Yet another Newby question about making the move to a computer-based storage/playback system for audio

[admin_exported]

I have read through many posts on this forum and other websites. Lots of choices abound for making the move yet I still have confusion and could use some clarification. I apologize in advance if this is overly simple but we all have to start somewhere!

I am a fairly "serious" collector of music and am wanting to transfer my collection to reduce space in my house and to offer me more convenience in the selection and playback of audio. I have approximately 5000 CDs, 1TB of FLAC/SHN files on a HD, perhaps 500 cassettes (gasp!) many of which have rare live recordings that will need to be preserved, and another 1000 hours of live music stored on DAT (mainly recorded 48 kHz/16 bit). It is going to be a long-term chore to move "re-digitize" and move to HD storage.

Upon purchasing a new audiophile quality soundcard solely for the task of making the cassette/DAT transfers to PC (any card suggestions for this purpose? My OS is XP-64bit and I have no interest in gaming). I will do any remastering with SoundForge or other SW and then will convert to FLAC for storage.

As to playback, I have a small stereo system in my home office where my PC is located. I'd want music there and also on my main system down in the living room. I'm intrigued by doing a wireless setup and have read good things about the Sonos. Seems pretty simple and expandable which I like.

So on to the questions:

1. What software programs are people using to organize their computer music libraries? Does this same SW control the playback?

2. I'm worried about HD failure and wonder about how best to backup the entire collection? Would it make sense to put together multi-HD system that uses RAID to automatically backup?

3. What kind of computing power is needed to run the system? Does the PC just "pull" files from the HD's and then direct the signal to the wireless network (i.e. Sonos)?

4. If I went the Sonos route, could the Sonos remote control the hard drive array? Would it communicate with the SW used to catalog the collection (see question 1).

Any thoughts, links, or other info would be greatly appreciated!

TIA, Dave

 

[idc]

Hi Dave, I only do basics so here goes

1 - Itunes, Foobar, Media Monkey there are loads of music managers. The majority are free to download and all have advantages and disadvantages. I would start by having a look at as many as possible and see which interface you like the look of. If you are not going to use an ipod and FLAC instead, I would discount itunes. The music manager is the means of getting your music files from the hard drive where thye are stored to your means of playing the music. If you choose Sonos then your music manager gets the files to the Sonos. It controls play, stop, pause etc etc.

2 - I use itunes. I have my files on my laptop, a USB hard drive in the spare room and on my ipod as well as it functions as a hard drive as well. However you choose to back up your files, so long as there is at least one backup you will be fine, but multiple is better.

3 - I have used itunes on laptops going back about 6 years now. I have a Vaio with windows 7, 4gb RAM and dual core intel do dah. It is faster than my Dell with 512mb RAM, 60gb hard drive and a less powerful processor. But both still work fine. The music manager is the thing that pulls the files and then directs them to your soundcard for onward transmission, or if you have a DAC to it bypassing the soundcard. I am not sure how the Sonos works, but it takes a digital signal from your PC as produced by the music manager using the PCs hardware.

4 - not sure.

 

[kena]

For a large collection i'd suggest a NAS using RAID, but an external backup of the NAS is also good practice to protect against total failure / fire flood .

 

[Anonymous]

Can help with your last question (all the others having been covered) providing your NAS drive is connected to the router that also has your first Sonos device (or zone briidge) connected to it you need only point the Sonos software at the NAS and away you go. I started out with a redundant laptop holding my ripped FLAC files but replaced it with a NAS drive (WD Sharespace configured RAID 5) which has been permanently on since Christmas draws very little power and is as near silent as makes no difference.

To be absolutely absolutely safe as regards your music collection files you might in addition to the NAS drive consider an offsite USB HDD as a sort of belt and braces.

