CD Music Collection Save to Hard Drive etc

bwatt72 on 20/12/2023 - 18:17

I have a very large cd collection going back 23 years which I have paid monthly to and dec 2022 was the last of them and company has now gone digital.
I’m still very old school I like most things physical be it movies, music or games.

My large cd collection I was thinking if something happened to them damaged etc I never get these back.

I also still like to buy CDs and have both options digital and cd format so what I used to get provided to me on cd I want to make my own CDs to keep adding to it.

As i have been getting the digital CDs now since January 2023 i would like to make the last 23 years all digital also.
It will take me some time as I get three double CDs worth each month over a 12 month period.

The downloads I do now on the music are flac don’t ask me what it is but supposed to be good quality.

So my goal is to get this 23 years of CDs into digital format, I take I would just instal them to my pc then onto a hard drive.

Can you recommend a hard drive to get as i am sure I read on here that some hard drives go funny after so many years?
Is there a certain brand I should look for or get?
I have no idea how large or gb this collection would use. But I take as it’s already on cd I not get any better than what it already is on cd as long as it’s not lesser quality.

Obviously I’m currently downloading my digital CDs with flac and this year I am adding a lot of stuff but it sure is eating up my pc gb.

It be nice in the end to have all my cd collection of this particular lot as said which most are in cd format just this years ones to make into cd and obviously convert the larger cd collection into digital.

I think putting on a hard drive I can connect to my pc and play music through this or my laptop and then Bluetooth it etc.

Also as an extra back up would it be a good idea to back it up somewhere storage that I can even access when I want it even play through that option as well?
But I be happy just to store it safe if need be. But I assume it would be ongoing costs to do this.

I will continue to add more each month until one day I stop or not longer get it.

Would I need any kind of software that might help me organise it or I would benifit from it.

Entertainment Computer Component Hard Drive Music

Comments

      • trapper on 22/12/2023 - 12:25
        +1

        Someone else will have already ripped them I mean, so just go download them on BitTorrent.

      • G-rig on 24/12/2023 - 11:24

        So they sent you physical CDs?
        What's the 6 months to do so about?

        • bwatt72 on 24/12/2023 - 12:10

          As they are now digital then keep them online for 6 months for you to download listen etc and after that gone as they add each month.

          • G-rig on 24/12/2023 - 13:47

            @bwatt72: So you don't even have CDs to rip after all this? What's to say you can even keep them after 6 months, probably have DRM encryption.

            Just look up tidal-gui on GitHub and knock yourself out;)

            • bwatt72 on 24/12/2023 - 14:39

              @G-rig: Yes I have about 22 years or so of CDs it was only end of 2022 they went digital no more CDs for me.
              I get approximately two double CDs and one single cd per month but as I said they give me more now digital, i believe i could have all these years gotten extra stuff through digital side and never knew about it now I know and I get more from digital side now.
              I still prefer physical stuff on cd but not much I can do if they gone digital I’m surprised they never gone digital long before now, they probably was but was happy to supply CDs.
              But either numbers was to low not worth it or i believe it was to cut costs more likely

              • G-rig on 24/12/2023 - 15:23

                @bwatt72: Ah right, sounds like it would be nice to rip all the physical ones then. The digital ones I doubt you would own as such?
                Agree, it is good having something tangible in your hands. I spent ages ripping all mine around 2008 and have been in boxes for years.
                It's a bit of a hobby sorting it all out to start with.

                • bwatt72 on 24/12/2023 - 15:50

                  @G-rig: The digital ones I do own, I pay for them just like I did when they put them on CDs same thing I just get it digital format now

                  • G-rig on 24/12/2023 - 16:03

                    @bwatt72: Sorry was just interested. Sweet so they are raw FLAC files or something?
                    Inspired me to a bit more sorting/tagging of some of mine.

                    • bwatt72 on 24/12/2023 - 16:49

                      @G-rig: Probably I get to pick various options how I like to download them

  • skittlebrau on 22/12/2023 - 17:19
    +4
    1. Download ExactAudioCopy (Windows) or XLD (macOS).
    2. Configure ripping settings for AccurateRip/SecureRip.
    3. Rip each CD to FLAC at original bit rate and sampling rate (likely 16bit, 44.1kHz)
    4. Use FreeDB to fill metadata tags.
    5. Archive your songs and keep them safe.

