Daily Dish of Dominey Design
{  October 17, 2005  }

Rip and Goodbye

cd shelves I started working on a new project this past weekend. Not a freelance design gig or anything web related, but something bigger, more time consuming, and potentially overwhelming -- the complete dissolution of my library of compact discs.

For most 'normal' people this wouldn't be a big deal, but I'm out of the ordinary. I worked in the music business for all of the late 90s, and was already a big music collector before then. I hosted a public radio show, interviewed artists for newspapers, wrote record reviews, worked part time in a specialty record shop, briefly managed a band, and when the local public radio station in Charleston, SC (WSCI) dissolved their full time staff, I was offered any CD from their priceless library. Myself and a few other DJs carted off as much as we could handle. Who knows what happened to the rest.

By the turn of the century I had thousands of CDs in a small one bedroom apartment. They were in piles on the floor, on bookshelves, in the kitchen, on top of the TV, in the unused fireplace, in boxes in the closet...you name it, a jewel case was probably on top of it.

The scary part? I loved it. The CDs were a never ending source of creative inspiration when planning out my next radio show. I would spend hours popping CDs in and out of the tray finding the right track to follow, say, a traditional Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Qawwali song (which often worked scarily well with American gospel), or Japanese pop like Cornelius. It was an adventure of sorts -- feeling out the BPM, the atmosphere -- and trying to come up with a similar, yet unexpected track to play next. For all intents and purposes, my love for making mixed cassette tapes in high school had turned into a full time job. It was also completely overwhelming.

So I gave it all up. I sold at least a thousand CDs on ebay before leaving town, but the vast majority moved to Atlanta with me in 2000. Adamant that I wouldn't live like that again, a family friend built custom CD shelves which could hold nearly 4,000 jewel cases. I packed it full, and again sold the excess.

And then came iTunes.

Half a decade later, I never listen to CDs anymore. It's nothing but MP3s. I can't remember the last time I placed a CD in a real CD player. The reason? It's nearly impossible to find anything. With iTunes, an artist, album or song is always a search box away. On the shelves, I could spend thirty minutes with my head turned sideways looking for an album. It's just not worth it.

So there they sit -- consuming space, visual attention, and waiting to again be packed in boxes and schlepped to a new abode. Or so they think.

I've devised an ambitions goal -- to rid myself of nearly every CD I own except for a 'core' of around 25-50 discs. And how do I judge which discs to keep? It's a gut thing. If I feel nothing for the disc, it's gone. If I know its good and have some sentimental attachment, I rip it to a very quality MP3 file. If, however, it's a disc with a powerful emotional response, I keep it.

Once all is said and done I will have an external 500GB hard drive full of the best music I acquired from the past 10 years of my life. That's an awesome mental picture when you wrap your ears around it. iTunes could playback on shuffle, twenty-four hours a day, and it would take months for you to hear the same song twice (if you have a 'smart' shuffle playlist set up, of course). And anytime a mood strikes, you can build an instant playlist.

This goal is not without caveats. One, it'll take a lot of time to organize, rip, and sell them all. Two, I run the risk of hard drive failure (unless of course I buy a matching drive that does nothing but back up the other one). Three, in the same vein of LP lovers who covet album art, there's something to be said for liner notes, cover art, and of course all that wonderful typography.

But is all that enough to sit on all that stuff, for years and years? Am I all that different from those crazy hoarders you see on day time TV with apartments full of pizza boxes and magazines? Okay, I'm not that crazy, but the point remains. Any pile of stuff that large and extensive occupies space and prevents you from doing anything else with it. It's noisy, convoluted, and unwieldy. And that's why it has to go.

Comments

I too am in the process of converting all my music and there are two things which I would strongly advise: 1). Rip to the best quality you can afford (i.e. have disk space for). This seems obvious, but judging from not just my own experience isn't. and 2). As per last but 1 para, a matching hard drive (for backup) is essential, especially if your collection is as important as Todd's (and mine :).

Posted by: David at October 17, 2005 8:17 PM

Any reason to not just ship your CDs off to one of those places that'll do hifi rips for you?