Good luck

 

[Anonymous]

More than a long term chore, this will probably consume the remainder of your natural life! I have about 500 cd's and it's taken me the best part of a year to rip them all. Adding cassette tapes into the equation makes things even more time consuming as it's a more involved process with additional manual steps. Hard work although there is probably more value in archiving the tapes to digital format for preservation purposes so I would probably start there. I would recommend looking at professional soundcards / interfaces used in recording studios. These usually have analogue to digital sections as well as digital to analogue. Some of the more reasonably priced are made by companies such as m-audio and emu. I've used both internal and external versions of the m-audio 2496 interfaces in the past and found them to be very good.

I would also recommend starting out with something like Spotify. It will change the way you listen to music and give you many of the benefits of having your collection available online without having to managed NAS boxes, offsite backups (which all reminds me of work too much to be honest).

What ever you decide to do, good luck!

 

[idc]

Thats a good point about Spotify and other streaming services. Its like having another backup. I wish I had kept my huge cassette collection instead of selling them all for 50p a pop at a car boot sale.

 

[The_Lhc]

digit3:1. What software programs are people using to organize their computer music libraries?

I use dbPoweramp

Does this same SW control the playback?

It can do but I don't use it for that as I don't play the music through the PC.

2. I'm worried about HD failure and wonder about how best to backup the entire collection? Would it make sense to put together multi-HD system that uses RAID to automatically backup?

A RAID system DOESN'T provide backup, it provides redundancy, which means if a hard drive fails you don't lose all the data, it won't protect you from losing data through fire or catastrophe or in the unlikely even that both drives (in a RAID 1 system) fail. You'd need an additional form of backup.

3. What kind of computing power is needed to run the system? Does the PC just "pull" files from the HD's and then direct the signal to the wireless network (i.e. Sonos)?

Now, you mentioned Sonos, so I'm going to answer this question based on that. The PC is passive in this situation, if you're storing the files on PC then all you need is for that directory to be shared on the network. This takes almost no computing power at all (if you think about it servers that we'd now consider archaic have been doing this for years). Sonos is the active component in this case, it will go to the directory and pull the files off it to play. This is what makes Sonos so flexible, you can use a NAS (which is simply a low power file server) to store the files on, meaning you don't need a PC running at all for Sonos to work.

4. If I went the Sonos route, could the Sonos remote control the hard drive array?

To do what? All Sonos needs to do is drag files from a network share, it doesn't know what that share is stored on and it doesn't care.

Would it communicate with the SW used to catalog the collection (see question 1).

Again, no, it doesn't need to, Sonos holds its own index of music in the share (or shares, Sonos can access multiple, separate shares but indexes everything centrally).

Any thoughts, links, or other info would be greatly appreciated!

You seem pretty serious about your music, Sonos is one of the simplest solutions and if you wanted multi-room, arguably the best, however it isn't the cheapest and you need to be aware that currently it doesn't support 24-bit files, if at any point you were thinking of ripping to anything higher than CD quality.

 

[Anonymous]

If I were to go with a NAS and Sonos, are you saying that my computer would be completely bypassed? If this is the case, how do I catalog my collection on the NAS so that the Sonos sees what is there? At least 50% of my collection is comprised of non-commercially released music so I'll have to manually input data regarding those recordings (title, venue, date, track listing, etc.). How would I accomplish this?

Thanks again for all of the responses to date! One other thing, this may be opening a huge can of worms but, what NAS boxes might you folks recommend for somebody who has very limited networking experience? I'd obviously like rock solid performance, hopefully low heat and sound generation, perhaps 4TB space, and fast data transfer from my PC. Maybe I'm setting the bar too high to hope for all of this AND have it be user friendly? There is always the option of buying a NAS box and have a friend put the drives in and set up the SW.