    Most albums will be around 350MB average I think.

    • bwatt72 on 22/12/2023 - 22:59

      What’s this online storage?

      • skittlebrau on 23/12/2023 - 11:02

        No online storage involved, unless you want to as an additional offsite backup. You just need an optical disc drive, enough hard drive space and time.

        If you’ve got about 1,500 discs to rip, then that will come to around 525GB which in modern storage terms isn’t really that much and will be easy to store for daily use and to keep multiple copies of for backup.

  • Bec-a on 22/12/2023 - 22:06

    How much space do you need? Might be easier to keep music on computer and keep an external hardrive plugged in to do automated backups

  • bwatt72 on 22/12/2023 - 22:58

    Is this a good deal a good hard drive?

    https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/821979

    • G-rig on 23/12/2023 - 10:50

      So can my pioneer DVD burner from back in the day ($100?). Doesn't fit in my PC case these days but done all my ripping 13-15y ago and don't buy more cds.

      Bluesound is a decent brand though. 2TB isn't heaps really but just use Tidal.

    • bwatt72 on 23/12/2023 - 12:26
      +1

      Not at that price

  • TightAssDude on 23/12/2023 - 11:20

    Amazon Glacier might be the way to go.. .It's cents per GB.

    • TightAssDude on 23/12/2023 - 11:21

      Also back-up in three places, otherwise it doesn't exist

    • bwatt72 on 23/12/2023 - 12:28

      Is that aud or usd is it even available in Australia if my match correct me is that not $180 per year is that not expensive for storage that would be 500gb

  • whyisave on 23/12/2023 - 13:48

    Hello OP.
    Over the years, I have ripped all my CD music into digital .wav

    There were about 500+ CDs (which I have mostly sold in the last 3-years).

    I have kept all the ripped files as .wav format on 2 x Hard Disks.

    I have used the excellent Exact Audio Copy [EAC], mentioned several times already.

    So, use EAC with the right settings for your needs, to extract the file.
    You can keep it intact, as .ISO or rip it to .WAV format.
    You can also instruct EAC to encode the .WAV into .FLAC, .MP3, etc…. that's up to you.

    Before ripping with EAC, I used to use Freedb
    so EAC can go to the Freedb Database and grab the names of your CD tracks,
    and then automatically tag the files.
    This means those ripped song filenames would be meaningful and be the actual song names,
    not just "Track 1.wav", "Track 2.wav", etc.

    Afterwards, you can also use MP3Tag with the Discogs webscripts,
    to auto-magically tag your .wav or .flac files with more context-rich data.

    To use Discogs tagging within MP3Tag, go to Discogs to set up an account as well,
    and after that, you will get an API key to use with MP3Tag.

    Even if you don't use MP3Tag, I highly recommend getting a Discogs account.
    Once you have an account, download the Discogs app to your Smartphone.

    Then, use the barcode scanner within the app,
    to scan the barcode of your physical CD collection,
    and this will create your collection online within Discogs.

    You will then see how many CDs you have, which version of the release you have,
    how much the CD is actually worth,…and in fact, you will see the total median price of your entire music collection.

    ( I have done this to my hundreds of rare CDs and also to my vinyl collection. )

    Finally, if you don't have the time or commitment to rip CDs all the time, for encoding to .flac, etc.
    then, download SoulSeek and you can download and/or share your music,
    ie. you can download the .flac files for your music (unless your CD music is rare).
    The issues with this are:
    ○ you don't know what quality FLAC encoder they used
    ○ what version of the CD album they had (sometimes there are different regional releases)
    ○ the download speeds are 'slow'
    ○ the user uploading to you, has disappeared middle of a download

    SoulSeek is amazing and has been around for >20 years,
    and it's the best for music collectors.
    I wish / want more people joined it,
    and shared their music,
    for its continued happiness with discovering music there.

    • G-rig on 23/12/2023 - 13:57
      +1

      Pretty good advice there. I use to use EAC and CDTag (i think, which is no longer supported but seemed a lot easier than the current offerings - more automated with the tagging and file renaming). I would recommend FLAC to save space - it's still lossless just think of it life a zip file. WAV can't store metadata either. Last thing I do is apply replaygain (can do this in Foobar2k).

