Hey all,
I'm a fairly long time collector of music (30 yrs) and have a large mass of different formats (CD, DAT, Cassette, and Hard Drive).
I have been doing some preliminary reading about converting my entire collection onto external hard drives. I would like to make it easier to access all of my collection and I would ultimately like to rid myself of an entire room full of music and shrink it down to perhaps a bookshelf full of drives.
As I think of attempting this very time consuming process I am wondering what folks think the best approach would be?
I realize that not only am I going to have to transfer all of my aforementioned recordings and compress them for space (lossless of course), I will need to decide about backing up the entire collection (could this be done on a cloudsite cost effectively), and also free myself from being bound to my computer as a playback center. I have a decent stereo here next to my main workstation (Adcom, Canton) but want to be able to play music on my main system downstairs.
Anybody try the Sonos system?
What would you guys use for a music library organization system? I have looked at MediaMonkey so far. I am liking my initial uses of Foobar2000 too.
Sorry for the lack of brevity and cohesiveness in my post! Dave
I would ultimately like to rid myself of an entire room full of music and shrink it down to perhaps a bookshelf full of drives.
How much music do you have? As a very-rough guess... You could probably fit about 35,000 FLAC (lossless) songs on a 1TB hard drive... Yesterday's Fry's ad had a 2TB hard drive for $140 USD. (I have over 11,000 MP3s in 75MB.)
What would you guys use for a music library organization system? I have looked at MediaMonkey so far. I am liking my initial uses of Foobar2000 too.
I use Winamp as a player/library, but it's a matter of taste... Once your files are tagged with artist, album, & title, you can switch to a different player/database without much trouble.
I will need to decide about backing up the entire collection (could this be done on a cloudsite cost effectively)
I wouldn't trust "the cloud" for backup... I want something I can physically get my hands on! (I have a music hard drive at home, and a backup at work.)
I have a decent stereo here next to my main workstation (Adcom, Canton) but want to be able to play music on my main system downstairs.
Anybody try the Sonos system?
I haven't tried Sonos. Whenever I get around to doing something like this, I'll probably dedicate a cheap laptop to my living room system.
I have approx. 5,000 CDs, 1000 hours of 48kHz audio on DAT, and a 1 TB external drive full of FLAC files.
Well.... I guess you'll need more than 1TB... If it was me, rather than a "bookshelf" full of drives, I'd consider an array of "live" drives (maybe an NAS, or a RAID setup).
For backup, an identical setup stored offsite would be nice... if that's convenient.