BIG problem - Music & Media

BIG problem - Music & Media

Author
Discussion

davepoth

29,395 posts

199 months

Monday 6th July 2015
quotequote all
legzr1 said:
With the price of storage so relatively cheap I reckon it's daft to choose a lossy format over FLAC - once the information has been discarded it's gone forever.
Agree. You're only looking at 125GB for 250 CDs (it might be a bit less than that) which really isn't a lot these days.

anonymous-user

54 months

Monday 6th July 2015
quotequote all
legzr1 said:
With the price of storage so relatively cheap I reckon it's daft to choose a lossy format over FLAC - once the information has been discarded it's gone forever.
I don't disagree but if you cannot tell the difference what does it matter? If I want a bit of nostalgia I can always get the CDs from the loft smile Now my music is portable/on all devices, I listen to more of it more of the time. My iPhone for example has 120gb storage and if I want I can put on most of my collection. I simply couldn't do that with FLAC. Guess I'm lucky not to have the hearing of a dog unlike most of the audiofiles on here wink


Edited by anonymous-user on Monday 6th July 07:51

Funk

26,274 posts

209 months

Monday 6th July 2015
quotequote all
wormus said:
legzr1 said:
With the price of storage so relatively cheap I reckon it's daft to choose a lossy format over FLAC - once the information has been discarded it's gone forever.
I don't disagree but if you cannot tell the difference what does it matter? If I want a bit of nostalgia I can always get the CDs from the loft smile Now my music is portable/on all devices, I listen to more of it more of the time. My iPhone for example has 120gb storage and if I want I can put on most of my collection. I simply couldn't do that with FLAC. Guess I'm lucky not to have the hearing of a dog unlike most of the audiofiles on here wink


Edited by wormus on Monday 6th July 07:51
On kit of the quality the OP is taking about, you'll hear it.

If you're ripping it, it makes sense to rip at the same quality as the source. You can't put it back in later without going through the whole palaver again so do it properly from the word go.

JRiver allows me to transcode down to mp3 or other when putting music on the phone (I use ogg) but then it also allows me to stream as a personal cloud which turns it to mp3 on the fly so I have all my music available online whenever I want it.

Best of all worlds really.

legzr1

3,848 posts

139 months

Monday 6th July 2015
quotequote all
Funk said:
On kit of the quality the OP is taking about, you'll hear it.

If you're ripping it, it makes sense to rip at the same quality as the source. You can't put it back in later without going through the whole palaver again so do it properly from the word go.

JRiver allows me to transcode down to mp3 or other when putting music on the phone (I use ogg) but then it also allows me to stream as a personal cloud which turns it to mp3 on the fly so I have all my music available online whenever I want it.

Best of all worlds really.
Exactly.

A decent 3Tb drive costs around the same as eight of those CD things in people's collections so not exactly a huge investment and I'd guess it would cover most needs / music collections.
If lossy versions are important (I've a few discs filled with MP3 for the car where quality isn't important) there are rippers available that will convert to both lossless and lossy at the same time, place them in seperate folders and move them to the same device.

24 bit rips of vinyl can create huge file sizes but I'm guessing that if lossy 'sounds the same as' lossless and/or the original album this won't be an issue wink

I use Synology and DBpoweramp - smooth, seamless and reliable. There are equally good alternatives out there.

PieterLOL

58 posts

128 months

Monday 6th July 2015
quotequote all
Tested a few of the hifi-servers/players with my dad a while ago, would recommend to stay away (sound isn't special, options limited and interfaces are more difficult to use). As recommended, just go for NAS and tablet/computer based source, play it through a good DAC linked to a proper stereo kit. Spend the money on your speakers and amp. Easy.

For your budget, I'd surely try a Vincent SV 238 with a pair of Monitor Audio's Platinum series speakers. Impressive kit (HUGE amp and extremely nice finish of the speakers) and I always favoured the Vincent/MA combinations for very detailed soundstage. But just go and listen to a few different sets somewhere.

anonymous-user

54 months

Monday 6th July 2015
quotequote all
Funk said:
On kit of the quality the OP is taking about, you'll hear it.

If you're ripping it, it makes sense to rip at the same quality as the source. You can't put it back in later without going through the whole palaver again so do it properly from the word go.

JRiver allows me to transcode down to mp3 or other when putting music on the phone (I use ogg) but then it also allows me to stream as a personal cloud which turns it to mp3 on the fly so I have all my music available online whenever I want it.

