Has anyone digitised their CD collection?

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I wouldn't stuff around with a NAS like. A Kodi box with room for an internal hard drive would be cheaper and more versatile.
 
Billy Rocket said:
What do you mean by that? FLAC produces exactly (down to the bit) the same digital output as the original CD did, so it's impossible to discern a difference, because there isn't one.
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Read a couple of articles that claim that rendering of sound can differ ever so slightly between CD vs FLAC. FLAC occasionally being better than CD due to mechanics of system & error correction in rip. Like I say these are from the theorists, no way you'd hear that at home I reckon. Data itself is the same but physical sound produced can differ.

Billy Rocket said:
I wouldn't stuff around with a NAS like. A Kodi box with room for an internal hard drive would be cheaper and more versatile.
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Depends what sort of sound quality you want. My Mrs wanted no hifi & speakers so compromise for me was to get the Muso + NAS server that matched hifi sound.
 
Roger said:
Uh? Surely FLAC is actually better than CD. It's a lossless format, so all of the info from the CD is retained, but because you rip to it rather than playing in realtime, the ripping process has a chance to re-read and correct any read errors on the CD.
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I was being facetious in that bit, as I'm doubtful that flac is necessary for the vast majority of people, meaning he'd be using up an unneccessary amount of hard drive space with his collection and would therefore likely have to spend more money than he otherwise would.

Flac takes the pure audio stream (wav/aiff essentially) and applies data compression (like winzip etc use) to make it take up less space. It's only as good as the source material, so in the case of a cd source, it's just as good as the cd, not better. If you're ripping from DAT, SACD, DVDA or a prerelease rip directly from a major pro recording studio, then yes flac can handle the "lossless" compression of those higher quality sources too.

Mp3 does a similar thing but takes advantage of an audio phenomenon called "frequency masking" which basically means that if you've got sound playing at full volume at frequency x, then any sound at frequencies v, w, y and z can't be heard if they are below a certain volume, so theres actually no need to store data for those frequencies at those levels.

At lower bitrates the algorythm removes enough information for the loss to be audible to most humans. It is pretty easy to hear where the information is being lost, but once you get beyond a bitrate of maybe 256 kbps, 320kbps, even the most golden-eared of audiophiles won't be able to hear that information has been "lost" at all.

It was long claimed that CDs were an equivalent quality of a 192kbps mp3 but personally I think if you have good hifi gear then it takes a 320 to not hear the difference. Having files bigger than that for a CD rip, (whether they be wavs, flacs or otherwise) then you're wasting hard drive space unless as specified earlier, you're not ripping a cd, you're ripping an original DAT, SACD, DVDA or other source material that's better than cd.
 
fyl2u said:
I was being facetious in that bit, as I'm doubtful that flac is necessary for the vast majority of people, meaning he'd be using up an unneccessary amount of hard drive space with his collection and would therefore likely have to spend more money than he otherwise would.

Flac takes the pure audio stream (wav/aiff essentially) and applies data compression (like winzip etc use) to make it take up less space. It's only as good as the source material, so in the case of a cd source, it's just as good as the cd, not better. If you're ripping from DAT, SACD, DVDA or a prerelease rip directly from a major pro recording studio, then yes flac can handle the "lossless" compression of those higher quality sources too.

Mp3 does a similar thing but takes advantage of an audio phenomenon called "frequency masking" which basically means that if you've got sound playing at full volume at frequency x, then any sound at frequencies v, w, y and z can't be heard if they are below a certain volume, so theres actually no need to store data for those frequencies at those levels.

At lower bitrates the algorythm removes enough information for the loss to be audible to most humans. It is pretty easy to hear where the information is being lost, but once you get beyond a bitrate of maybe 256 kbps, 320kbps, even the most golden-eared of audiophiles won't be able to hear that information has been "lost" at all.

It was long claimed that CDs were an equivalent quality of a 192kbps mp3 but personally I think if you have good hifi gear then it takes a 320 to not hear the difference. Having files bigger than that for a CD rip, (whether they be wavs, flacs or otherwise) then you're wasting hard drive space unless as specified earlier, you're not ripping a cd, you're ripping an original DAT, SACD, DVDA or other source material that's better than cd.
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My aged lugs are bunged up and I listen to punk. You could replace my gear with a scalded cat and I probably wouldn't notice.
 
dangermows said:
Impressive file collection you've got there marra, said no fucker.



David, give your heed a wobble.
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Why? You can find most things on it.

fyl2u said:
I was being facetious in that bit, as I'm doubtful that flac is necessary for the vast majority of people, meaning he'd be using up an unneccessary amount of hard drive space with his collection and would therefore likely have to spend more money than he otherwise would.

