Any Audiophiles out there?

[crazy steve]

While rebuilding my stereo cabinet to fit the various bits of 'upgraded' equipment I've bought over the years, my 17-year-old CD changer died. I quickly found that these are no longer a popular piece, with a very limited number of models available. Anyway, I was informed that most 'modern' systems now use a computer to store music collections, and transfer the music to your system by various methods. A very popular way is wirelessly, through a transmitter/receiver setup. The system that seems to get good reviews is by 'Sonos', anybody using one? My stereo and computer are in two different rooms, and I'm not going to move either.

Another question is accessing your music; the Sonos system can use a Android, I-phone, or I-pad to control/access it on the 'puter (as well as a stand-alone remote if those aren't available), so how does that work? There's other systems too (Arcam has a interesting unit, but it doesn't seem to offer the same features/ease of use), so I'm looking for user feedback from those who are doing this...

I'll also note that I'm not interested in 'compressed' files like MP3 with their inferior sound, only full-spectrum files like WAV.

Anybody.....?

[GLoweVA]

Wav files take up a LOT of room, that's why there's only 7-10 songs on a single CD (640Mb)
So, if you've got a large music collection, make sure you get a huge hard drive to store all those tunes.

[crazy steve]

Yeah, I know I'll need to upgrade the hard drive, but with the costs of really big drives going down as fast as they are, that's not the issue. I was told a 1 terrabyte drive will hold well over 2000 hours of uncompressed music files for about $60....

[GLoweVA]

Wow, that's a pretty good price for all that storage.
I wonder how many hours it'll take to transfer all those CDs to the hard drive.

Ah, but once's it's done... music forever!

[crazy steve]

I wonder how many hours it'll take to transfer all those CDs to the hard drive.

With the data transfer rates today, not as much time as you think (good cold-weather project). The trick is being able to easily find/play individual tracks once it's all in there....

[cywelchjr]

Depending on whether the system supports it there are also lossless compression systems out there that don't get anything near MP3 of course, but do get some reasonable compression without any loss of quality. I don't know if any commercial stuff supports them though. That said, with the cost of storage being so low, it's hardly worth bothering with hunting for the compression routine. For little earbuds worn when running or something like that, the loss of MP3 is insignificant, but for listening in the house with a high end audio system I agree that the quality loss CAN be unacceptable (of course you can adjust the quality setting when converting to pretty much no loss and still get some compression, just helps with things like periods of silence and such which get encoded much smaller) but again, not sure if it's worth it. Of course there is also the point of the loss of fidelity in converting to digital format in the first place .

BTW, not arguing it's not there, just that pretty much in 99% of the cases you can't really tell the difference, but with MP3 files you CAN tell the difference if they were encoded poorly.

[MaximPhil]

Wow, that's a pretty good price for all that storage.
I wonder how many hours it'll take to transfer all those CDs to the hard drive.

Ah, but once's it's done... music forever!

Forever or until the hard drive CRASHES
Always back up anything valuable.
Phil

[cywelchjr]

Depending on how many hours of music you plan on storing and how many drives the box can handle, it might be worth considering SSD's rather than spinning drives for this use. Not only is energy consumption lower, this is an ideal use for them since most files are written only once and then read many many times and never written to again. The only downside is the limitations in size at this point, but for this use, lifetime would be almost unlimited, where the spinning drive would die just from where on the bearings and such. And I'd still recommend a back, although as long as you have the source material, a backup might be redundant.

[crazy steve]

The hardware part seems to be pretty straightforward, it's the software that gets confusing. MediaMonkey, Foobar, etc, etc, there's all these different programs for storing/accessing your collection and when trying to figure out what's what, I get bogged down in all the techno-speak. I guess I'll have to make the drive to town and see if I can get any straight answers out of anybody who sells the hardware.... shudder....

[TopCatGr58]

Hey Steve,

I don't have any experience with a wireless media network setup or use.
I was just playing with the MATH....a Wav file uses about 10 Mbytes a minute worth of data space. That's 80 Mbits, divided by 60 seconds, is only 1.3 mbits/second, most home wireless networks now can transmit 56mbits/second, so there shouldn't be a problem being able to handle the fully uncompressed files.

I use a Cd ripping program called Exact Audio Copy, but you can use Windows Media Player as well, go into the Tools/Options and the CD Rip tab, and you can select WAV uncompressed files. With the Computer doing the ripping connected to the Internet, it will look up the CD's track information and automatically fill in the song titles, album info. Ripping will only put the song title on the file. You'll want/need to setup/organize the folders like in artists sections.

