Go to www.etree.org & check the faq page, it will tell you everything you need to know about preserving music digitaly. My hobby & the reason I got into audiophile hell is recoding concerts from bands that allow taping. We are rather advanced in our storage skills when it comes to saving wave files on drives with compression. I record everything on DAT than transfer into my PC using a bit-perfect soundcard (not any sound blaster product, they resample) than convert to shn. SHN will compress the file without dropping any bits & is available for FREE. Once you load MKW on your PC you can then re-convert to analog wav for playback. You can also load SHN-Amp in your PC & play back SHN files without converting back to wav. There has been vollumes written about these techniques as we are a rather "large" community (or so I like to think) Most of us will not listen to MP3, yes it is THAT bad. There are also plenty of ways to cut tracks once you have the wav file in your PC without damaging the original wav. I also use SoundForge for wav capture & feel it is the best way to go. As far as "ripping" I would recommend Nero or Fuerio for burning discs once they are in your PC. Also realize if you get a bit-perfect soundcard you can then output from the card into the DAC of your choice from Coax or Toslink, this will preserve the analog signal in the best way without adding any artifacts to the original source (i.e. resampling)Please feel free to drop me a line if you need any help.
I Hate to Admit It
If I live to be 100, I expect to still be cleaning vinyl records in 2064. Or perhaps tinkering with my turn of the century Sony SCD-1 and the quaint discs that were sold with it.
But it seems that computer based audio would be useful for archiving things and enable me to throw away hundreds of CDs that I rarely, if ever, want to listen to and basically just clutter up my cabinets.
I am sure there are some threads on this subject, but I don't even know where to search:
My only experience is using a Rio MP3 player and the supplied software. The MP3 sound is pretty bad and recordings often skip.
Could someone therefore explain the quickest, easiest way to get good sounding (uncompressed?) music on a hard drive? I can buy a new computer if necessary.
Is there a consensus in the audiophile community on software/hardware to use or not to use? Is there a program with an amazing interface for a computer based jukebox?
Also, for burning CDs, is it true that high fidelity compilations can be easily made? Again, do I need any special hardware or software?
(At the moment, I have a Sony VAIO laptop about 2 years old and a CD burner that I purchased at about the same time.)
Thank you.
But it seems that computer based audio would be useful for archiving things and enable me to throw away hundreds of CDs that I rarely, if ever, want to listen to and basically just clutter up my cabinets.
I am sure there are some threads on this subject, but I don't even know where to search:
My only experience is using a Rio MP3 player and the supplied software. The MP3 sound is pretty bad and recordings often skip.
Could someone therefore explain the quickest, easiest way to get good sounding (uncompressed?) music on a hard drive? I can buy a new computer if necessary.
Is there a consensus in the audiophile community on software/hardware to use or not to use? Is there a program with an amazing interface for a computer based jukebox?
Also, for burning CDs, is it true that high fidelity compilations can be easily made? Again, do I need any special hardware or software?
(At the moment, I have a Sony VAIO laptop about 2 years old and a CD burner that I purchased at about the same time.)
Thank you.