      FLAC Frontend is another handy app.

      You could also or just get Tidal - they have hi-res FLAC now (and unofficially look up the GitHub project to download if you still want a copy, some titles get removed over time - another good reason to have your own library, ripped or otherwise).

    • bwatt72 on 23/12/2023 - 14:33

      So, use EAC with the right settings for your needs, to extract the file.
      You can keep it intact, as .ISO or rip it to .WAV format.
      You can also instruct EAC to encode the .WAV into .FLAC, .MP3, etc…. that's up to you.

      Flac I was told was best quality so why not use it? As I said this is all new to me, all I ever knew was MPs and that’s many moons ago.

      The CDs don’t have barcodes they are bundles of songs out into different categories of music

  • whyisave on 23/12/2023 - 15:25
    +2

    Flac I was told was best quality so why not use it

    You missed the point of why that was your advice.

    The files/content in the CD is a bunch of digital data.

    You extract that as .wav, which is uncompressed and keeping it 'true to source'.

    Once you have the .wav file on your your hard-disk,
    you have the original source file and you don't need the CD anymore.

    So, that's just the 1st step, ie. to take something that is stored in a physical object (the CD),
    and getting it into a digital format (ie. as a file on your hard-disk, USB stick, etc.)

    Once you have this 'source file' (the .wav file),
    you will then see how many bytes it's taking up in your hard-disk.

    So, the next step is to decide whether you want to keep it this way
    or try to reduce the space in your hard-disk.

    If you leave it as-is, then it's fine,…there's nothing wrong with it.
    You will have the CD-quality source files.

    For a 74 or 80-minute CD, you will see that the .wav files have occupied about 700 MB or 800MB worth of space.

    100 x CDs of 700MB of .wav files, will be 70,000 MB or 70GB worth of space.

    Then, someone comes along as says you can use less space in your hard-disk,
    if you decide to "compress" the music files, because your ears can't tell the "difference"
    because there are frequencies that we can't always hear, etc. etc.

    So, MP3 was a way to compress music files, to save file storage
    and also be able to share those files online, quicker because internet speeds were slower 25-years ago
    and hard-disks were more expensive.
    People needed to be more frugal and creative with how they stored and shared/uploaded their music.

    MP3 is 'lossy' way of compression music,
    ie. you 'lose' bits of data based on complex mathetical formula around signal analyses, etc.
    There are various bitrates to choose from, 95kbps, 128kbps, … 320kbps.

    Then, there are 'lossless' way of compressing music,
    where, you do not 'lose' bits of data, and all of the bits are there,
    but it's intelligent packed and compressed, so that it takes up less space.

    FLAC is 'lossless', so that's why people gave you that advice,
    because it's a good compromise of keeping your original sound quality
    but without taking up lots and lots of hard-disk space.

    If you you're using FLAC compression level 8,
    your 800MB of .wav files can become 500MB of .flac files
    without losing any quality whatsoever.
    That's the marketing and maths around FLAC, ie. it preserves your original audio files.

    So, 100 x CDs of .wav files was 70GB before,
    the same in .flac files will be about 50GB, so you save 20GB.

    1GB here, 20GB there…it all adds up, when you're storing files in hard-disks.

    The good thing about keeping .wav files is, you have the original files
    and you can use the .wav source files, to make multiple back-ups,
    eg. you can keep them as .flac in one hard-disk
    and you can use same source files, to compress into 320kbps .mp3
    or some other formats, like .opus, .ogg, etc.

    I guess keeping .flac files is already "good enough" as having .wav files,
    so you don't necessarily need to the .wav files, because you can reconstruct a .flac file back to .wav file.
    The most important benefit of .flac over .wav file is,
    .flac can store metadata inside its tags, but .wav files cannot.

    You can keep all the song information, lyrics, Discogs links, producer/composer information, etc… all inside of .flac file.
    You can even keep high quality CD album artwork inside the .flac files,
    so it's an awesome format to keep your music files as.

    • bwatt72 on 23/12/2023 - 16:07

      Wow a lot to take in I not started on the cd collection and it’s when I start and when I get time to do it and will do it in stages.

      I was provided 9 months of music around 28 CDs worth in fact it’s hard to estimate as more songs was given being digital than it would have been in cd format. I will need to check what format they was put on to use.
      When I downloaded 2 months recently I did it flac.

