Big digital audio collection to play via HiFi system

[admin_exported]

Hello all,
It seems like i've a question that has been asked 10th of times on this forum. Unfortunately, answers i found are much too costly or are not convenient for my situation.

Basically, i want to play my digitised music collection on my current, (20-year old) Hi Fi system.

The music : It concerns a rough 40k numbers (approx 1600 CD's), ripped in both WAV (for sound quality) and FLAC (for editability of the properties + to avoid use of a brand-linked format like WMA or AAC). All this takes up about 3 TB of hard disk drive in my computer.

I'm searching for a Hi Fi component that

• Can hold the hard drive (so i can still take it out and add new music or perform updates on the library)
• Comes with a screen to browse the folder structure. Ideally there would be a library-option in this thing, but not obligatory
• Plays the music formats .wav and .flac
• Transmits it to my amplifier via analog connection (white/red jack in for AUX)
• Comes with basic playback options : play file, play folder(s), Play/pause/stop/>> and <<
• Very important : ain't connected to anything but the amplifier: not to the TV, not to the internet, not to the PC, network drive,....

I've run trough a lot of posts, but haven't found the answer to this - in my eyes - very simple need. Posts i found on this question mention the streaming (wired or wireless) directly from PC or from a network drive. Hardwares i looked into can send like emails to Neptune, but not comply to my demands. Hardwares that seemingly answer my need only come at 4 digit prices and then still require this whole TV to put on to select a few songs.

My spending budget is a rough 150 $ and i have it difficult to believe that, for that money, no hardware would exist that does what i want, no more.

My apologies if this question has been answered 20 times already, i've must have missed that post then. In that case, do not hesitate to post the link to that/those topic(s).

thanks in advance to you all,
Hunwick

 

[burningpanda]

a second hand netbook and one of those usb to sata adaptor cables.

 

[amcluesent]

1600 CDs should take up much less than 1Tb. Anyhow, the product which comes closest is the Cocktail Audio X10. However, with a budget of $150 you're going to be out of luck for a long, long time.

 

[DavieCee]

You have the PC. You have the amp.

At a basic level, all you need is a 3.5mm to phono cable.

There are more options that will give better quality or convenience, but at a cost. Try the cheap and easy option first. 8)

 

[RobinKidderminster]

Not really an answer but I'm havin' a rest right now. I store my videos, photos & music on a large usb stick. Plug it into tv, amp, tablets, pc etc., both home and away. And I had Weetabix for breakfast. Seagate Theatre with hdd useful too.

 

[MajorFubar]

1600 CDs should take up much less than 1Tb.

Might not...the OP is saving uncompressed which takes upto 800Mb each. I've ripped 269 CDs as Apple Lossless to a Mac Mini and even that's taken 128Gb. Multipling that up to 1600 CDs would be more than 761Gb, and that's with ALAC lossless compression.

 

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Thanks already for your feedback all. The fact the music takes that much place is because of the double encoding (every piece exists both in .wav and .flac highest quality). It's my father's classical CD collection and i value it a lot: he spent so much time choosing every single CD that quality loss is just not an option. The bad tagging possibilities for .wav forced the creation of the .flac format.

The cocktail audio seems a plausible answer to my search, though well over my initial foreseen budget indeed. But this collection was made over 20 years or so, i'll approach it with the same patience 😉

regards,
Hunwick

 

[MajorFubar]

You really do not need to rip to both WAV and FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression. Think of FLACs as being like ZIP files tailored for music, and just like ZIP files, there is absolutely no data lost.

 

[Alec]

You really do not need to rip to both WAV and FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression. Think of FLACs as being like ZIP files tailored for music, and just like ZIP files, there is absolutely no data lost.

Seconded.

 

[Anonymous]

Where it comes to music quality, i indeed do not need to convert to .flac. But i've 2 reasons still to do so:

- i judge the .wav format having a longer life expectancy than .flac : pretty sure that 25 years from now i can still play that wave
- .wav tagging is crap, so i needed something else.

It's a kind of therapeutic work, all this ripping and encoding + this collection is somewhat my father's heritage : i don't really mind doing a bit extra - possibly useless - work.

But thanks for the advise still,

regards,

Hunwick