Help with a new Digital Audio Set-up

[admin_exported]

Guys,<br>

I've read some really interesting and helpful topics on here...I was hoping that I could get some feedback that is specific to what I'm looking to do. I'm trying to decide on the following: What type of computer to go with? What standard I should rip to? What type of software player I should use? What type of backup or NAS to get and what type of portable player to get? I actually posted this the other day but I realized that I messed up the formatting.<p>

Here's where I am so far....<br>

1. I need a new computer. I have a work machine which is a Thinkpad but my home computer is toast so I have a clean slate there. I was initially thinking about going Mac but I've think I've since been discouraged. I've heard that iTunes is really limiting in the structural organization of much like iPhoto is but I don't know if this is true. I'd like something relatively small, fast and I hate to say it....cool looking. I really like the Dell and HP slim-lines. Thoughts?<p>

2. As far as standards, here's what I'm working with. I have about 600 CDs to rip. I think I have settled on EAC as my ripper and that is as far as I've gotten. My priorities are archival first and portability second. There is something very attractive about a lossless format. I do know that I'd like to NEVER have to rip again...ever. I should also mention...along the same lines of not re-ripping down the road...the "future" of the format is big for me. MP3 at 320 was recommended to me. I'm not an audiophile and I know I couldn't tell the difference but again, I like the idea of being able to put away my CDs permanently and have a perfect collection. Also, I don't intend to buy music off the web since I have a lot of CDs and so do my friends. I really do want a true, archival or library of music that is either perfect or almost perfect. I know the stuff off of iTunes is pretty far from it. I don’t know if that changes your advice but I thought it might be relevant. That said, I do intend to move some if it to a player so do I need two copies...large and small files? urgh....this is confusing!!!<p>

3. I don't really think the SW player is a big deal. WinAmp seems like a good choice although MediaMonkey looks good too.<p>

4. I know almost nothing about storage. I don't know how much space I'll need for 600+ CDs. I would ideally like to keep a copy on my new computer and then back up to a NAS. I also would like a multi-disk NAS so that I can back up photos to a different disk. Is that foolish?<p?

5. OK....last thing…the player. I really do like the iPod...not because everyone has one either. If I went to a lossless format, I think I'm screwed. I know that it can handle the Apple lossless format but I'm wary of anything that is platform-specific.I know that I'm being needy but this is stressfull! Any help that you can give me is mucho appreciated!

 

[Anonymous]

Can I ask how you're going to connect this computer system to the hifi?

1. Buy any computer you like the look of and that fulfills the spec you need. A music suggestion from me would be a MacBook with an Airport Expresss. Or have any PC running and access the music with Squeezebox or Sonos. If you want to run Squeezebox from the NAS you need it to be running SlimServer software, but there isn't this requirement with Sonos.

4. The maximum a CD can be in size is ~700MB. Albums don't usually fill the whole CD, so let's say a full album in WAV (will be ~600MB. Lossless formats, which reduce file size but not quality, typically use two thirds of the space, so estimate 400MB per album, which equates to ~250GB to cover all of the CDs. Bare in mind you contingency and room for expansion I'd go for 500GB, but because hard drives are so cheap these days maybe stretch to 1TB. I believe PC World are selling a "My Book" 1TB NAS for £150.

5MP3 is very flexible but reduced quality. WAV is flexible but huge and no tags. FLAC and Apple Lossless both have limitation about where they can be played, but don't worry as you can convert between formats for free using dbPoweramp.

 

[up the music]

I'm something of a newbie with computer audio software and hardware really, though I have 25000odd MP3 files in as good a bit rate as were to be found when culling friends hard drives for good or interesting tunes. I'm posting here for a couple of reasons. Firstly to provoke more response to this thread as I share some of pedrot99's queries (i'm not settled on a software player yet, though I think Foobar is my prefered choice of default player to 'play by click' in my computer because it is so lightweight and fast. I found WinAmp interface to be badly laid out and Media Monkey was crashing regularly on my system when I tried it. I've found a way to get I Tunes to do most of what I want from it so that's what I use at present. If I can get Media Monkey to work though I love its power and functionality). I'd also appreciate comment on my system setup, is there any point in getting something more exotic to convert USB to coax or optical than my Maplin box? I was thinking M Audio Audiophile USB or Fire Wire, bear in mind the Beresford is something of a mid price DAC slayer at a budget price. No I can't afford a Benchmark USB DAC. What are the issues with tagging FLAC and APE? Lastly I'd like somebody to point me in the direction of a page to explain how to tidy my formatting. Where there's a few spaces, consider this a new paragraph. I'm in a similar position to yourself. I killed my sound card a couple of months ago and had to use the onboard line out for a while. Because my home built PC was mechanically very noisy and too big to fit in with my hi-fi I bought a 2nd hand machine. A Dell Optiplex ATX mini thing. Whilst not silent it's quieter than the kids outside traffic noise and police sirens in my rough end of town. There are other small PC's to consider too though or even laptops. A Mac mini is likely to be more stable a platform than anything running Windows and whilst I Tunes is the default media playing software you can use others. Like Media Monkey I think (don't quote me on that). Do you need network storage? You could use plain USB or Firewire SATA drives to your PC for backup if you are only listening in one room. You don't mention getting a Sqeezebox or similar. Doing without the network side and Squeezebox or similar could save pennies. This is my 'poor mans' way of doing it.I use a Maplin 18 quid USB to Optical converter into a Beresford DAC costing 115 quid delivered. I output the DAC straight to my main system. I have a pair of external media hard drives with scart and digital outs as backups which can play music and video through my system with the PC off if required. I use the Dell for music playback only to keep the machine simple and stable. My old PC with the dead soundcard is used for all other PC applications like internet, downloading, ripping etc. I must say that the Dell/Beresford/External drives do look sweet together. As for software, EAC does seem to be preffered ripping software for perfectionists.I've about 400 discs to rip. I've downloaded EAC and done one rip so far to test it out and that was a doddle. Of course that's hardly an extensive road test but I'm confident about EAC so far. As for file format I'll rip as WAV because my external drives won't play FLAC or APE in standalone mode. While all 3 are lossless formats, I've heard it argued that WAV sounds better as the PC has none of it's resources tied up uncompressing files. In all honesty though I think you'd need fairly golden ears and a half decent system to notice any difference. If you use WAV do think about the lack of tags, This will need careful thinking about what file/folder naming conventions you adopt. Rip a few, play with the file structure and naming until you're happy, then rip the rest. I reckon it could be a pain renaming and moving 600 discs because you were unhappy with this. Get it right early on. I Tunes has an option to copy files to its library folder. If you choose to let it do this it is very restrictive about how the files are organized. That said you might find the way it does it fine. Millions of people do. You can though choose to organize files manually. I Tunes does not support FLAC or APE though. WinAmp, Media Monkey and Foobar are all better for file format compatibility. Obviously if you go the I Pod route you'll need software that will sync with it. I'm not sure what does other than I Tunes and Media Monkey. I have a Philips MP3 player which uses their Digital Media Manager 2 to send files to the player. Do not get one of these unless you're happy to let it upload files overnight. It really is a very slow system. Having the Philips I'm not really qualified to discuss things I Poddy at any length.
Storage space requirements was fairly well covered in the previous post. Do bear in mind that if your hard drive fails a backup files would save you from re-ripping. I guess you'd get about 13 FLAC discs or 8 WAV discs to a single DVD. I'm not sure if your intention was to keep files on both your PC and NAS discs, that would be ideal. You really need space for 1200 discs, plus those of your friends Hopefully some of what I said is true. If not please correct me.