Posted by: David at October 17, 2005 8:22 PM

I am doing nearly the exact same thing. (850ish CDs ripped, 3,000ish to go) To be safe I spent a reasonable amount on two USB 2.0 external drives and got myself a Linksys NSLU2 to hook them up to. Using the iTunes Library Manager I have my iTunes library redirected to one of the drives.

I have the NSLU2 set to back up the first drive to the second drive once a week. (Poor man's RAID)

An added bonus to this setup is that I can have multiple computers access the same iTunes Library (one at a time, of course) that way my wife's laptop can be employed to rip CDs whilst I work. It all works well for me and, because of the backup, I sleep a little easier.

Posted by: Jason at October 17, 2005 8:29 PM

If you're an audiophile (and judging by your history, I'd say you are), I'd say rip them to Apple Lossless format, so as not to lose any quality in the deal. Then you can burn a new disc should the need arise, and not have lost anything in the exchange.

I keep telling myself I'm going to do this... but I'm still in the pack rat phase of my music life...

Posted by: gb at October 17, 2005 8:29 PM

You might want to consider using a lossless format like FLAC. That way you rip everything once and have a perfect digital copy that you can play locally or transcode as much as you want while keeping the exact original copy.

Lossless does yield much bigger files but with storeage as cheap as it is, the tradeoff is worth it in the long run.

Posted by: Andrew at October 17, 2005 8:31 PM

In preferences under import
On CD Insert: Import Songs and Eject

Does what it says, and makes life so much easier. Spend the next few days watching for your machine to spit out a CD and then replacing it with the next CD. 196 kbps AAC or higher sounds really nice (I really wish the iTunes store would bump up to 196).

Posted by: Alexis at October 17, 2005 8:32 PM

I'm anxious to read the unfolding saga this is sure to be. I don't have nearly the same size library but 50 gig's according to iTunes right now 27,7 days of music. It's been a labor of love to say the least.

I would definitely recommend RAID 0/1/5 for backup purposes. I've found that keeping all the cover art, lyrics, etc is very time consuming. In addition, the smart search within iTunes is not quite enough once you've amassed a library of that size either.

Posted by: Keith Ellis at October 17, 2005 8:34 PM

I did the same thing a year or so ago (albeit with only a few hundred CDs) and I've never regretted it. I kept the 50 or so discs that I really cared about, or that were rare or whatever, but the bulk of my collection got sold to the local used record shop.

I did back everything up first, in case of regret. Ripped to Apple's Lossless codec, a DVD will hold more than a dozen CDs.

Posted by: Feaverish at October 17, 2005 8:48 PM

I have the same problem, 'cept my vice was vinyl. Loads of it. 3000+ records. Try moving that many, from apartment to apartment, that is some serious weight and bulk. now they sit, unused in my house in LA, with no shot in hell of making the move to mexico, where I'm currently living (and have no plans of going back). I'd say a 70% can be found on mp3 and 20% is kruft, but there's that magic 10% that never made it to cd and most definitely never made it to mp3. This is a daunting task though, even at 300 records, that's a significant amount of time, I'll need to spend converting the sounds to mp3. I just don't have the time...

Posted by: Ed Fladung at October 17, 2005 8:50 PM

I recommend a program called Tag&Rename for automatic tagging of files with information from Amazon.com. It does album covers, too! It's a handy little program.

Posted by: Chuck at October 17, 2005 9:08 PM

I'm a sucker for sentiment. I'd probably get rid of the jewel, but only after I salvage the CD & liner notes. Then I would put them in a nice big gazillion-capacity CD sleeve album. It's always nice to look at the cover art / lyrics / credits while listening to the corresponding CD.

Posted by: Brownspank at October 17, 2005 10:18 PM

I have the NSLU2 set to back up the first drive to the second drive once a week. (Poor man's RAID)

I bought a RAID controller card for about $20 at newegg, and it's been working great in my work server. Raid-1, mirroring. (Note: using this in a windows only enviroment)

Posted by: cameron aka desk003 at October 17, 2005 10:45 PM

In similar shoes. Radio station employee through high school and college and worked at a record store for 7 years.

I have well over 2,000 CDs and probably half of that would be worth ripping. However, I could never sell the discs. I would box them up and store them in my basement or attic just in case.