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Stereolad:
More than a long term chore, this will probably consume the remainder of your natural life! I have about 500 cd's and it's taken me the best part of a year to rip them all. Adding cassette tapes into the equation makes things even more time consuming as it's a more involved process with additional manual steps. Hard work although there is probably more value in archiving the tapes to digital format for preservation purposes so I would probably start there. I would recommend looking at professional soundcards / interfaces used in recording studios. These usually have analogue to digital sections as well as digital to analogue. Some of the more reasonably priced are made by companies such as m-audio and emu. I've used both internal and external versions of the m-audio 2496 interfaces in the past and found them to be very good.

I would also recommend starting out with something like Spotify. It will change the way you listen to music and give you many of the benefits of having your collection available online without having to managed NAS boxes, offsite backups (which all reminds me of work too much to be honest).

What ever you decide to do, good luck!

A year to rip 500 cds??!! What have you been using? I reckon a standard album takes 5 mins. 2500 mins = 41 odd hours. Three weeks of a couple of hours a day...

 

[The_Lhc]

digit3:If I were to go with a NAS and Sonos, are you saying that my computer would be completely bypassed?

Well no, you'll still need a PC to rip the CDs in the first place of course, although you can buy NAS's that have this function built-in (Ripcaster for example), although they're generally more expensive.

If this is the case, how do I catalog my collection on the NAS so that the Sonos sees what is there?

Please read what I wrote previously, Sonos creates and updates its own index, which it stores internally (ie not on the PC or share).

At least 50% of my collection is comprised of non-commercially released music so I'll have to manually input data regarding those recordings (title, venue, date, track listing, etc.). How would I accomplish this?

Well, yes for that you would need a PC to input that data, what I'm saying is you don't need the PC to be on when playing music from a NAS if you're using Sonos.

Thanks again for all of the responses to date! One other thing, this may be opening a huge can of worms but, what NAS boxes might you folks recommend for somebody who has very limited networking experience? I'd obviously like rock solid performance, hopefully low heat and sound generation, perhaps 4TB space, and fast data transfer from my PC.

The 4TB is going to be the killer there, most user friendly NAS's are two drive models holding between 500Gb to 2TB (maybe 3TB if you get 1.5TB drives and even then only if you don't mirror them). If you want 4TB of usable space (ie after the necessary space loss due to the RAID protection) then you're looking at a 4-bay NAS. The current copy of WHF is the ideal place to start in fact as this month's issue looks at NAS boxes and includes an HP NAS with a lot more space in it.

As to the rest of it, most of them are pretty quiet, don't generate much heat (as they don't have whacking great processors in them) and all will feature gigabit ethernet (so you'll need to make sure your home network does as well, you can get this fairly easily by getting a gigabit switch (Netgear do a few with differing numbers of ports, they're not expensive), plugging that into your router and then plugging your PC, NAS (and Sonos if you get one) into the switch, rather than into your router. That will also have the benefit of keeping the local traffic off your router's backbone, which will please anyone else who happens to be using the router.

Maybe I'm setting the bar too high to hope for all of this AND have it be user friendly?

Impossible to say, they're all different (from one manufacturer to another) and one man's user-friendly is another's ergonomic nightmare.

There is always the option of buying a NAS box and have a friend put the drives in and set up the SW.

Well they normally come with the drives in and even if they don't it's usually just a case of opening the front and sliding the drive in and generally there isn't any SW to set up, you just need to tell it what directories you want and if you can do that on a PC you can probably do it on a NAS as well.

It would be helpful to know what your budget for all this is.

 

[Anonymous]

I surely did read your previous post (most helpful BTW). After I rip CD's and input information pertaining to the rip onto my PC, would I then send the info to the NAS which Sonos would then index? Would I have to use a certain SW program to input the info so that Sonos could accurately read the file? Sorry about my lack of comprehension here.

As to budget, Sonos aside, I'd be willing to spend maybe $1,000 for the NAS and whatever else I might need to get it up and running (cables, router, switch, etc.).

I have lots of excess gear to sell that could easily fund the Sonos system to put tunes all around my house.

