Creating a Digital MusicBox

[bersik]

Hello,

I am looking at taking all of my CD's and .mp3, .wav, etc songs and create a seachable music collection that is stored and backed-up on a hard drive or some similar type of hardware. I'm in need of some good suggestions.

1. Are they're any products (i.e. software) that help organazing, searching and ripping of music.

2. What about hardware? What are the best products for large volume of storage.

One thing that is important to me is maintaining quality of the CD's I have. Suggestions in regards to this would be greatly appreciated as well

Thanks!

 

[Pianoman84d]

Number of options out there

It will help people give suggestions if you tell us your price range. Here are some suggestions I have just in general.

1. Download iTunes (make sure you set the import settings to import songs using Apple Lossless and use error correction when reading CDs). depending on your hard drive space, you can just have them on your computer.

If you need more storage, add an external hard drive

price= iTunes is free. hard drive price depends on how much you spend.

2. Do the above and use a squeezebox (www.slimdevices dot com) to get your music from your computer to your stereo. add $299 or $250 depending on which squeezebox model you get. There is a review of this on Audioholics and Enjoythemusic.com to name a few.

3. Do #1 and use an Olive Sonata (www.Olive dot com) this device looks similar to a squeezebox but comes in at $199. This is not shipping until Sept.

4. Buy something like an Olive Symphony which will import and store CDs for you without putting them on your computer. It connects to your stereo like a CD player or DVD player and is supposed to have very good sound. See the review at Stereophile.

5. Thats all I can think of at the moment. let us know any questions you have.

 

[sfurules]

Here we go

1. Yes, there are many many many many programs that you can use to rip your music. Since you have used the correct nomenclature I assume you will be familier with the names. iTunes is growing very popular, even with those that use windows primarily. The caveat with iTunes is that the songs are ripped to .ACC format by default. This is a great compression scheme with is better than .OCC and MP3 and WMA and blah blah blah. The problem is that the ONLY program that can play .ACC is iTunes. Be prepared to use iTunes for awhile if you choose that option (although it appears that apple is being pressured into making changes to that....sadly) Although some may groan, Windows Media Player does a fine job of ripping music as well. I would be sure to mess with the settings to assure that the compresion is as lossless as possible. Others include Winamp, Jukebox (I suspect spyware of Jukebox though) and Lame (an open source product....if you want to stick it to "the man"). Lame is very fast and good, but not directly supported. As far as I am concerned (and I am a microsoft guy), iTunes is the best product out there. Especially for searching out your songs once compiled. Also....these are all free programs to use. DO NOT PAY MONEY FOR A PROGRAM THAT DOES THIS STUFF!

2. As far as hardware goes, we live in a very happy time. Hard Drives are becoming very inexpensive nowadays, and that is the best way to do it if I were you (I am me....and that is how I have it done it). I am 26, have 2 children, a mortgage....whatever, and I still have been able to afford 500 Gigabytes of storage for my computer without much difficulty. My favorite site for deals is Http://www.spoofee.com . Sometimes is has AMAZING deals on things....just be a little patient. For about 350 dollars and some research (or be a dork like me) you could have a terabyte of information set up on a RAID 1 format.....sweet........ Now, regarding your need for perfect sound, you might consider getting alot of storage and then using a lossless format for your music (.WAV). Unfortunatly, .ACC and the others are about one 10th the size of .WAV formated sound. It is up to you.

Now, there is no point in having lossless formats and lots of storage if you don't get the signal to your equipment in a good fashion. Buy a good sound card. They are about 100 bucks for one that will fit your needs. Don't go over the top unless are plan on openeing up a recording studio in your house. Spoofee is a great place for deals on that also.

Finally, do some research. I doubt you have bought any of your other equipment without checking it out first. DO the same for the programs as well as hardware. When I research this stuff I use http://www.techreport.com They are the audioholics.com of computer geekery.

One last thing. Check spoofee and get some more optical drives (cd/dvd players/burners) for your computer. You will want them when you start with the ripping of the tunage

 

[Tom Andry]

4. Buy something like an Olive Symphony which will import and store CDs for you without putting them on your computer. It connects to your stereo like a CD player or DVD player and is supposed to have very good sound. See the review at Stereophile.

Orrrrrrrrrrrrrrr you can read the review right here on this website.

 

[Pianoman84d]

To clarify.

The website for Olive products is www.olive.us sorry.

Also, iTunes is the most user friendly in my experience. And if you set it to import in lossless, you have outstanding quality.