Best of all worlds really.
Sounds like a nice solution. My problem is I was so ahead of the curve smile I ripped all my CDs to WMA about 10 years ago and because nothing at the time would play them I converted them all to 192kbs MP3 which was about the best you could get at the time. Big mistake as it sounded crap in hindsight. When I discovered iTunes match it sort of dug me out of a hole as it replaces all your low quality/legacy MP3s with much better 256kps MP4a. Sounds pretty good to me but as I'm using a £500 Sony AV Receiver and ProAC floor standers, it will never be what Audiophiles consider good enough. It's a compromise and we use the system every day for a mixture of TV, movies, music and internet radio. By contrast, when I had a dedicated audio system, playing CDs, it would get used perhaps once per month. Having got to this point, I cannot be arsed to rip everything again!


I've ripped all my Blu rays and DVDs to MKV and have them stored on my NAS also. The convenience of having everything in one place with the easy to use Kodi interface to switch between sources is good combination IMHO.

Edited by anonymous-user on Monday 6th July 13:09

Funk

26,274 posts

209 months

Monday 6th July 2015
quotequote all
wormus said:
Funk said:
On kit of the quality the OP is taking about, you'll hear it.

If you're ripping it, it makes sense to rip at the same quality as the source. You can't put it back in later without going through the whole palaver again so do it properly from the word go.

JRiver allows me to transcode down to mp3 or other when putting music on the phone (I use ogg) but then it also allows me to stream as a personal cloud which turns it to mp3 on the fly so I have all my music available online whenever I want it.

Best of all worlds really.
Sounds like a nice solution. My problem is I was so ahead of the curve smile I ripped all my CDs to WMA about 10 years ago and because nothing at the time would play them I converted them all to 192kbs MP3 which was about the best you could get at the time. Big mistake as it sounded crap in hindsight. When I discovered iTunes match it sort of dug me out of a hole as it replaces all your low quality/legacy MP3s with much better 256kps MP4a. Sounds pretty good to me but as I'm using a £500 Sony AV Receiver and ProAC floor standers, it will never be what Audiophiles consider good enough. It's a compromise and we use the system every day for a mixture of TV, movies, music and internet radio. By contrast, when I had a dedicated audio system, playing CDs, it would get used perhaps once per month. Having got to this point, I cannot be arsed to rip everything again!


I've ripped all my Blu rays and DVDs to MKV and have them stored on my NAS also. The convenience of having everything in one place with the easy to use Kodi interface to switch between sources is good combination IMHO.

Edited by wormus on Monday 6th July 13:09
I also made the mistake of MP3 all those years ago and have been studiously replacing with FLAC. I also use Kodi but only for TV and film; I prefer JRiver for audio quality and the feature set mentioned in my previous post.

mikeiow

5,366 posts

130 months

Thursday 16th July 2015
quotequote all
TEKNOPUG said:
This. Pay someone else to do it. Rip everything to FLAC on a HD. Back up to another HD. Then upload to a Cloud service.
You have two boys. This task is their pocket money.....Xp per CD (your call!) !
Nothing so helpful as children earning money. Even older ones (my son is away, but we recently paid a friend of his £50 per day to do some fence painting....best £150 I've spent this year!!!)


IceBoy

Original Poster:

2,443 posts

221 months

Thursday 16th July 2015
quotequote all
mikeiow said:
TEKNOPUG said:
This. Pay someone else to do it. Rip everything to FLAC on a HD. Back up to another HD. Then upload to a Cloud service.
You have two boys. This task is their pocket money.....Xp per CD (your call!) !
Nothing so helpful as children earning money. Even older ones (my son is away, but we recently paid a friend of his £50 per day to do some fence painting....best £150 I've spent this year!!!)
Mike,

I like your thinking!! LOL!
IceBoy
(OP)

IceBoy

Original Poster:

2,443 posts

221 months

Thursday 16th July 2015
quotequote all
Hi All (OP here!)

I think I might have a bigger problem......We are going to be moving to the countryside!....which means I will be going from fibre 40-50mb/s to 1-2mb/s.

Is this going to cause me issue with the technology and solution I need to purchase?!?!

