Uncompressed Digital Library
:: Wednesday, April 14th, 2004 @ 1:12:24 pm
:: Tags: Music
I just realized the other day that one 250GB disk is enough to hold my entire 400 CD music collection — uncompressed. The next time I am home for a long time (hah!), I’m going to build a music server and rip all my CDs in both WAV and MP3 formats. I’ll stick ‘em in a cheap $400 DELL box with IDE RAID and two mirrored 250GB drives (or whatever the largest size o’ the moment is), and stream them to cheapy client boxes with digital audio outs. With my nice DAC, it should sound heavenly (enough), and will be available all over the house. :)
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If you’re feeling really lazy, these people will rip your CDs for you: http://www.ripdigital.com/ :)
-Sha Sha
cool service, sha sha! i’m being unrealistic when i say that i will have time to rip 400 CDs. i’d much rather ship them off to a service like that.
but expensive!! i mean, not for what you get, but for doing it to so many CDs. ;)
You can even fit more if you use a lossless codec like flac or monkeys audio. I rip all my CDs to both 192kbps mp3’s (for my iPod) and monkeys audio.
For a decent CD ripper that supports alot of codes, checkout dbPowerAmp … and it’s FREE.
thanks for the rec, mark. a lossless codec would be a perfect solution.
Eric, Tom J. is doing that exact thing, only with a twist. He is building little holders next to every keypad in the house that will hold an iPod, and will connect it into the house audio system. That way you can let your iPod also act as a media server. Kinda cool.
I have been thinking of ripping my entire CD collection all over again, since 192kbps isn’t that great for the audiofile side of me.
Any ideas on what the best lossless format out there is?
Cool idea. I also like the simplicity of iPod as media server. Ripping twice would suck.
Just picked up a Inspiron 600M today. I’ll get to see my images and no need to timeshare laptops on dive trips :)
Dave - hopefully your Dell won’t give you the BSOD, as mine has started doing these past few weeks. Yargh.
get a Thinkpad T41.
:-)
A lot of the (legal) music traders out there use the SHN format. I see that there is a WinAmp plugin for it. Anyone know if there is wider support for it, or if there is another dominant lossless format or codec that people use?
Here’s a good comparison of lossless compression formates out there:
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/comparison.html
But what I want to know is if my mainstream media players will play those formats. ;)
BSOD?! That’s RFBS. NG. I will have my whizzy new laptop blessed by…a rabbi or something…
A question from the uninitiated like me: how can a compression format be lossless? Doesn’t compression, by definition = some data loss? Or in the case of audio, does lossless = can’t-hear-any-difference-between-compressed and-uncompressed-but-technically-there-is-some-data-loss?
Please explain.
compression does not implicitly imply loss of data. when you zip up your files and unzip them, you get the original bits back, and not some approximation, right?
Think of LZW compression, etc.
SHN is compatible with all operating systems. Mac OS 9 users can’t use FLAC, or APE either I think, so many traders still use SHN, although many use FLAC too. They don’t use APE because up until recently it hasn’t been Mac OS X compatible. You’ll find pirates using it for commercial CDs though. FLAC has more features than SHN and is generally easier to work with. You can get standalone gadgets that’ll play FLAC, but none that’ll do SHN. They’re listed on http://flac.sourceforge.net/ on the right hand side that says Hardware supporting FLAC.
Thanks, Michele.
I’m a mainstream sort of guy when dealing with computing. I think I’ll likely either stick with WAV files (hard drives are cheap!) or WMA’s lossless format. However, I’m not sure whether the digital audio client boxes these days support WAV files. I assume they do.
The RipDigital guys say that they will charge $0.50 extra per CD for another format, including WAV. So that’s $1.50 per CD for MP3 and WAV. Not so bad!
It’s actually remarkably easy and fast to rip your CD’s if you have a second computer.
One day I — inspired to rip all my CDs — I set up a spare computer in my cage [cubicle]. While doing my normal job on one computer, I just changed CD’s every three or four minutes (whenever it’s convenient) on the other computer… it becomes a subconsious motion after just a few CD’s.
I ripped about 75 a day (I don’t actually sit at my desk the whole day) without getting fired.
Hi, check out http://test.fycd.com - it’s a new service and it’s cheaper than the competition because the whole process is automated. The cost for 400 CDs with 192kbps MP3 AND WMA lossless is $405. If you hurry and you join the beta test program we’ll do it for $252.50. Those folks you mention above would want around $600.
So, whaddya say?