If I ever win some cash, I'd like to hire someone to convert my record collection. It's such a pain to convert and to be honest easier just to download the album on torrent or soulseek. I did rip all my singles & 7''s and boxed those up.

Would be cool to tie in the ripping of all my discs into Delicious Library as well. Just for the illusion of a cd shelf!

Maybe I could donate all my CD's to my local library. That way everyone wins.

You got me thinking...

Posted by: Jim Renaud at October 18, 2005 12:57 AM

Keep the CDs in folders (takes much less space, I moved 600+ CDs from Europe to the US this way). They will serve as evidence of right to use when the RIAA gestapo knocks at your door.

I am in my own ripping process to Apple Lossless (about 60% done, in the middle of Prokofiev). The hardest part in the process is metadata: song titles, artists, and so on. CDDB is ridiculously uneven in this regard, e.g. people who put the song name in the artist field. Locating scanned cover art is also hard, since my jewel boxes and liners are mouldering away in a cellar in France.

To speed up the process of cleaning up CDDB metadata, I have a series of AppleScript macros to do basic things like swap artist and song name, strip numbers from tracks, renumber tracks, and so on. Google "iTunes Applescript" to see Dave's collection of useful scripts for iTunes, they are a real time saver. I just wish I had thought about that before I reached the 400+ ripped CDs mark...

Posted by: Fazal Majid at October 18, 2005 1:50 AM

I have the same issue. If I only knew what format (mp3, AAC, etc) would give me the best sound. I worked at record shops in my 20s and amassed a lot of Blue Note CDs. Now with the label remastering my whole collection, I think its time I rip my CDs to iTunes. Burn backups to Dual Layer DVDs and donate my beloved CDs to a public library as someone mentioned earlier.

Posted by: Ben Ogoe at October 18, 2005 1:54 AM

For those CDs that you do hang on to, you can keep them in these nifty sleeves, which take up 25% of the space of jewelboxes:

I first read about these on Alex Ross's blog (music critic for the New Yorker); he owns "probably more than 10,000" CDs:

Posted by: brad at October 18, 2005 7:03 AM

I've also fallen in love with having my CD collection on iTunes. But when I'm done I'll be stashing my CDs under my basement steps, not selling them. Not because I love the physical CDs, but because I think the musicians have a right to be paid for their work.

I'm not an absolutist. I bought U2's Joshua Tree on vinyl. But I made a copy of my brother's CD when he bought it. I paid U2 for the right to listen the the songs once, I don't feel like I need to pay them twice. But if I rip "Achtung Baby" and then I sell my CD on eBay then U2's been paid once for two people owning one CD. And who's to say the buyer won't turn around and do the same thing? So U2 gets paid once for two, three or more people having access to "Achtung Baby."

I think I owe it to U2 to stash all my ripped CDs under my steps. And I especially owe it to the musicians who haven't made as much money as U2. The marginal groups are the ones who will really feel the effects of the "rip - sell - rip - sell" cycle.

Todd: you weren't happy a while back when Harlan Williams ripped off your site design. I'm not sure how selling your ripped CDs is any different. Artists need to be paid for their work.

Posted by: Craig Ramsdell at October 18, 2005 8:59 AM

Well, we did exactly this back in February, and spent some time considering th ethics of selling 650 CDs once we've extracted the data in Apple Lossless. Bought a cheap 300GB drive at Fry's, stuck it into a cheap USB 2.0 enclosure, attached that to our Mac Mini/media center.
It just didn't seem right to sell the originals--not to mention a hassle--so we packed them in several bankers boxes and hauled them from Atlanta to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and loaned them to some media- and music-deprived friends who were suffering a brutal winter and said "would you hold onto these for us for say, 10-15 years? And feel free to listen to any of them you'd like." So they're not gathering dust, but we're not profiting from them.

Posted by: jcburns at October 18, 2005 9:20 AM

Of course you all know that it is illegal to rip and then sell your CDs. And of course you know that despite what the RIAA tells you, artists do benefit from this.

I would like to thank Alexis for pointing out the iTunes import and eject feature. I only have 500 more CD's to go, but this is a welcome feature better late than never.

Back up often.

