Compressed Music Formats

I'm considering storing my CD collection in a compressed format on a PC hard disk. Now, I've got just over 500 CDs and around 100 - 150 LPs. The reason for this is that I plan to go into IT contracting work, which would hopefully lead to work overseas. As a result, my main rig and music collection would have to remain in storage. So, armed with a laptop (already got one), plus an HDD in an external case, I plan to carry my music around the world with me. I've got a few questions

1) What would be the best format to use in terms of a compromise between reasonable quailty/effecient use of disk space. Also what sort of bit-rate?

2) What music management/ripping/encoding software would you recommend that supports the above suggested format?

3) Any suggestions for portable speaker setups? It wouldn't be practical to cart round an amp/speakers? Two channel is all that would be needed. No sub either.

4) What sort of hard drive size would I be looking at needing - based on current collection size + room for expansion. 80GB drives are around £45 and 120GB for about £58 locally from Novatech.

Many thanks for any advice on the above!

 

go and grab iTunes from the apple site. lovely piece of software.

i have my entire CD collection ripped using the AAC codec (mpeg4 audio) which is miles better than any mp3 codec i've used in the past. encoding at upwards of 192k will give you good results.


as for playback, if i were going mobile, i'd grab an M-Audio Sonica (USB soundcard) and a good pair of headphones (Senn HD650's or the like). i've no doubt the sonica would be miles better than the onboard sound on your lappy.


as for HD space, i'd say bigger is most deffinatelly better in this case - get the biggest you can afford/find.


hope this was helpful

 

As far as I know the .ogg format is better than the .mp3 format. Dunno about .mp4.

It can be played through the free winamp players.

 

If you look around you'll find all sorts of tweaky software and rarely used formats that will let you extract the Nth degree of quality from compression but you'll be fiddling with arcane settings and software that's barely more user friendly than most Unix command line tools for most of your time

If you want an easy life though just get iTunes and record everything at 192Kbps, VBR (variable bit rate) and normal stereo (not Joint Stereo). If you have enough disk space, then up the rate to 320Kbps instead of 192.

I expect PBirkett will be along shortly to take the other side of the argument

Michael.

 

Thanks - I was giving the iTunes route serious consideration. I assume it will support CDDB etc. Seems like the easy way to do it - I can't be bothered to faff around with endless settings etc - too many CDs to rip/encode!

Was wondering myself when PBirkett was going to show up

 

Thanks - I was giving the iTunes route serious consideration. I assume it will support CDDB etc. Seems like the easy way to do it - I can't be bothered to faff around with endless settings etc - too many CDs to rip/encode!

Was wondering myself when PBirkett was going to show up

 

I is here

If you arent bothered with widespread compatability, there is only one performance / efficiency winner - Musepack (MPC). Achieves amazing results at an average bitrate of 190-210 Kbit. Otherwise for compatability I'd suggest sticking with MP3.

If you are using MP3 and want an easy life go with iTunes. If you want to use MPC and Foobar, then use Exact Audio Copy with the Musepack codec.

I'd recommend a cheapish headphone rig. £100 for an X-Can, £60 for some Beyer DT531s, and perhaps a stereo link DAC, and your looking at £200 for a good quality computer sound.

120 Gb would hold approximately 1,000 CDs / Records at Variable Bitrate MP3 or MPC format, and leave you room for plenty of programs, and enough headroom to cover future needs for quite a while.

 

Just to answer the question, yes, iTunes does have CDDB support

Michael.

 

DON'T use i-Tunes .

The next thing you know.......you'll have an i-Pod.
It's just a slippery slope to portable heaven from there .

 

Cheers guys for all the advice and suggestions! I think I'll go with iTunes and about 192 kbps VBR for now.

I'm in the process of clearing off my 80GB drive - it's not completely full and mainly stored up with junk, so that I can get an idea of what sort of storage I'll need in the long term - I can just image the current 80GB to a new, bigger drive when the need arises.

The priority is CDs - due to the sheer amount and the simplicity. If I've got time, then I'll archive a selection of vinyl to MP3 later on.

No doubt I'll utimately end up with an iPod - I'd love one if I could afford it

 

80gb not enough ! I just upgrade today from a 30Gb drive to an 80Gb in order to rationalise everything and have enough space for iTunes stuff etc.

Installed WinXp from scratch and am gradually reinstalling all the apps I need and none of the junk I don't

Before I also had a messed up partition structure because I thought I still need to use WinMe for games (this was 3 years ago) and I also thought I might install Linux on another partitition

Now it's just 80gb all in one partition, all XP

Michael.

 

I've already got a 40GB boot drive and have moved all my other partitions - i.e. one data, the other for general storage/temporary space for video editing to it.

The 80GB now empty and will be used just for music. Ultimately, I'll buy an external FireWire / USB 2.0 enclosure for it - thus it's usable with my desktop/notebook PCs.

What I normally do is to install XP, download the 101 updates, install and patch all apps etc, tweak to my liking then take an image of the system partition with DriveImage. I then stash this onto a couple of DVD-RWs. Then if the sh-t hits the fan, I can be back up and running in about half hour or so

 

If I were you I would use the 'FLAC' format. It does not loss any sound quality at all. i.e. it is a lossless compression. It is not quite as small as MP3 but it is still hugely better than wav. A 4 min tune ends up at about 27mb

Maybe I would use a good compressed format for the not so commonly listened to stuff and them FLAC for my fav 100CDs or so.

Oh FLAC can be played in Winamp if you just install the correct plugin/codec thing. Download from http://flac.sourceforge.net

 

I use DVD-RWs for backups aswell but got a bit of a shock yesterday. Of course I backed up my important stuff before the rebuild (using Nero BackItUp). The backup verified OK aswell. Then I was pulling stuff back and to start with there was no problem but when I got to the really important stuff like my documents I was getting CRC errors and "file not accessible" errors all over :cry:

Fortunately I still had my old 30Gb drive untouched so I stuck it in as a 2nd IDE drive and am copying everything back from there...phew!

I might use DVD-R in the future as they're bound to be safer...

Michael.

 

Thanks for the FLAC suggestion - unfortunately, sizes are too large for my use, due to the sheer amount of albums I wish to store.

Haven't had any problems yet with DVD-RW. I was moving partitions over to my 40GB drive last night and have finally learnt my lesson - I 'copied' them first - always a safer bet, rather than moving them to save time and then find I've lost data.

Just looking at storage solutions for laptops at the moment - there is a USB cable that you can just plug a standard IDE drive into, without an external enclosure. One of them, plus a PCMCIA USB 2.0 card should do the trick - I can share that with my 80GB drive and NEC DVD +/- RW drive.