2. pc-audio
  3. 1305302794

Archiving CDs to HD...suggestions?

i'm thinking of moving and wondering the best way to consolidate my 3k CD collection to a hard drive, which would be much easier to move.

clearly i'd go into PC/Mac-based audio in my new abode.

but a few questions first:
1) does the cd drive matter to the rip? or do i just need to use a good software like EAC or the like to ensure an accurate rip?

2) if i rip on a PC, do i have to use a PC in the future, or can i use a Mac against my external music store if it was created under a PC?

3) what sort of redundancy is in order? RAID 1? RAID 5? or just another HD the same as the one i plan on playing from, and simply use it as a backup?

4) which uncompressed file format should i use? AAC or something else?

5) any estimate of how much storage would be required for 3k CDs? or would it be feasible to split my music collection across 2 primary HDs...like A-L, M-Z...which is really asking if playback software can read across multiple drives in one virtual "library"

6) are rips sensitive to vibrations, power conditioning, etc?

thanks for any suggestions
RC
rhyno

Showing 1 response by ehlarson

ehlarson
15 posts
 
The CD drive does matter because they vary in ability to correct errors and dig info out of scratches. The best ones are the Plextor 760's and 716's. Unfortunately these are not made any more and have to be dug out of EBay etc. Newer Plextors are outsourced gubbage.

Software is important too. EAC is ok but with 3K disks you want something more capable. Take a look at dbpoweramp. This has a lot of capability. There is a batch rip util that will process several rips in parallel depending on the capability of your computer. Basically figure that you can run as many drives in parallel as you have cores.

Getting good metadata is huge, and dbpoweramp lets you set up access to commercial services and edit the data on the fly. This will also attempt to snag album art.

Also I would recommend FLAC as the target format. There is just more software that supports it. Unfortunately the one exception to that rule is Apple, which of course is always pushing their own. Which is why I gave up on them a few years ago. But that is another story.

In any case you don't lose anything converting between lossless formats later. The big thing is to rip to lossless in the first place.
More to discover