Large capacity portable FLAC player?
Discussion
Hi folks,
I am looking at the various options of getting my sizeable CD collection (c. 500 albums and singles in total) onto "a device" of some description which will enable me to take my entire music collection with me if I so desire.
As someone who can easily tell the difference between crappy mp3 format and lossless formats I've already decided I'll be ripping it using FLAC. However this seems to pose a problem with regards the portability of the music as 1GB of storage in this format roughly equates to 3 full size CD albums which means an SD card is just not going to cut it.
I've read Finlandia's excellent wiki/review page and the Cowon X7 caught my eye as something that seems to be in the right area of what I'm after, but it has "only" 160GB of storage. Although it has a USB port to connect other devices to, it does state in the PDF manual that this is only for copying files across, so my idea of connecting a large capacity USB HDD with all my music on and using the Cowon to play it is not an option.
I realise that 99% of folks will say just rip it in mp3 as "you can't tell the difference" etc but my ears can I want to do this right first time as it'll be a time consuming process. Having sampled the quality of the music and sound stage from a workmate's £300 earphones and Cowon player (not X7, can't remember which one it was) I was frankly amazed at just how incredible it sounded and I want some of that myself!
What's the best way of going about this? I had also considered streaming it but have since ruled this out as a viable option, primarily because I often like to listen to music whilst driving.
Thanks.
I am looking at the various options of getting my sizeable CD collection (c. 500 albums and singles in total) onto "a device" of some description which will enable me to take my entire music collection with me if I so desire.
As someone who can easily tell the difference between crappy mp3 format and lossless formats I've already decided I'll be ripping it using FLAC. However this seems to pose a problem with regards the portability of the music as 1GB of storage in this format roughly equates to 3 full size CD albums which means an SD card is just not going to cut it.
I've read Finlandia's excellent wiki/review page and the Cowon X7 caught my eye as something that seems to be in the right area of what I'm after, but it has "only" 160GB of storage. Although it has a USB port to connect other devices to, it does state in the PDF manual that this is only for copying files across, so my idea of connecting a large capacity USB HDD with all my music on and using the Cowon to play it is not an option.
I realise that 99% of folks will say just rip it in mp3 as "you can't tell the difference" etc but my ears can I want to do this right first time as it'll be a time consuming process. Having sampled the quality of the music and sound stage from a workmate's £300 earphones and Cowon player (not X7, can't remember which one it was) I was frankly amazed at just how incredible it sounded and I want some of that myself!
What's the best way of going about this? I had also considered streaming it but have since ruled this out as a viable option, primarily because I often like to listen to music whilst driving.
Thanks.
Fiio X5
Expandable to 256Gb via micro SD and they promise upto 1 Terabyte in the future.
http://www.fiio.net/products/index.aspx?ID=1000000...
http://www.head-fi.org/products/fiio-x5-high-res-p...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/FiiO-X5-Music-Player-DAC/d...
Expandable to 256Gb via micro SD and they promise upto 1 Terabyte in the future.
http://www.fiio.net/products/index.aspx?ID=1000000...
http://www.head-fi.org/products/fiio-x5-high-res-p...
http://www.amazon.co.uk/FiiO-X5-Music-Player-DAC/d...
Edited by mp3manager on Monday 19th May 05:05
You *should* rip to FLAC, even if you can't hear the difference as it will guarantee long term future availability of your music.
My ~500 CDs take up ~180GB but I have converted these to 320kbps .MP3 files for playing in the car or streaming to my phone. I believe that I *can* hear the difference between this and FLAC, but it is very slight, and only at certain times (and might not even be actually true!). Conversion is a few mouse clicks to set up, then it just chugs away over night. Make sure you get your tagging right first.
Make backups: do not rip to any one device and leave it at that. A storage device will fail/get lost/get stolen eventually and ripping 500 CDs is an awful thing to do once, never mind twice (500*20 minutes per disc...). I have 5 copies of all my flac files, in various places.
Mike...
My ~500 CDs take up ~180GB but I have converted these to 320kbps .MP3 files for playing in the car or streaming to my phone. I believe that I *can* hear the difference between this and FLAC, but it is very slight, and only at certain times (and might not even be actually true!). Conversion is a few mouse clicks to set up, then it just chugs away over night. Make sure you get your tagging right first.
Make backups: do not rip to any one device and leave it at that. A storage device will fail/get lost/get stolen eventually and ripping 500 CDs is an awful thing to do once, never mind twice (500*20 minutes per disc...). I have 5 copies of all my flac files, in various places.
Mike...
Have a look at - http://www.rockbox.org/
It's custom firmware for a variety of portable media players.
Find one with big storage it is compatible with.
I use it on my old 30gb iPod video.
It's custom firmware for a variety of portable media players.
Find one with big storage it is compatible with.
I use it on my old 30gb iPod video.
dbpoweramp will rip two formats at the same time so you can produce a FLAC & an MP3 (or whatever you prefer) in one pass.
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/cd-ripper.htm
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/cd-ripper.htm
Most Android phones will play FLAC. How crucial is it to have all your music available all the time? Can you give examples of where you are likely to be travelling?
I'd suggest sticking all your music on a NAS or similar and uploading it all to the cloud. Then you can access all of your music over the net.
Alternatively, just set up a free Google Play account and upload all your music. Admittedly it does transcode FLAC to 320 mp3 AFAIK but I'm not sure you'd really notice the difference on a phone or in a car.
I'd suggest sticking all your music on a NAS or similar and uploading it all to the cloud. Then you can access all of your music over the net.
Alternatively, just set up a free Google Play account and upload all your music. Admittedly it does transcode FLAC to 320 mp3 AFAIK but I'm not sure you'd really notice the difference on a phone or in a car.