Most music players like ipods and such are using MP3's which allow for more File "tag" info, like artist, album, genre, etc. and so the music can then be sorted according to the different categories. With the music files as WAV's, you'll only have the song name, perhaps the artist as well if you set up the naming scheme to show both. Exact Audio Copy allows a variety of naming schemes when it rips the files/cds.

As for backups, I would actually suggest making them onto DVD-Roms once you get them ripped. Copying the Wav files from DVD-rom will be much faster than doing the RIPS again from the individual music CD's. You'll be able to put about 8 Cd's worth of songs onto 1 single layer DVD-rom. And you'll have an actual backup for your music CDs.

BTW, have you played with a CD/MP3 ripping/encoding program, using the least compression/highest quality settings and then do a comparison listening to them vs. the full WAV file?? JAT? I use a Variable Rate ~192kbps and I think they sound quite good.

I've got a slave computer that I have ripped a bunch of CDs onto for then converting into MP3's. It's only a 160GB drive, and it should be able to hold ~250 CD's worth, so a Terabyte should be able to hold 1500 or more CD's. How many CD's do you have to rip? You may not need a Terabyte??

Good luck with your choice of Wireless Player/transmitter/receiver setup.
T.C.

[crazy steve]

I've got about 900 CDs currently, but I've also got a pile of rare/obscure/out-of-print vinyl albums I have yet to transcribe to CD, as well as a bunch of live recordings I've collected over the years. I do need to get a new CD-burner program (my old one won't run on Windows 7), but need more than just a 'ripper' as these will need some additional processing before I burn a 'keeper' copy. One suggestion I was given was to use dedicated outboard hard drives (one 'master', one backup) to avoid any issues with the 'main' computer. It's a real thicket, with lots of competing options....

[bikerphil]

This guy has the right idea...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYi1i02CrvY

[crazy steve]

I still have a 8-track recorder deck in the closet, along with a few dozen tapes... including an unopened 6-pack pack of blanks and an autographed copy of "Alice's Restaurant" ...

[mack]

Music

I've been doing the same thing now every winter for about five years. I have an extensive vinyl collection, probably close to f ive thousand alblums I've been converting to digital format on a dedicated computer. (WAV lossless). Not sure how many CD's, 1500 or so. I use Nero audio suite 6. It's idiot proof and gives you studio technology to remove clicks or scratches from the vinyl. It can also do cassette tapes etc. CD's of course are no problem. I use windows media as my library source but during play back I usually use media monkey. It has an auto volume leveling feature that lets you level tracks evenly when in shuffle mode. As a few have said. It's a lot of work so back up your hard drive with a small stand alone unit. I had a remote set up that plugged into the computer and and it brodcast to were ever your amp was. In my case the deck. I loaned it to may brother and haven't seen it since. Can't remember what make it was. Microwaves played havoc with it though. I now just set up a cabinet with the amp and computer and flat screen out on the deck. This way guests can scroll through the music and select artists or genre or watch DVDs.

[TopCatGr58]

Hey Mack,

You're like me, I used Nero 5 and then 6, and then got Ultimate 7 suite, but I don't use much of it. I use an earlier version of a simple Wav edittor program from a Soundblaster PCI soundcard. BTW, Nero is now up to version 11, but they actually have dropped their MUSIC editting software from the suite as far as I could tell from their website describing the suite!?

I, too, have been converting many of my old LP's onto CD format, have a Discwasher, plugged the stereo audio out jacks into my computer. I don't like using any built in "filters" in the programs because they seem to muddle the overall sound/clarity/crispness of the music. I just use the zoom in function to find the clicks and pops, and then highlight the millisecond section, and then just MUTE it so it doesn't change the timeline. A few of my records have not aged well, lots of low level scratchiness etc., but they are not rare, so I can get CD or iTunes versions easily for them.

Steve, what program are you trying to use with Win7 that won't work? I'm still using WinXP(SP3) on my home system, not going to pay MS until they MAKE ME change from XP! Duh, your burner program. I've been partial to NERO for many years, but there's a FREE version you can get/try, look for NeroBurnLite . Another free burner I have actually used is believe it or not, ASHAMPOO free CD/DVD burning program...just deselect the toolbars during the install. Again, these are BURNER programs, not necessarily wav editting.

You can get a separate Wav recording/editting program easily. I found one on CNET Downloads a year or so ago with IIRC 24 or 32 bit vs. just 16 bit WAV file format, had some 24 bit files I had to work with that my regular SB wav edittor wouldn't work on. It is called Audacity for windows ver 1.2.6, but that's a couple of years old now, but they state it's still their main release. They state it's for WinXP, their beta version should work with Vista/7. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

T.C.