Posted by: M.e. at October 18, 2005 9:46 AM

Great idea. The inevitable next step is-- where do you host the music from? For the past year I've had the music served out of my laptop, sent wirelessly to an Airport Express. Works fairly well, except that inevitably the somewhat overzealous Powerbook's fan kicks in and the whole Erik Satie vibe is lost.

Now I'm thinking of dedicating a Mac Mini or buying an eBay castoff as a music server (note I didn't say a "media center", because ripping videos is not something I feel the urge to do). If I want to go headless I can VNC to the music server and put the whole mess into a closet. And then there's a simpler solution of just getting the new universal dock and remote for my iPod, which will work well but I'll have to sacrifice the iTunes interface.

Choices, choices.

Posted by: John at October 18, 2005 10:14 AM

Lots of great suggestions in this comment thread -- thanks everyone.

One of the things I'm hoping to find down the road is a stereo receiver that can interface directly with the 500GB hard drive (which has both Firewire and USB 2), read the data off of it, and offer an iPod-like display for selecting music.

Something *close* exists with this TEAC. (Check out that USB port on the front).

The hard drive would also be plugged into my G5 where I could add / manage music when need be.

Airport Express is great, but it soaks up bandwidth, which could be a problem if I were working at the same time. That's why a direct digital link would be best.

If anyone has thoughts (or success stories) with that idea, do tell!

Posted by: Todd Dominey at October 18, 2005 10:54 AM

i ripped my collection to my harddrive about a year and a half ago. it took somewhere in the realm of 6 months to do the 1,000ish cds i've got. i wasn't doing it full-time but after the first couple hundred it became a real drag. i still have all my vinyl to do as well. i did keep all my cds largely because that's the type of person i am. the point about the riaa is a valid one, but they will only come knocking if you are putting them up on a file sharing network.

Posted by: mosquito at October 18, 2005 11:19 AM

Though saving space sounds great, let's not forget that we took an audio hit going from LP to CD and now we're compressing the information even more. No matter what rate you rip MP3s at, they will never sound as good as a CD which in turn will not sound as good as an audiphile lp. Play a CD and an MP3 through a good system, and the difference will be obvious.

Posted by: Alan at October 18, 2005 11:47 AM

Do you ever feel like all of your eggs are in one basket?

Posted by: ton at October 18, 2005 11:47 AM

I can see how it can be tempting to digitize all your music in your situation. I've also come to gather a lot of LPs and CDs as a collector for more than 15 years.

Last year, I decided to upgrade my "big box" system to something more worthy of the audiophile knowledge and interest I've gathered over the years. Namely, NAD and Pro-Ject components and Energy speakers. I have iTunes connected to this system as well, and though I was a little reluctant I threw a NAD CD player in there just for kicks. The few times I've put a CD on this system, though, and making sonic comparisons with iTunes's output, do remind me why I'm not drinking the MP3 Kool-Aid as a permanent means of listening to music. The sound I get from a CD or LP on my system boasts levels of depth, soundstage and detail that are simply not there on most MP3s or AACs. It's like if I had to settle for a McD's value meal when I could actually have sushi for lunch.

While the convenience of digitizing any music collection cannot be denied, it is rather a huge sonic step backwards if you ask me. Unfortunately, few people other than us audio nuts care about this.

Posted by: beto at October 18, 2005 12:30 PM

Curiously, this is the first time I've read of such a conversion where people have stepped up and pointed out the legalities of this; even a local newspaper advocated the move, without pointing out that it's no longer 'fair use' once you don't own the original.

For the quality arguments, however, that's been pretty much bunk for years now. Remember CDs are also digital .. how much of that quality you wish to keep, is purely up to how much disk space you're willing to buy. Lossless codecs such as apple's, flac, ape, etc will preserve everything on the CD

Posted by: Shaun at October 18, 2005 1:00 PM

making sonic comparisons with iTunes's output, do remind me why I'm not drinking the MP3 Kool-Aid as a permanent means of listening to music

That was the point I was about to make. I'm slowly but surely ripping all my CDs, but only for background listening when I'm working, and for iPod use, but I'm keeping the original discs. Even to my half-deafened ears, there's just no way MP3 or AAC are good enough for those times when you want to sit down and really, properly listen to music (nor are a lot of CDs, but that's another story). So, I'd say rip to a lossless format, and/or keep the original CDs, packed tight sans jewel boxes.