Arrrgghhh!
IceBoy

Digitalize

2,850 posts

135 months

Thursday 16th July 2015
quotequote all
If you're planning to use a Home Server solution, it will have no effect. If you want to use a streaming service such as Apple Music, yes there will be an issue.

legzr1

3,848 posts

139 months

Friday 17th July 2015
quotequote all
mikeiow said:
You have two boys. This task is their pocket money.....Xp per CD (your call!) !
Nothing so helpful as children earning money. Even older ones (my son is away, but we recently paid a friend of his £50 per day to do some fence painting....best £150 I've spent this year!!!)
My 13 year old daughter did 90% of mine in exchange for a school skiing trip (expensive at first look but she was always going to go anyway so got it done for free in effect - I'm a terrible parent biggrin).

legzr1

3,848 posts

139 months

Friday 17th July 2015
quotequote all

Digitalize said:
If you're planning to use a Home Server solution, it will have no effect. If you want to use a streaming service such as Apple Music, yes there will be an issue.
This.


Broadband speed will have no effect whatsoever In a system using NAS > router > renderer.

You could even unplug the phone line if you like wink

OldSkoolRS

6,749 posts

179 months

Friday 17th July 2015
quotequote all
I was thinking...if you haven't the time to rip them, how will you have the time to actually listen to them afterwards? silly

IceBoy

Original Poster:

2,443 posts

221 months

Friday 17th July 2015
quotequote all
Has anyone any experience of these AV receivers, that have bluetooth, Wifi, NAS connections?!

Are they any good?

I guess the interface and searching for tracks will be the difficulty?

IceBoy

OldSkoolRS

6,749 posts

179 months

Friday 17th July 2015
quotequote all
Yes, I've got a slim line Marantz NR1605 in my conservatory and it can play files from my NAS via wifi. Not something I use much, so I don't know if there are any limits on the number of folders (or folders within folders) or individual songs, but it seems to work quite well.

I was being tongue in cheek with my earlier remark, but I do sometimes wonder if people do end up listening/watching to all the ripped DVDs and CDs that they accumulate on hard drives. I know I've got CD wallets full of CDs and DVDs that rarely get taken out as I'm more interested in the recently bought ones.

eztiger

836 posts

180 months

Friday 17th July 2015
quotequote all
A friend of mine setup a system whereby a headless PC lived in the hallway. A large pile of 'to be ripped' CD's sat next to it in a box.

Anyone in the house who walked by the machine and noticed the cd tray was open would plonk a disc from the pile in and close the tray. System was configured to then automatically rip the cd (with metadata where appropriate) and, when done, eject the tray again.

Rinse, repeat. Took a while but was pretty painless given anyone in the household could easily swap the discs as necessary.

His was cobbled together with linux and a bunch of scripts but I'm sure there will be easier ways to set this up these days.

David A

3,606 posts

251 months

Friday 17th July 2015
quotequote all
IceBoy said:
Has anyone any experience of these AV receivers, that have bluetooth, Wifi, NAS connections?!

Are they any good?

I guess the interface and searching for tracks will be the difficulty?

IceBoy
Seems we have a lot in common (well a car anyway) except I kept my 1210s and have a loft full of records from the early/mid 90's.

Sub wise I recommend one of these http://www.hometheatersound.com/equipment/svs_pb12...

Now the weathers better must meet up and compare cars.

marctwo

3,666 posts

260 months

Friday 17th July 2015
quotequote all
IceBoy said:
Has anyone any experience of these AV receivers, that have bluetooth, Wifi, NAS connections?!

Are they any good?

I guess the interface and searching for tracks will be the difficulty?

IceBoy
Just buy a normal amp and connect a raspberry pi running something like Volumino which you can control from your phone. Get one of these with the pi for very high quality audio: http://iqaudio.com/?page_id=454

Otherwise, if your NAS has a build of Logitech Media Server, run squeezelite on the Pi and buy iPeng for your tablets/phones.

marctwo

3,666 posts

260 months

Friday 17th July 2015
quotequote all
marctwo said:
Just buy a normal amp and connect a raspberry pi running something like Volumino which you can control from your phone. Get one of these with the pi for very high quality audio: http://iqaudio.com/?page_id=454

Otherwise, if your NAS has a build of Logitech Media Server, run squeezelite on the Pi and buy iPeng for your tablets/phones.
Also, if you are using Apple gear for playback, consider ripping to Apple Lossless (ALAC) instead of FLAC. Most things seem to play ALAC but iPods/iPhones don't like FLAC.