      So to be honest i probably will start with the last 11 months of music I have done which might be all flac or other.

      I would want to try keep all the same and get these 11 months on to hard drive.
      After that start on the CDs gradually going through them so end result is all in sane hard drive.
      If it don’t fit on the same hard drive I can always get another.
      But if it fits great as long as I have best quality and best one and most compatible.
      I may back up on a laptop if enough space or just two hard drives and online back up

      • whyisave on 23/12/2023 - 17:05
        +1

        Wow a lot to take in

        I took the time to reply slowly and explain the steps,
        because from your replies, I felt like you were not
        grasping the basic concepts around music, lossy/lossless compression,
        hard-drive storage, hard-drive back-up solutions, file management (eg. ID3 tagging, etc.)

        I was provided 9 months of music around 28 CDs

        I don't know why you are saying "9 months of music" ?

        No one here is counting your music in terms of days or months.
        You just need to worry about number of CDs, and do the maths,
        so you know how many CDs = how much storage you need, etc.
        It's easier than you think.

        Just focus on your CDs and transferring them to into digital files, eg. FLAC.

        Once you have transferred them, if you really want,
        you can run some duplicate file check software,
        to compare if your CD .flac files are 'duplicate' of your digital files,
        just by comparing the names of the digital files.

        Then, you can choose to trim your .flac collection around that.

        I say this, in case you fear there will be an overlap of CD files and digital music files.

        If it don’t fit on the same hard drive I can always get another.

        You can already do the calculations before you do anything.
        Each typical audio CD only holds less than 74 or 80-minutes of music,
        so you already know that will be about 500MB of .flac files.

        If you have a 2TB SSD, you will be able to store about 3,500 CDs worth of .flac files.

        A 2TB SSD hard-disk costs about AU$ 150+

        A non-SSD hard-disk is even cheaper, eg. 4TB is about AU$ 110 now.

        You need at least 2 hard-disks, because hard-disks will fail,
        …it's not "if it will fail, but when it will fail".
        No warranty will replace your files lost.

    • skittlebrau on 23/12/2023 - 19:30
      +3

      You extract that as .wav, which is uncompressed and keeping it 'true to source'.

      Something to consider for your own collection/archival purposes is that FLAC has built-in checksums (CRC and MD5 hash) and WAV does not. Aside from FLAC being lossles, tagging/metadata support and being an open/free format, you really should be storing your music as FLAC and not WAV, even if for the checksumming alone.

      • G-rig on 23/12/2023 - 19:31

        Agree and wav cannot storesl metadata (tags) either if I recall.

        • skittlebrau on 23/12/2023 - 19:33
          +1

          Yep I mentioned that above.

          Without some sort of checksumming whether at the file level or block level, you would have no way of knowing whether WAV rips are silently corrupting over time.

          • G-rig on 23/12/2023 - 19:50
            +1

            @skittlebrau: Yeah I mentioned it above before too.
            No reason to use WAV.

  • kaleidoscope on 23/12/2023 - 16:59

    Have you used itunes music match? Its there for this usecase where you have music purchased from other sources but still want to use itunes for playback. What it is, is a service you subscribe to (less than apple music ofcourse), where you import your music into itunes, and if there is a match from your imported music into their song collection, you will be able to play it back at full format across your other apple devices.

    If you want family to enjoy this, it may not be the best solution. but look into it if you are interested.

    • whyisave on 23/12/2023 - 17:06

      Personally, I stay away from Apple.

  • bwatt72 on 23/12/2023 - 17:14

    So many helpful answers here thank you all most appreciated and I will look into it when I have bit more time, being Xmas is just around the corner obviously this comes first and this is only something I just been thinking of doing as a to do list.
    With all the info given it be very helpful and if I need to ask more I post up again.
    I may have missed it but in regards to online storage as another back up is this expensive and what’s recommended cheaper the better obviously.

