First Vinyl then CD now Hard drive – what is the best option?

[admin_exported]

In the late 70s, it was always a pain having to turn an album over after 20 minutes.

In the early 80s, CDs and a remote control made this a lot easier.

I now find even this a pain and often want to play different tracks off different albums by different artists.

I have an MP3 player hooked up to my amp but its just not the same is it?

Can anyone recommend a storage / play back device that I can store my CDs on and hook up to my amp via phono leads. Ideally with a remote control with display to select tracks etc.

I would need to store over 500 CDs and (ideally) still have CD quality sound or not far off.

I have looked at the Sonos system but I don’t need wireless and I would prefer the storage / play back equipment to be a standalone unit.

Any thoughts?

 

[Anonymous]

The naim hdx, would do everything you want but is expensive.

 

[Anonymous]

m1rfy:
The naim hdx, would do everything you want but is expensive.

Thanks m1rfy - great suggestion - but at £4500 its a bit above my budget!

 

[Dave_]

How about an arcam ms250 slightly cheaper than the HDX but same sort of idea!

 

[bballtom]

How about the Sony CDP-CX355 - 300 disk changer? Do know how is sounds but will solve your problem, costs less than £200. My mate has one (or very similar) that he picked up second hand from ebay, seems pretty good.

 

[John Duncan]

heystak:In the late 70s, it was always a pain having to turn an album over after 20 minutes.

In the early 80s, CDs and a remote control made this a lot easier.

I now find even this a pain and often want to play different tracks off different albums by different artists.

I have an MP3 player hooked up to my amp but its just not the same is it?

Can anyone recommend a storage / play back device that I can store my CDs on and hook up to my amp via phono leads. Ideally with a remote control with display to select tracks etc.

I would need to store over 500 CDs and (ideally) still have CD quality sound or not far off.

I have looked at the Sonos system but I don't need wireless and I would prefer the storage / play back equipment to be a standalone unit.

Any thoughts?

Home taping is killing music.......

Anyway, I'd put them on your computer using the lossless format of your choice (Apple Lossless, FLAC, WMA Lossless), and either use a good sound card or external DAC (USB or optical) to plug into your stereo. £50-£2,000 depending on your choice and you'll have a front end to rival CD players many times the price.

Use a client like Squeezebox (Classic or Duet) or Airport Express/iPod Touch or Apple TV, and you have remote.

 

[Anonymous]

Personally I am a big squeezebox fan. You have to have a good DAC; but it is simple, much less expensive than many options and with the right DAC sounds great.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm a massive fan of the AppleTV/Airport Express route. My iTunes has got to big for my MacBook Pro, so this weekend it's going onto an Air Disk which is just an external hard drive plugged into apples router/wi-fi base station.

What I think is missing (so far) is the ability to link 2 different files (an apple lossless version and a 256 aac version) to a song. Use the lossless for home listening and the 256 for the iPhone/walkman...

 

[John Duncan]

thrillis75:What I think is missing (so far) is the ability to link 2 different files (an apple lossless version and a 256 aac version) to a song. Use the lossless for home listening and the 256 for the iPhone/walkman...

Yes! Or at least the option to do with other iPods what you can do with the Shuffle - have it convert on the fly to a lower bitrate (selectable, preferably) as you sync.

 

[Anonymous]

I didn't know you can do that with suffle! Nice solution!

I was thinking about either making 2 librarys or have two versions of the same album and set the appleTV to only sync the lossless files. Should be able to create a little automator (like a macro but for OS X) function to re-encode all the lossless files to AAC and append (iPod version) to the album title?

 

[Anonymous]

Sony do a hard drive juke box thing.

Alternatively a Mac Mini into a DAC, controlled by iTouch.

 

[Anonymous]

Anyone remember the Yamaha CDR-HD1500 ? I have used one with great results for 3 years. Its 200GB, hdd which is upgradeable to 400GB, could hold hundreds of cds and vinyl albums uncompressed.

The CD recorder recordings were nearly always indistinguishable from the source and sometimes be improved by using the " Audio Master Quality Recording" which, although lessens the CDR 74 minutes capacity, can improve the musical dynamics and impact.

It internal DAC can be upgraded by connecting its digital output ( it has coaxial and optical outputs ) to say a DAC magic decoder, plus it can record from any external analogue or digital ( not copy protected material ) source.

Its only real failing is that its not compatible with any compressed music format. As a CD player/HDD music source its excelent for the money which cost me £450.

Might be worth getting an audition if you can find one.

 

[John Duncan]

thrillis75:
I didn't know you can do that with suffle! Nice solution!

I was thinking about either making 2 librarys or have two versions of the same album and set the appleTV to only sync the lossless files. Should be able to create a little automator (like a macro but for OS X) function to re-encode all the lossless files to AAC and append (iPod version) to the album title?

As I only have an 8gig Touch, I selected all the lossless files and right click/create mp3 version (which creates a version in whichever rip quality you have set, so remember to set it back before you rip again). You can then use a smart playlist to filter out the duplicates by bit rate.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm with JohnDuncan. Use an existing computer, possibly stick some extra storage on it, and get a nice soundcard -- I got an M-Audio Audiophile 2496 and it's worked very well for me. It has phono outs or SPDIF if you want to connect it to an external DAC, but the DAC on the card is quite good enough for me. I already had a computer with around a terabyte of space on it, so it would only have cost me £50 for the card -- and actually a friend gave me his old one