(Disclaimer: I moved house this year in order to have an extra room for my vinyl to live in, so I may not be the best person to listen to on this topic!)

Posted by: Jack Mottram [TypeKey Profile Page] at October 18, 2005 1:01 PM

I currently have about 186GB of music, using iTunes as the library manager. I will warn you that at that volume of music, iTunes starts to get a bit sluggish. It's probably worse over a network drive. Specifically, when moving down a long list of songs (say when browsing a genre), it sometimes pauses between refreshing the window. Other times it can take a while to start a song. And startup takes quite a bit longer than normal.
Search is still pretty fast, though. Slower than instant on a smaller library, but fast.

Posted by: Andrew at October 18, 2005 2:20 PM

Of course you all know that it is illegal to rip and then sell your CDs. And of course you know that despite what the RIAA tells you, artists do benefit from this.

I'm not sure that I agree. Is it truly documented that your license to use that music is tied physically to the CD media? If we can assume Todd bought and or otherwise legally obtained all of the CDs then is it not his right to listen to and store them in the manner of his choosing? Where does it say that he loes the right to listen to that music once he no longer owns the CD? What if he lost or broke a CD?

I'm not sure this issue is as black and white as the commenter asserts.

Posted by: Jason Zimdars at October 18, 2005 2:45 PM

If you go digital with your music, do think digital for your CD art and liner notes, as well. Scan the text directly into a PDF format, OCR for searchablility, and then create a database of your files to keep track of everything. Tedious, yes, but heck, I do it for a living and there is nothing quite so satisfying as having it all, yet not having it all! :-)

Posted by: Teresa at October 18, 2005 2:54 PM

Is it truly documented that your license to use that music is tied physically to the CD media? If we can assume Todd bought and or otherwise legally obtained all of the CDs then is it not his right to listen to and store them in the manner of his choosing?

I think he does have the right to listen and store his legally obtained CDs in a manner of his own choosing. Right now I listen to my MP3s at my computer through iTunes, in my car on CDs and while cutting my grass with my iPod. I'm not sure the RIAA would agree with me doing that, but it strikes me as fair to both me and the musicians.

I would also agree that Todd can store his CDs anywhere he wants. I'm arguing that he can't sell them to someone else as a storage option. How many people are going to buy a used CD on eBay so they can store it for Todd?

Where does it say that he looses the right to listen to that music once he no longer owns the CD? What if he lost or broke a CD?

I don't think Todd would lose the right to listen to legally obtained music if he lost or broke a CD. I think anyone looses the right to listen to legally obtained music when they sell or give away the CD to someone who will obviously listen to the CD.

Posted by: Craig Ramsdell at October 18, 2005 4:09 PM

i know i read somewhere (and it might of been riaa backed) but i think it is essentially that if you physically own the material, you can put it on your hard drive, etc. however, i don't think you can sell the cd and still maintain that right. the reason i say that is think of it in terms of purchasing a cd, ripping it to your harddrive, then returning it for a refund. i think this is the reason most places are no longer allowing cds to be returned where the wrapping has been removed. you are in "grey" area when you start talking about the aspect of a radio station, or a magazine for that matter, providing you the cds for multiple reasons. the largest being that they were provided for promotional use only (sometimes they punch a hole in the upc, stamp the cover, or any number of things or nothing at all). in those cases *technically* the label can request it back. now we know there is no way they are going to do this, but it further complicates the matters.

as for the quality, it is interesting to note that while the industry has progressed steadily "uphill" in terms of better quality (forget vinyl and comparing it to tapes, and cds, etc i'm talking about the progression from cd to dvd), the consumer has consistently put convience ahead of quality. that's where the record execs where caught with their pants down and all of a sudden the distribution models they had ceased to function. there is a difference between the actual material and what it sounds like with any and all compression settings. now granted i have a home studio for making music so i'm obviously not the typical consumer. but the quality argument is valid. people can say all day long that you can't hear the difference, but you can. it's a matter of what you listen to it on.

but i ripped them all to mp3s because let's face it, when i'm driving to work every day on 285 at 75mph (i go the opposite way of traffic) the wind noise effectively destroys the quality of whatever i listen to, so convience takes prescedence. in that regard i am typical, but i refuse to purchase through itunes. if i like the samples, i'll buy the cd. that's just how i am though.