    • G-rig on 24/12/2023 - 08:24

      No worries. Takes a bit of time researching. Just decide on something before you start in terms of your file tagging & naming.
      (I think there was a good audiophile preset in EAC I used, which automatically creates a log file, md7, nfo & m3u (playlist) file. Album cover - 'folder.jpg'

      I have adopted the following:
      Folder: Artist-Album-Year
      File Name: Track No_Track Name.flac (eg. 01_Track Name.flac)
      01_Artist-Album-Year (.log, .md5, .nfo, .m3u)

      Folder multi-disc: Artist-Album-Year-2CD
      File name: Disc NoTrack Name (eg. 101_Track Name.flac)
      000_Artist-Album-Year-2CD (.log, .md5, .nfo, .m3u)

      A NAS setup isn't very cheap (see below ~$900) but I've always wanted one. Still haven't bothered as I use a RPi 4 for music streaming with Volumio.
      It would be a great central area for other files,photos and backups though. I deleted most DVDs, the 720p and 1080p look pretty average these days with 4k streaming being effortless. Just trying to cut down on digital hoarding, but will always want my music collection.

      just keep a backup in a few places & Premises. All mine fit on a 2TB SSD connected to RPI 4, and the originals on a normal HDD on PC which I copy from. A syncing program would be handy such as Rsync or WinSCP).

  • morebunnings on 23/12/2023 - 20:35

    HDD wise, you'll want a NAS with RAID so that when a HDD fails, you can just swap it out (its not a case of if, but a case of when the HDD fails).

    Dual bay NAS: $320
    https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/nas/1-4-bays/104586-ds22…

    2x 8TB NAS HDDS: $300 each
    https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/hard-drives-&-ssds/hdd-3…

    That gives you 8TB of redundant storage (7.8TB of usable storage). if one HDD fails, you just replace it and wont loose any data.

    CDs ripped to FLAC are about 300mb each, so you'd be looking at about 26,000 CDs worth of music able to be stored.

    You could then install subsonic onto a PC at home to stream to devices: http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp

    For streaming use whichever app you like best from here: http://www.subsonic.org/pages/apps.jsp

    $0/month cost. $920 setup cost (plus you have to have your PC on all the time, connected to the internet).

    • quick-dry on 24/12/2023 - 04:31

      this is pretty much the exact post that I was going to make.

      Though it might be worth OP considering future plans as it could make things easier in the future - as a music 'sized' NAS might be great now, but limited you if you later wanted to fill it with DVDs you own, or other stuff. We have a 4 bay Diskstation DS916+ and a DS920, both 4 bay. But either way, so simple to handle disk errors of capacity upgrades if needs be. A synology with 1 disk redundancy is easy - if a disk dies, you immediately buy and install a new disk and it rebuilds. We have one NAS backing up to the second, and it sits in a different house, so if the "house burns down" scenario comes to pass, we stilll have that - if both houses burn down… we're probably so far down on our luck that we went up with the NAS :p

      If you have a decent internet speed then Synology drive is a pretty easy thing to setup and gives you a dropbox equivalent - but with no ongoing cost. Handy if you want to grab music while out and about, or you acquire some and want it backed up to your 'cloud at home' immediately. The Synology Photos backup also makes it super easy to backup phone photos to the NAS, and easy to then backup that NAS to a second NAS if you want.

  • cashless on 23/12/2023 - 21:49
    +1

    Love the amount of detail & information provided on this thread, it’s inspiring. The 2 long posts from whyisave are more or less instructions for what I plan to do with my CD collection. Thanks!

    One of the above posters mentioned that if you have CD’s then your data is already digitised.
    How true.
    Then another poster mentioned that commercial CD’s don’t suffer from disc rot (assuming they’re relatively well looked after).
    These two things combined lead me to believe that the CD collection itself serves as a backup. It might take up more physical space than a NAS, but it doesn’t need power.
    So the point here being, is cloud storage necessary as the extra safeguard when you might be able to box up the whole collection & store it at a friendly relative’s house in their attic?
    With NAS and archived HDD, this would satisfy the 3.2.1 rule that was mentioned?

    • skittlebrau on 24/12/2023 - 00:04

      Attics can get pretty hot. I wouldn’t recommend storing them there.

      You also need to take into account the time required to re-rip. I’d hate having to redo my collection. Just buy an extra hard drive and store it at your friend or relative’s house.

  • Tmofee on 02/01/2024 - 19:50

    I’d suggest a few things - get yourself a raid nas. You usually buy them empty but buy some hard discs so if a hard disc dies you have a backup.

    Also, use something like plex. Their music software side is pretty deeent and you can stream to your phone without messing around and free.

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