 

[The_Lhc]

digit3:I surely did read your previous post (most helpful BTW). After I rip CD's and input information pertaining to the rip onto my PC,

Your ripping software should gather the information for you, if it's a commercial release of course.

would I then send the info to the NAS which Sonos would then index?

Forgive me for saying but it sounds like you don't really know what a NAS offers, so apologies if I'm teaching you to suck eggs, the NAS will appear as another drive letter on your PC (so you probably have C:, D: and maybe E: as well at the moment), all you do is select the NAS drive folder as the output for your ripping software and it goes to the NAS automatically.

Would I have to use a certain SW program to input the info so that Sonos could accurately read the file? Sorry about my lack of comprehension here.

No, if you rip to FLAC (although the same goes for pretty much any format other than WAV) each file (track) will have what's called an IDTag, this is where the track name, artist, album, album track number, genre, etc etc, is stored. Any ripping software worth its salt will populate this Tag info for you and Sonos will read it regardless of what software you use.

As to budget, Sonos aside, I'd be willing to spend maybe $1,000 for the NAS and whatever else I might need to get it up and running (cables, router, switch, etc.).

That should be plenty. Do you have a router at the moment? You have internet access, does that include a router? The switch is only necessary to give you gigabit ethernet (and thus speed things up a bit compared to 100Mbit) for copying the sheer number of files you have to the NAS. You don't need gigabit just for the playback side of things.

I have lots of excess gear to sell that could easily fund the Sonos system to put tunes all around my house.

Well, bear in mind you'll need speakers if you want to use the amplified Sonos zoneplayer (ZP120) or an amp and speakers if you want to use the unamplified zoneplayer (ZP90), so don't sell it all...

 

[Anonymous]

I have several programs that I use to rip. You are right that I am a noob and don't totally get the NAS idea completely (hence the questions and follow ups on my part).

I have a Linksys WRT546 router currently. I certainly would be willing to replace if necessary. I would like to have things sped up for sure! Copying files to my Lacie 1TB external from my PC can be pretty slow.

I would connecting the Sonos ZP90 to my main listening system and then could do ZP120's to other listening areas. I am well equipped with speakers. My gear sales would be components, excess camera stuff, bikes, etc. In addition, I have a couple thousand store bought CDs that I would want to liquidate once this process is complete.

 

[The_Lhc]

digit3:I have several programs that I use to rip. You are right that I am a noob and don't totally get the NAS idea completely (hence the questions and follow ups on my part).
I have a Linksys WRT546 router currently. I certainly would be willing to replace if necessary.

Well like I said you don't need to replace your router, just add a switch, it's plug and play so you won't need to muck around with configuring a new router for your broadband. Does your PC have a gigabit ethernet connection?

I would like to have things sped up for sure! Copying files to my Lacie 1TB external from my PC can be pretty slow.

Is that a NAS or a USB drive because it won't help with the latter.

I would connecting the Sonos ZP90 to my main listening system and then could do ZP120's to other listening areas. I am well equipped with speakers. My gear sales would be components, excess camera stuff, bikes, etc.

Oh ok.

In addition, I have a couple thousand store bought CDs that I would want to liquidate once this process is complete.

Hmm, well that would technically be illegal but it's your call...

 

[Anonymous]

In addition, I have a couple thousand store bought CDs that I would want to liquidate once this process is complete. Hmm, well that would technically be illegal but it's your call...

Are you meaning to say that all of the brick and mortar used CD stores, online used CD purveyors like Amazon, and many other outlets selling used CDs are doing so illegally?

 

[The_Lhc]

digit3:In addition, I have a couple thousand store bought CDs that I would want to liquidate once this process is complete. Hmm, well that would technically be illegal but it's your call...
Are you meaning to say that all of the brick and mortar used CD stores, online used CD purveyors like Amazon, and many other outlets selling used CDs are doing so illegally?

No. I'm saying ripping a copy of a CD to your PC and THEN selling the CD is technically illegal.

