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01-11-2008, 01:01 AM
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#1 of 25 
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Member
Join Date: Dec 2001
Local Time: 01:04 AM
Local Date: 12-04-2008
Posts: 799
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So, who's put their entire music collection on their PC?
I've thrown together a media PC for my home theater. One of the reasons was because I wanted to digitize all my CDs and have them immediately accessible from my couch.
Has anyone done this? What compression techniques did you use, and how much disk space did it consume vs # of discs? And what software did you use?
I'm using Media Monkey for the software app. And I intend to encode high frequency listening items in FLAC, with lesser stuff at 320k. At least that's my intention. I can't get my head around the math right now. 
I have an estimate 1500 cds to deal with and I'm trying to get a grasp on how much disk space I'm going to need.
-paul |
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01-11-2008, 03:13 AM
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#2 of 25
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Member
Join Date: Mar 2006
Local Time: 01:04 AM
Local Date: 12-04-2008
Posts: 65
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Re: So, who's put their entire music collection on their PC?
I've got my entire music collection on an external drive. It's over 5,000 CDs on a 750GB Seagate (Firewire/USB 2.0). Bitrates between 192-320, with some FLAC thrown in. (The drive is not near full however!)
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01-11-2008, 07:20 AM
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#3 of 25
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Todd B.
Member
Location: Mississippi, USA
Join Date: Oct 1999
Local Time: 01:04 AM
Local Date: 12-04-2008
Posts: 2,294
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Re: So, who's put their entire music collection on their PC?
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Brandy S
It's over 5,000 CDs
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Wow, that one hell of a collection!  
Regards,
Todd 
My Blue-Ray & SD DVD's
Current HT setup:
Vizio P50HDTV20A 50" Plasma, Pioneer VSX1015TX 7.1, DirecTV HR20-100 HD DVR, Panasonic DMP-BD10 Blu-Ray,
SVS 2531PCi sub, Polk R30 mains, Polk CS125 center, Polk R15 x4 rears
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01-11-2008, 12:47 PM
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#4 of 25
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Member
Join Date: Nov 2000
Local Time: 12:04 AM
Local Date: 12-04-2008
Posts: 437
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Re: So, who's put their entire music collection on their PC?
I also have my entire music collection on an external drive, a 500 GB to be exact. I am not sure exactly how many CDs there are, but I have around 36,000 songs and bitrates are between 192-320 also. It's around 250 GB in total +/-
I also back everything up in a .rar format and backed up on a server. Can't be to careful nowadays.
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01-11-2008, 03:14 PM
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#5 of 25
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Member
Join Date: Dec 2001
Local Time: 01:04 AM
Local Date: 12-04-2008
Posts: 799
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Re: So, who's put their entire music collection on their PC?
So I've decided to just rip everything as highest quality mp3s. I probably won't notice the difference between tracks encoded in flac or 320k mp3.
Does anyone have an opinion which is better sonic-ly? 256k variable bitrate or 320k constant?
I think 256vbr would result in smaller file sizes and, I assume as good if not better audio quality.
-paul
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01-11-2008, 05:57 PM
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#6 of 25
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CJ
Member
Join Date: May 2002
Local Time: 03:04 AM
Local Date: 12-04-2008
Posts: 3,605
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Re: So, who's put their entire music collection on their PC?
Quote:
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Does anyone have an opinion which is better sonic-ly?
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Whatever sounds best to you is the best sonically.
CJ
And then when I feel so stuffed I can't eat anymore, I just use the restroom! And then I CAN eat more!
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01-11-2008, 07:23 PM
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#7 of 25
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Member
Join Date: Jun 1999
Local Time: 07:04 AM
Local Date: 12-04-2008
Posts: 1,646
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Re: So, who's put their entire music collection on their PC?
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Paul D G
I have an estimate 1500 cds to deal with and I'm trying to get a grasp on how much disk space I'm going to need.
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Uncompressed CD Audio runs about 10 MB per minute, so if all of the discs were full-up (80 minutes), and you encoded them uncompressed, you'd need (1500 * 80 minutes * (10 MB / minute)) = 1,200,000 MB (just over 1 TB).
320 Kilobits per second encoding == 2400 Kilobytes per minute == about 23% of the uncompressed CD audio rate. So if you encode 1500 full CDs' worth of audio at this rate, you'll need about 276 GB.
Probably many of the CDs will be shorter than 80 minutes, and you will end up using something like 1/3 less space. |
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01-11-2008, 07:36 PM
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#8 of 25
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Member
Join Date: Mar 2001
Local Time: 02:04 AM
Local Date: 12-04-2008
Posts: 5,162
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Re: So, who's put their entire music collection on their PC?
From last year, article about a fellow with an 850 GB, 11,000-album iTunes library.
I've got my entire library on my MacBook Pro, in iTunes. My library is a normal 200+ CDs.
But I'm curious if anyone knows the solution to a problem that stymied two years ago: I meant to create an archive library of my CDs. I wanted to rip all my CDs to a lossless format. Then I wanted to be able to re-encode those to a format and bitrate of choice, according to my current portable player. So, if a few years later I had a larger capacity player, I wouldn't need to re-rip all my CDs, but I could just re-encode my archive at a higher bitrate or newer format.
But I couldn't find a way to preserve CD (ID3?) info in an archive. Or, more specifically, I could find any programs that could re-encode from an archive and also figure out the CD info. It seems an obvious problem, but I couldn't find anything and I did a serious search for it. |
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01-11-2008, 08:28 PM
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#9 of 25
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Member
Join Date: May 2005
Local Time: 04:04 AM
Local Date: 12-04-2008
Posts: 105
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Re: So, who's put their entire music collection on their PC?
I've got all my music on a 300 GB internal drive. I'd say I have a little over 26,000 songs, most of which are WMA format @192 kbps.
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01-11-2008, 09:09 PM
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#10 of 25
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Member
Location: Michigan
Join Date: Dec 1998
Local Time: 02:04 AM
Local Date: 12-04-2008
Posts: 9,799
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Re: So, who's put their entire music collection on their PC?
I have approximately 600 CDs converted to 256K VBR MP3's. I use iTunes to organize the music, and used Exact Audio Copy with a LAME encoder to rip the CDs. We mostly play the MP3's on our iPods, and the quality is more than satisfactory for me (I have Shure E4C earbuds).
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01-14-2008, 12:09 AM
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#11 of 25
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Member
Join Date: Mar 2006
Local Time: 01:04 AM
Local Date: 12-04-2008
Posts: 65
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Re: So, who's put their entire music collection on their PC?
I had more than I thought!
Here's a screenshot I just took of my Music folder properties...
http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r...nred/Music.jpg |
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01-14-2008, 10:25 PM
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#12 of 25
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Member
Join Date: Feb 2001
Local Time: 02:04 AM
Local Date: 12-04-2008
Posts: 8,765
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Re: So, who's put their entire music collection on their PC?
I have 2190 songs, 5.9 days work of music, on my harddrive. The only problem with one massive music archive is that my old failing harddrive introduced plenty of barely noticable skips into a lot of my songs before I finally replaced it. These problems transferred over to my new harddrive, and I'm having a bitch of a time weeding them all out.
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