Posted by: mosquito at October 18, 2005 7:14 PM

I'm unclear: Are you only ripping 50-100 CDs or are you ripping all of the CDs you have?

Physical content management, which most of the comments I've read seem to be about, is interesting, but technology changes so fast, I don't worry about it too much. I struggle more with what to keep. If I've bought an album and really only like a couple of songs (no longer a problem with iTMS) do I keep the whole album. On the one hand I have the drive space, but it makes shuffle less enjoyable and making great playlists less enjoyable etc. On the other hand, I don't want to through out music I've paid for nor do I want to lose songs that maybe I wasn't in the mood for at the time of deletion but now my interests have changed.

Guidelines for these sort of issues is what I struggle with more than RAID or Airport Express (which I am not sure you would use the whole bandwith of 802.11g to notice streaming some music slowdown, but that is just a guess).

Posted by: Lekun at October 18, 2005 9:15 PM

You know this seems to also represents a shift in your thinking about music too. Sounds like you used to "listen" to music. Remember sitting down and really "hearing" that cool new record you bought? Looking at the cover/liner notes?

For alot of folks now - it seems music is relegated to background music and "shuffle" play.

Posted by: Dean at October 19, 2005 8:36 AM

I started doing this about 2 years ago, when Apple first introduced the AAC format to iTunes on Windows. It was an ideal application to begin archiving the masses of CDs I had.

As of now, I have 27,000 tracks on iTunes which are fully tagged. I recently culled 5,000 tracks from my digital library as I felt that my musical tastes had moved on somewhat.

I stream the music wireliessly all over the house using a ROKU SOUNDBRIDGE, which decodes the AAC files on the fly and provides me with a great remote interface to the library.

http://www.rokulabs.com

Posted by: Paul Livingstone at October 20, 2005 5:14 AM

As someone who's already gone through the process of ripping and storing my CD's, let me just reiterate how ESSENTIAL it is to have some sort of RAID setup, even if it's manual.

Did I mention that my external harddrive recently ate itself? Yea, I probably should have put that in here somewhere....

Posted by: wah at October 20, 2005 5:51 PM

YO TODD,

DO NOT SELL those CDs!!!!!!!!! They are your backup plan in case something goes wrong or if you have to prove ownership of the individual digital track.

Get maximum size Case-Logic organizers out of fabric material (not the leather ones) and throw away all the jewel cases. Keep all the artwork in one box. You should be able to fit 200 or 250 CDs in one of those maximum size organizers. So for 4000 CDs that's about 16 fairly slim, black organizers. That does not take up too much room and they stack nicely on top of each other, or vanish into a couple of boxes.

I personally own only about 400 electronica CDs, which did start to get on my nerves a couple of years ago. So that's the route that I took. I DJed with Pioneer CD players, doing mostly ambient sound. Now I use Traktor and Ableton Live on a Notebook. Of course I use iTunes for everything.

Love your site - ttyl, Christof

Posted by: Christof at October 22, 2005 12:02 AM

You are indeed a brave man. That said, this is coming from someone who still buys vinyl. I am (and always will be) of the opinion that some records just sound better on a good old turntable .. like Aretha Franklin's Spirit In The Dark or any Rolling Stones.

Posted by: starbody at October 22, 2005 7:53 PM

Please donate your CDs to your local public library. Its the best way to share music.

I recently ripped my CD collection and donated all the cds to the library. Since then I have noticed more collections turning up there and have borrowed a few.

Its a wonderful way to share music and to keep things free... legally!

Posted by: Kuan at October 24, 2005 2:12 PM

I've got too much vinyl (and a few hundred MCs) so there is no chance that I will ever go fully digital. Since I've got the space and the vinyl sounds better I've simply decided that life is too short for such an excersise.