 

[Anonymous]

I did not realize that

 

[PJPro]

You need to retain ownership of the original to provide proof of purchase. It also serves as another backup....and you can't have enough of these.

 

[Anonymous]

So much for the idea of streamlining and freeing up house space!

 

[Anonymous]

Gerrardasnails:Stereolad:
More than a long term chore, this will probably consume the remainder of your natural life! I have about 500 cd's and it's taken me the best part of a year to rip them all. Adding cassette tapes into the equation makes things even more time consuming as it's a more involved process with additional manual steps. Hard work although there is probably more value in archiving the tapes to digital format for preservation purposes so I would probably start there. I would recommend looking at professional soundcards / interfaces used in recording studios. These usually have analogue to digital sections as well as digital to analogue. Some of the more reasonably priced are made by companies such as m-audio and emu. I've used both internal and external versions of the m-audio 2496 interfaces in the past and found them to be very good.

I would also recommend starting out with something like Spotify. It will change the way you listen to music and give you many of the benefits of having your collection available online without having to managed NAS boxes, offsite backups (which all reminds me of work too much to be honest).

What ever you decide to do, good luck!

A year to rip 500 cds??!! What have you been using? I reckon a standard album takes 5 mins. 2500 mins = 41 odd hours. Three weeks of a couple of hours a day...

Using my spare time which unfortunately is limited!

 

[PJPro]

digit3:
So much for the idea of streamlining and freeing up house space!

I box mine up and stick them in the loft.

 

[david_tring]

Here's another (almost on-topic) question then.... I want to rip a small number of CDs to my Windows XP PC for use both at home via my Sonos ZP90 and also in my car via iPhone3G or USB stick. The Sonos takes almost any format audio, but the car hi-fi doesn't. I have no problem ripping a CD twice via iTunes, in hi-res for Sonos and lower-res for the car, as I won't be doing that many.

There are 3 variables then:-

1/ The Sonos help files recommend Apple Lossless (no parameters specified) or "Uncompressed WAV".
2/ iTunes will do AAC 44.1khz/320kbps, Apple Lossless (again no parameters quoted) or WAV (doesn't say if this is uncompressed).
3/ My car hi-fi replays AAC-LC 44.1khz/320kpbs, it won't do WAV at all (I'm ignoring MP3 and WMA here). So AAC-LC looks the prefered lower-res car format.

File size is irrelevant, as there won't be enough of them to worry about, so which is a better hi-res format to rip a CD in iTunes - WAV, or AAC at 320kbps? And is AAC the same as AAC-LC?

Regards - David

 

[The_Lhc]

How does the car stereo work with the iPhone, is it just using it as storage, or is the iPhone actually playing the tracks and passing the audio to the stereo? If it's the latter then I'd have thought ALAC would work ok, not knowing what the car stereo is it's difficult to say though.

 

[david_tring]

Hi the-lhc, it's a Kenwood DNX-8220BT. The unit has two "USB" sockets on flying leads - one is specifically for iPod/iPhone connection, the other is for USB thumb drives. The specification for what audio files they can play is the same however, so I've settled on 320kbps AAC for them. My iPhone becomes a dumb drive when connected - all its controls become inopereative and its display just shows "Connected" or similar message. Control/display is via the DNX.

 

[The_Lhc]

david_tring:Hi the-lhc,

Guh! It's an underscore dammit...

it's a Kenwood DNX-8220BT. The unit has two "USB" sockets on flying leads - one is specifically for iPod/iPhone connection, the other is for USB thumb drives. The specification for what audio files they can play is the same however, so I've settled on 320kbps AAC for them. My iPhone becomes a dumb drive when connected - all its controls become inopereative and its display just shows "Connected" or similar message. Control/display is via the DNX.

Ah, ok, shame, if it was just an aux input it wouldn't have matter as long as the iPhone could play it but as you suggest it's just using it as dumb storage, so I think you've chosen the best option.