Do you need it all on you all the time? I agree it's nice to have everything with you but if you store it all in FLAC at home you can easily synchronise a subset of it to a portable device.
Also agree with the above comment about can you really tell the difference in the car? My car has an SD reader and I convert a load of albums to variable bitrate MP3s on an SD car to play in the car. I could probably tell the difference on a high end home system with decent headphones, but a 128ish kbps track on MP3 sounds just as good as the CD in the car.
Also agree with the above comment about can you really tell the difference in the car? My car has an SD reader and I convert a load of albums to variable bitrate MP3s on an SD car to play in the car. I could probably tell the difference on a high end home system with decent headphones, but a 128ish kbps track on MP3 sounds just as good as the CD in the car.
TEKNOPUG said:
Most Android phones will play FLAC. How crucial is it to have all your music available all the time? Can you give examples of where you are likely to be travelling?
I'd suggest sticking all your music on a NAS or similar and uploading it all to the cloud. Then you can access all of your music over the net.
At 300+ Mb per album he's going to have issues with data rates though.I'd suggest sticking all your music on a NAS or similar and uploading it all to the cloud. Then you can access all of your music over the net.
RizzoTheRat said:
At 300+ Mb per album he's going to have issues with data rates though.
I don't see why - that will happily stream over wifi. My point is more that, does the OP really need all 500 cd's available at any one time? If you have everything in a cloud, you can either stream tracks if you have a suitable connection or download a few days worth of music and then change the playlist when you next have a network connection. Unless you are planning a few months away from civilisation, I can't see the need to have 500 cd's written to a portable device.Also, I assume that the original rips will be on a HDD somewhere? In which case I presume at some stage you'll be able to connect whatever portable device you have and change the files?
RizzoTheRat said:
I was referring to the OP's mention of listening to music when driving.
My bad.Few car stereos play FLAC, so you'd be looking at AUX connection from a portable device. A car is one of the least hospitable places in which to listen to music. I really can't see the value in using FLAC over 320mp3 in a car.
So, yes, of course rip everything to FLAC initially. Storage is cheap, so why wouldn't you? Then if you want music in your car, convert it to 320kbps and stick in on a USB stick. What's an album @ 320mp3 - 150mb? So you'd get 420 CDs on a 64gb stick.
Then stick all your music in Google Play, which will transcode to 320kbps and you have access on your phone to your entire library, anywhere, as long as you have data connection.
Or if you must have FLAC, for whatever reasons, then upload it all to your own cloud.
TEKNOPUG said:
RizzoTheRat said:
I was referring to the OP's mention of listening to music when driving.
My bad.Few car stereos play FLAC, so you'd be looking at AUX connection from a portable device. A car is one of the least hospitable places in which to listen to music. I really can't see the value in using FLAC over 320mp3 in a car.
So, yes, of course rip everything to FLAC initially. Storage is cheap, so why wouldn't you? Then if you want music in your car, convert it to 320kbps and stick in on a USB stick. What's an album @ 320mp3 - 150mb? So you'd get 420 CDs on a 64gb stick.
Then stick all your music in Google Play, which will transcode to 320kbps and you have access on your phone to your entire library, anywhere, as long as you have data connection.
Or if you must have FLAC, for whatever reasons, then upload it all to your own cloud.
best of all worlds then
As others have said, rip everything losslessly and accurately - look at EAC and dBpoweramp - do it properly and you'll never have to rip again. I keep a 'master' library in this format and any other codecs/bitrates get transcoded from it. It also acts as a single point for organising, tagging, maintaining artwork, etc. which then filters down to the transcoded libraries. You can get batch converters which will transcode into any other format you desire.
My strategy is somewhat tailored for the fact that I use Apple portables (no native FLAC support but otherwise quite handy for managing/playback) but as an example of how one master FLAC library can be converted to serve many purposes:
(1) master lossless library in FLAC (includes a lot of HD albums) - this sits on a NAS at home and gets streamed to my Linn DS players in the house
(2) ALAC copy of the above which goes into iTunes on my MacBook Pro and then disseminates to iPhones/iPads. MBP also acts as a 'semi' portable player with a lossless copy of the library - played via iTunes/Bitperfect into discrete Meridian USB DAC and earphones in train/office/hotel scenarios
(3) 320kbps AAC version of the above - allows me to manually manage whether albums are downloaded to portables in AAC or ALAC. Lossy is fine for most contemporary music but classical needs to be lossless IMHO - especially with very detailed earphones).
(4) 320kbps AAC, downsampled to 44.1/16 and volume normalised, gets put on USB stick for the car
My current i7 desktop or MBP will batch convert a couple of hundred albums in between 1 and 2 hours...
My strategy is somewhat tailored for the fact that I use Apple portables (no native FLAC support but otherwise quite handy for managing/playback) but as an example of how one master FLAC library can be converted to serve many purposes:
(1) master lossless library in FLAC (includes a lot of HD albums) - this sits on a NAS at home and gets streamed to my Linn DS players in the house
(2) ALAC copy of the above which goes into iTunes on my MacBook Pro and then disseminates to iPhones/iPads. MBP also acts as a 'semi' portable player with a lossless copy of the library - played via iTunes/Bitperfect into discrete Meridian USB DAC and earphones in train/office/hotel scenarios
(3) 320kbps AAC version of the above - allows me to manually manage whether albums are downloaded to portables in AAC or ALAC. Lossy is fine for most contemporary music but classical needs to be lossless IMHO - especially with very detailed earphones).
(4) 320kbps AAC, downsampled to 44.1/16 and volume normalised, gets put on USB stick for the car
My current i7 desktop or MBP will batch convert a couple of hundred albums in between 1 and 2 hours...
Edited by theboss on Sunday 25th May 16:37
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