Flac takes the pure audio stream (wav/aiff essentially) and applies data compression (like winzip etc use) to make it take up less space. It's only as good as the source material, so in the case of a cd source, it's just as good as the cd, not better. If you're ripping from DAT, SACD, DVDA or a prerelease rip directly from a major pro recording studio, then yes flac can handle the "lossless" compression of those higher quality sources too.

Mp3 does a similar thing but takes advantage of an audio phenomenon called "frequency masking" which basically means that if you've got sound playing at full volume at frequency x, then any sound at frequencies v, w, y and z can't be heard if they are below a certain volume, so theres actually no need to store data for those frequencies at those levels.

At lower bitrates the algorythm removes enough information for the loss to be audible to most humans. It is pretty easy to hear where the information is being lost, but once you get beyond a bitrate of maybe 256 kbps, 320kbps, even the most golden-eared of audiophiles won't be able to hear that information has been "lost" at all.

It was long claimed that CDs were an equivalent quality of a 192kbps mp3 but personally I think if you have good hifi gear then it takes a 320 to not hear the difference. Having files bigger than that for a CD rip, (whether they be wavs, flacs or otherwise) then you're wasting hard drive space unless as specified earlier, you're not ripping a cd, you're ripping an original DAT, SACD, DVDA or other source material that's better than cd.
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Areet man Epstein
 
Banks said:
Spotify

Band A - oh 4 of their albums arent on

Band B - not on

Artist C - everything but the songs i like.

Its proper overrated
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That's what I found. And new albums don't always appear as quick as you'd expect.

Not bad for themed playlists, I suppose.
 
Ben Gardner said:
Thanks all.

Call me old fashioned but the thought of having to boot up my laptop AND a streamer AND a router AND switch on the amp is a right f***ing chew on.

Much rather just flick on a couple of boxes, choose the album and off we go.

Here man woman man, I still f***ing resent CDs, I was brought up on proper records. 7", 12" and LP!!!!
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I just turn my nas on when I turn my internet on.... normally first thing in the morning... then it's "there" whenever you want it and from wherever you want it!...
Have always liked cd's - an easy format to live with and almost indestructible compared to "proper records"! :) .... guess it was also the clarity of sound that was the attraction - the level of noise was so much lower compared to vinyl back then.... having said that, some of the production on cd these days is atrocious....

Like you I still like my vinyl... have started digitising that too.... but that takes a whole lot longer using some software called VinylStudio.... it means I start listening to my old albums again... but then record them to flac with the software at the same time... what's more you can clear up all the scratches and clicks etc too....
 
I did a similar number a few years ago just using windows media.
Just set it up to automatically rip when it sees a cd and then eject once done.

I had a laptop sat next to me so when the tray came out I put the next disk in from the stack whilst watching telly or whatever.

BTW you can put up to 20,000 track on google play music for free back up and play anyway capabilities.
I'm not a format nerd so I won't offer anything on that :)
 
Ben Gardner said:
And that's not some sort of geeky euphemism.

CD player has given up and I realise I have to "go fully digital" which apparently means converting my c. 400 CDs to 16-bit FLAC (better than MP3, allegedly), then transfer said files to a NAS drive.

That's not enough, I then have to buy a f***ing "streamer" to pull the digital FLAC files from NAS drive and covert them to analog sound to push through to me amp.

Am I over-complicating this or is it always a genuine f***ing chew on?

I've learned a whole new language of acronyms in the last day or two, and I'm none the wiser.

Any tips or advice? And yes, I've already formatted the fucker.

NB: I'm not simply replacing the CD player with another one as it won't be long before I move abroad and would rather take a couple of boxes than the whole CD collection. Also, I like "easy access" to my tunes instead of piss-farting around with them jewel-boxes.
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its probably easier and quicker to download them all
 
PrisonBroken said:
I did a similar number a few years ago just using windows media.
Just set it up to automatically rip when it sees a cd and then eject once done.

I had a laptop sat next to me so when the tray came out I put the next disk in from the stack whilst watching telly or whatever.

BTW you can put up to 20,000 track on google play music for free back up and play anyway capabilities.
I'm not a format nerd so I won't offer anything on that :)
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50,000 now see https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/1143668?hl=en-GB

Personally I sync my music with Google Music for work and on the go, I also have my music in a library on Kodi for the rooms it's installed in. I need to explore an option for re-using an android phone as a dedicated music player for listen to tunes in the garage. Again will probably use Kodi for this.
 
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