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T O P I C R E V I E W
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TheMoMan
Member # 1659
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 posted June 21, 2012 05:48
I am close to being an audiophile, if it does not sound live, I do not want to hear or listen. I still feel that tubes are better than solid state.
I have a large collection of LP s that I am starting to worry about their age.
Now the question, what mode to best save all of my music, LP s, Tapes, (reel to reel) and a few CD s.
I would like all of the music in one place and if possible in one format. I want to save as much of the analog signal as possible. I have heard some methods convert most of the audio, not throw it out as not needed.
So I am taking suggestions on players and modes?
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littlefish
Member # 966
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posted June 22, 2012 18:39
I know a bit about this, but I am far away from audophilia. 5-10 years ago I could have given a definitive answer; now, not so much. As far as I am concerned, the quality of the tune is far more important to my enjoyment than the quality of the recording.
The most important questions are how much money are you willing to spend, how much do you care, and where/how do you want to listen to it? Do you have a single awesome hi-fi with glorious speakers that your tunes will always be pumped through, or are you trying to make the music available in the kitchen, car and everywhere else?
I've done a bit of research, and realised that audio technology has moved on from when I knew stuff. You can get DAT recorders off ebay that 10 years ago would cost you the same as a kidney for cheap. The quality will not change, and tapes will probably be available for a few years.
Otherwise, it's going to be a hard drive recorder, and other factors come into play, and I don't know about them.
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GrumpySteen
Member # 170
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posted June 22, 2012 19:45
First, you should be prepared to buy a studio quality audio interface as well, since your average sound card is pretty crappy when it comes to recording. It won't be cheap and it'll require some research to find a good one that will work with whatever setup you have. Be prepared to be disappointed by the lack of support for anything other than Windows and Mac.
FLAC, WavPack, Monkey's Audio, ALAC, WAV... these are all lossless (or potentially lossless) recording formats, which is what you're describing. Be prepared to buy a lot of hard drives since songs will compress at most by around 50% and will take up about 5MB of drive space per minute (and you'll want backups, so double that hard drive purchase). If you choose one of the non-compressed formats, be prepared to double that hard drive purchase since you'll be looking at 10MB/minute.
You should also be aware that very few portable players support these formats. ALAC is Apple's lossless format and is supported by iPods. RockBox (a firmware replacement that can be installed on a wide variety of players) supports FLAC. I would go with one of those two if you want to play the music anywhere other than on your PC.
Lossless WAV is also supported by iPod, Rockbox and most MP3 players, but it's uncompressed so songs are around twice the size of ALAC and FLAC.
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The Famous Druid
Member # 1769
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posted June 22, 2012 21:10
quote:
Originally posted by GrumpySteen:
Be prepared to buy a lot of hard drives since songs will compress at most by around 50% and will take up about 5MB of drive space per minute (and you'll want backups, so double that hard drive purchase).
'A lot of hard drives'?
At the encoding rate you quote (which sounds about right) a 2TB drive can hold 9 months of continuous listening - I doubt the MoMan has that many LPs. More realistically, he can probably fit several encodings (to suit various players) of all his music on the one drive.
A 2TB external drive costs about $100, which works out to less than 1 cent per hour of music, so yeah, buy 2 and keep backups. Actually, for a ripping exercise of that magnitude, I'd buy 3 and keep an offsite backup somewhere, but I'm paranoid about backups.
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TheMoMan
Member # 1659
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posted June 23, 2012 05:54
Okay thanks to you two gentlemen. I have also been made aware that the LP s and Tapes will have to be played one more time each to put them into memory.
On the CD s is there a way to read the CD and convert, not having to listen to it also while/during saving?
Figuring that each LP has about forty minutes of audio, and some of the reel to reels go several hours this could become a huge project.
I am figuring that this project will consume about an hour for each hour of final listening, wow talk about high overhead.
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The Famous Druid
Member # 1769
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posted June 23, 2012 09:44
quote:
Originally posted by TheMoMan:
On the CD s is there a way to read the CD and convert, not having to listen to it also while/during saving?
Yes, on reasonably recent hardware (anything made this century) you should be able to rip a CD in about 5 minutes.
Your LPs and tapes, well, not much can be done to speed that up, but you don't need to be there while it's happening. Start a tape playing, then go mow the cows (or whatever you farm-types do with your time) and come back in a couple of hours.
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GrumpySteen
Member # 170
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posted June 23, 2012 16:43
The Famous Druid wrote:
At the encoding rate you quote (which sounds about right) a 2TB drive can hold 9 months of continuous listening - I doubt the MoMan has that many LPs.
It's a perspective thing. TheMoMan said a large collection. To me, a large collection of albums is at least a few thousand albums.
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The Famous Druid
Member # 1769
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posted June 23, 2012 19:06
quote:
Originally posted by GrumpySteen:
It's a perspective thing. TheMoMan said a large collection. To me, a large collection of albums is at least a few thousand albums.
And 8,500 45 minute LPs will fit on a 2TB drive.
If he treated the LP ripping process as a 'full time job' (8 hours per day, 5 days per week, 50 weeks a year) it would take 3 years to fill the first drive, but by then 5TB drives will cost about $50, so the second drive he buys will hold 22,000 LPs, and take 9 years to fill.
Still not 'a lot of hard drives'
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TheMoMan
Member # 1659
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posted June 23, 2012 21:07
Back during my Campus radio days both radio stations at MTU had huge LP collections, I have maybe 150 LP s and about twenty hours of tape.
I just got back from the Field Day event in Midland Mi. I think I overexposed myself to the sun and heat. Came home with sore eyes, headache and tremendous thirt even though I downed about three litters of Gatoraid.
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dragonman97
Member # 780
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posted June 24, 2012 01:17
Most people who say 'large collection' probably mean around about the size of MoMan's collection, at least as I see it.
Most people are /not/ Rich Russo:
http://richrusso.net/about/
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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GrumpySteen
Member # 170
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posted June 24, 2012 18:49
Fucking lay off the nitpicking. I provided useful information. If you don't agree with one goddamn irrelevant statement, consider how pedantic and annoying you're being before you post.
This shit is why I rarely bother posting here anymore and I'm sure as hell not going to bother responding in this topic again.
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TheMoMan
Member # 1659
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posted June 24, 2012 20:35
I did not open this thread to start a whizzing, or Poop tossing contest. Thank you all whom replied.
So with Ubuntu I am having fits getting a ripping program that will convert the CDs to MP3s. I have spent too much time inside on these beautiful days fighting with installers.
Yesterday the Fertilizer truck that is steered by the GPS and controls the spray nozzles was here that is cool the driver only is in the cab, in case of malfunction. During the last long axis pass the end nozzles on the arms were shut off to prevent over application. Because of overlap.
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TheMoMan
Member # 1659
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posted June 25, 2012 12:23
Well Folks I got up this morning downloaded K3b and all of its plug-ins and have started putting music in my external HD. It still takes some amount of time for each CD about half of the play time.
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CommanderShroom
Member # 2097
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posted June 26, 2012 10:42
The faster your Drive, and computer, the faster that process goes. But if you are going with FLAC or another lossless format, then it does still take a while.
I am not a complete audiophile, so I am ok with MP3s. However I have always used the highest rate possible.
In any case, good luck on the audio ripping and hopefully you can stay sane through it all.
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