There are "issues" with the iTunes MP3 encoder, not sure what it is but a track like "Black Sheets of Rain"/Bob Mould simply sounds wrong even at high bitrates. Before you start ripping listen to some of your favourite tracks with headphones on your hifi and through your computer/iPod setup. If it doesn't sound right - go lossless (or look at other software for doing the MP3 encoding, adds an extra step though). Then again sound quality might not be an issue for you?

Posted by: Halvard Halvorsen at October 25, 2005 12:07 PM

I've got an ipod and am all for mp3's, but I don't think I could ever bring myself to get rid of my cd collection. I haven't got a massive one (2-300) but its the artwork that i would miss the most. Buying an album, be it CD or vinyl, is all part of the experience of the record. The packaging, the inserts... i'd really miss having that complete package that so many people have been involved in to produce.
But that’s just me...

Posted by: Aaron at October 26, 2005 8:23 PM

Todd,

I haven't read everyone's replies, so someone else may have said this already. It's all well and good to have a back up drive in case of hard drive failure, but you also need to keep your backup drive in an entirely different location from your main one. I have a portable drive that usually stays at work - I do backups at work and take the laptop home. In the event of fire, flood or who knows what else, I won't lose both drives.

In response to someone else's comment about FLAC - I don't think there's any way of getting iTunes to play that format, which would be useless for Todd.

Posted by: Ian Lloyd at October 28, 2005 4:31 AM

Let me just say, your music collection seems more extensive than mine, and I have tons of music. Forget Lossless formats, unless your willing to have four or five 500GB drives, and still no data back-up.

Unless you have top off the line speakers, you'll not be able to tell the difference after 192kbs. With the exception of some vocals.

My thoughts from my own music collection lead me to make the following decisions:

(1) Turn on, and leave set, the import & eject option in iTunes. Its the biggest time saver in the world, and will allow you to converts at random through-out the day;

(2) If you plan on getting rid of the original media, back-up, back-up, back-up. I have two LaCie 250GB FireWire drives. One who's sole purpose is to back-up the other. I also have 2 40GB iPods, and an iPod nano. The nano is my main iPod. Of the 40GB iPods one has my favorite music, the other has podcast, audiobooks, and comedy albums.

(3) Besides from your absolute favorites, you might also want to keep box sets. I had a number of them, and decided, that they were worth the storage required.

I'm hoping to add two 500GB drives to my system, one for music, and one for music backup. I also need a larger drive for TV shows, but I don't worry about backing those up.

Also, if your main computer is a laptop, like mine, then ChronoSync is a great tool. I've set-up a script that transfers all my iTMS purchased music to my Music drive, whenever I plug-in the firewire drive. So I don't have to remember to run a script or to transfer files or anything like that.

Posted by: allgood2 at October 28, 2005 12:29 PM

Really try Tag&Rename for automatic tagging of files with information from Amazon.com. It'll make your life better =) It's a handy little program.

Posted by: John Beale at October 30, 2005 8:59 AM

I started a similar project about two years ago, though on a smaller scale (~1500 CDs). Soon after finishing, the Maxtor Firewire drive I was storing them on died. Unfortunately, I had no backup. Luckily, I hadn't gotten rid of the CDs yet. So I bought some new internal drives and an external 500GB La Cie drive, and ripped all of the discs again. Basically the big drive is a backup of the the two internal drives. It died about two months ago, and I spent a couple of nervous weeks waiting for a replacement, fearing one or both of the internal drives would fail. Luckily, they haven't (yet).

I still think there's a certain point at which you can't manage so many physical albums, but having to rely on an external drive or two as your source for all of your music can be very scary. Especially once you've had two drives die within a year. Good luck.

Posted by: Alec Riedl at November 1, 2005 10:05 AM

I also had a Maxtor Firewire drive crap out on me, taking with it 1,500 CDs (the drive itself was a replacement for a flaky Que M3 which was the first one used when I started ripping my CDs in February, 2002). Fortunately I had a second, hard drive-based backup by that time, but I've definitely been turned off Maxtor for life. To be fair, music is always playing from the computer so the drive is hit constantly every few seconds, but I'd still expect more than a year out of the thing.

Now the main drive is a 250 gig Western Digital that I put in an external Firewire case, backed up to an internal WD drive with an offsite backup to DVD and the original CDs available if worse comes to worse (though the thought of grabbing a CD from the "A"s and ripping the entire set again -- especially after nearly four years of just the incremental ripping of new CDs -- makes me want to curl up in the fetal position under my desk).

