flacs on your ipod. That possible?

no. itunes does not do flac (although there are some workarounds). if you want lossless with itunes use apple lossless - sounds the same.

 

[its phillip]

Okay so just about enough for an average audioholic music collection.

Seriously a $50 1TB drive should easily hold a good 1500-2000CDs woth of flacs. I'll never go back to playing CDs just as I rarely read paper books anymore (Kindleholic/audiobookaholic). It's 2011 and CDs are soooooo 1980s tech.

Yeah...I have 47940 flac files according to foobar (unsure how many albums), and that's only 1.36 TB. If there were 10 tracks to an album, that would be 4794 albums, so 2000 albums should definitely fit on a 1TB drive. Big drives are the best though. I really really really need to build a box filled with 3TB drives or something

 

[Pyrrho]

It never has been difficult to put CDs into a CD player. But it is even easier to queu up digital files and it is a whole heck of a lot easier to manage a large collection of CD if they've been ripped. I'll take a database manager like itunes anyday over having to hunt for a CD.

The startup time for a CD player is faster than for a computer.

I am not, however, saying that there is anything wrong with putting everything on a hard drive if one wishes to do that, and there are obvious advantages to doing so. But I have never wanted to take the time to copy my 1500+ CD collection onto a hard drive, and I don't want to have to start up a computer just to play some music. And I currently don't have any way of putting my SACDs onto a hard drive, so I need to keep a player hooked up anyway (or get something that can copy the SACDs).

Also, I have my CDs categorized and alphabetized, so finding what I want is easy without a database.

But, again, I am not saying that there is anything wrong with someone putting it all on a hard drive if that is what the person wants to do.

 

[sholling]

The startup time for a CD player is faster than for a computer.

I am not, however, saying that there is anything wrong with putting everything on a hard drive if one wishes to do that, and there are obvious advantages to doing so. But I have never wanted to take the time to copy my 1500+ CD collection onto a hard drive, and I don't want to have to start up a computer just to play some music. And I currently don't have any way of putting my SACDs onto a hard drive, so I need to keep a player hooked up anyway (or get something that can copy the SACDs).

Also, I have my CDs categorized and alphabetized, so finding what I want is easy without a database.

But, again, I am not saying that there is anything wrong with someone putting it all on a hard drive if that is what the person wants to do.

The rip is reasonably painless with dBpowerAmp. Set the filing system (I use :\music\artist\album\) and the naming convention (I use artist\album\track number\title) and just feed it CDs. It will rip, automatically tag, and file the music just how you want them just as fast as your computer can rip. If you have 2 drives you can be loading one while the other rips, if you have 4 CD drives it will do it in batches although I haven't tried that feature.

My HTPC needs about less than 30sec from pushing the button to ready to play. The joys of a SSD boot drive. I used to leave my WDTV Live on with an external drive attached so that I had instant access but it didn't do 24bit flacs.

I don't know of anything that will rip SACDs yet but there is at least one product that will rip DVD-A into multichannel flacs.

To each their own though - it's a hobby. It sounds like you have a well organized collection and have the space.

 

[LAB3]

I have wanted to do this but I have such a large CD collection and I my PC is in the other room. Wife uses Laptop for work. I am not allowed to mess with it. But she does not touch my AVR or mess with me about where and what size speakers I have in the den. I am not very PC savy and do not know the difference in the two different files posted here. I use Itunes(Grand daughter showed me how) for my Ipod Classic 80 Gb that I plug in the Yamaha docking station and play some of muisc this way. I have just know started do this, what files am I loading from Itunes?? I know a rookie question.help a Grand Dad.

 

[bikemig]

I have wanted to do this but I have such a large CD collection and I my PC is in the other room. Wife uses Laptop for work. I am not allowed to mess with it. But she does not touch my AVR or mess with me about where and what size speakers I have in the den. I am not very PC savy and do not know the difference in the two different files posted here. I use Itunes(Grand daughter showed me how) for my Ipod Classic 80 Gb that I plug in the Yamaha docking station and play some of muisc this way. I have just know started do this, what files am I loading from Itunes?? I know a rookie question.help a Grand Dad.

I'd keep it real simple. Since you know how to use itunes, I would simply rip my CDs in apple lossless format (itunes does not play nicely with flac files). Go to apple preferences, click on general, and then import settings. Choose apple lossless and you are good to go. Insert a CD and it will rip. I would also click use error correction. And you are good to go. You can either use the ipod to playback your music via your AV receiver or you can use a streaming device, whichever works best for you.

 

[LAB3]

I'd keep it real simple. Since you know how to use itunes, I would simply rip my CDs in apple lossless format (itunes does not play nicely with flac files). Go to apple preferences, click on general, and then import settings. Choose apple lossless and you are good to go. Insert a CD and it will rip. I would also click use error correction. And you are good to go. You can either use the ipod to playback your music via your AV receiver or you can use a streaming device, whichever works best for you.

Thanks I have a lot to learn about this. I would like to have all my CD and my DVD movies on a PC hooked up to my 55" flatt screen and use it like my monitor for my PC. I was reading on a different site where a member has a PC next to his HT system and has a Large hard drive with all his family photos, movies and music on it.

 

[sholling]

The rip is reasonably painless with dBpowerAmp. Set the filing system (I use :\music\artist\album\) and the naming convention (I use artist\album\track number\title) and just feed it CDs. It will rip, automatically tag, and file the music just how you want them just as fast as your computer can rip. If you have 2 drives you can be loading one while the other rips, if you have 4 CD drives it will do it in batches although I haven't tried that feature.

I forgot to mention one other thing about dbPowerAmp and that's the batch converter. Once you've ripped your 1500 CD collection to ~15,000 flac files you can run the batch converter to make a second copy in the MP3 format of your choice and auto-tagged and filed how you like for your MP3 player. It takes a while but it's handy.