Posted by: Rob at November 7, 2005 4:48 AM

So far, so good. Based on the tips in this thread I picked up an extra Lacie 500GB big disk and connected it to the other one over Firewire 800. Backups are handled daily by the excellent Deja Vu preference pane for OS X.

The rip-and-eject mode in iTunes is fantastic. Every now and then the CDDB info gets a little funky, but I can go through a stack of CDs much faster than before.

Oh, and I sold my CD shelves (sob!) on Craig's List to a local guy in Atlanta who, of course, used to be a radio DJ as well. All of it is boxed up, and I'm tackling one box at a time until they are all gone. It will take a *long* time, I'm sure, but I'll get there eventually.

Posted by: Todd Dominey at November 8, 2005 1:55 PM

500GB, that's huge? What the mp3 bit rate you use? 196Kbps? Still 5MB per song and you got 10k songs?

Posted by: yuga at November 15, 2005 12:53 AM

I did this exact thing. I burned over 2000 CD's to a big 200GB drive and then SOLD all of them and made enough money selling them to buy myself a new laptop.

Now if I could only rid myself of all the DVDs.

Posted by: Pauly D at November 20, 2005 10:39 PM

I could not agree more with my collection of CDs... sitting in their tower, clinging to relevancy... as I am ripping out the good songs and throwing away jewelboxes and all the rest. Yes, I'll keep 25 or so, (It's against the law in some places to throw away "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis or "Sgt. Pepper") but they are GONE by 2006 for GOOD.

Posted by: Mike Harmanos at November 22, 2005 1:12 PM

ive been doing some research and have come across this excellent combo that you guys may be interested in:

nas (network area storage)
ReadyNAS X6
http://www.infrant.com/

basically a raid 5 box that can run slimserve, and store 1.6 terabytes of flac goodness.

http://www.slimdevices.com/

plug this little beaut into your linein and wirelessly play directly from the nas drive (no noisey computer!!!)

trust me, if your system is anything but a clock radio you will appreciate a lossless archive, if not now, 5 years from now.

i mean youve already got a $10000 investment in the cd's why reduce that to $11. you owe it to the music to back that stuff up properly.

my setup is due next week, i'll write more if anyone is interested.

Posted by: sam c at November 27, 2005 2:58 PM

Good luck!! and happy transfering

Posted by: Paul at November 28, 2005 5:55 PM

I'm a fella of yours in CD ripping/selling/goodbye... and I do agree it's a pleasure to think about this :)

Posted by: Gianluca at December 2, 2005 6:09 AM

I’m a sucker for sentiment. I’d probably get rid of the jewel, but only after I salvage the CD & liner notes. Then I would put them in a nice big gazillion-capacity CD sleeve album. It’s always nice to look at the cover art / lyrics / credits while listening to the corresponding CD.

Posted by: Chris at December 7, 2005 6:19 AM

Well said! Great thoughts! Good luck!

Posted by: Tony at December 7, 2005 1:53 PM

Good luck!! and happy transfering.

Posted by: Luiza at December 9, 2005 5:48 AM

It took me 2 years to complete the transfer of about 3,500 CD's to my pc. Have 160 GB internal, 300 GB external to backup everything. I made it harder on myself, but I think it was worth it. I listened to EVERY CD, and only ripped the songs I liked, so to create more of a "best of" jukebox (about 80 GB). I then created different genre folders (pop, rock, rap, club, r&b, etc.) It was daunting, but like everything, you just have to get started. I'm glad I did it. I weeded out alot of junk and my CD's sitting in about 23 caselogic cases, barely ever touched. Good luck!

Posted by: Eric at December 10, 2005 12:29 PM

You are a collector! (Me too that's why I know what it's like!) Believe me the free available space will soon be filled by some other stuff. Selling is like selling a part of a soul, but it's necessary to part with things because they are not people. It gives new energy in the end

Posted by: Linda at December 15, 2005 11:02 AM

My son uses hit iPod all the time and I think CD changers for vehicles are on the way out, so easy to use and you just put it on random and let it play.

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