Maintaining a Digital Music Collection

wait so are you doing your backup policy now, because if so good for you (seriously)

hahaha, I am! there's no way I'm re-ripping 2500 CDs. I've got utilities that make it easier... they compare the main drive to the backup and only update what changes on the backups. and the backup drives are 2.5" laptop-size in external enclosures... small, don't require power supplies, and USB3 makes the transfers pretty speedy. So it isn't that hard. I do my photos and other stuff as well.

I spent too many years in tech support listening to adults burst into tears when I told them their data was gone for good to not have a backup plan in place for my own.

...why the fear of external drives vs. internal? ― Michael Train

Bodacious got it.

I do have a really good internal HDD docking station, but I kind of want my cake and eat it, too, as I want portability and reliability--two terms which apparently do not go together. E.g., that Caldigit VR2 RAID looks huge, Michael.

I just buy internal HDDs and put them in external enclosures which cost $15-25 each... never had any problems and it's not expensive? We must be talking about disparate amounts of data here... I'm under 3TB.

I've got utilities that make it easier... they compare the main drive to the backup and only update what changes on the backups.

Ah good. This is all that I want to do. I don't want to synch drives or add redundancies. I just want to change the files on my backup as they're modified on the principal. I've been searching for awhile for Windows freeware that can do this but haven't been successful. I tried Cobian but can seem to configure it this way. Any suggestions?

if the external hd was an ipod itunes could do the job. that incremental update thing is bascally a syncing process in one direction. but i'd be interested in reliable incremental backup software too.

i'd be interested in reliable incremental backup software too. ― (alex in mainhattan)

I use Windows freeware (Karen's Replicator) to do my backups. It's pretty basic, but does what I want.

re: external vs internal drives - I bought a cheap DLink 2-bay NAS for £50 and whacked a couple of 2TB drives in with one backing up the other via RAID. Secure, cheap, easy to set up, and the backups happen without me having to think about it.

re: iTunes compilations - make sure the album artist is identical for everything in a compilation. iTunes should then group the compilation correctly.

Album Artist can be "Various" or whatever obv.

Relevant:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2013/04/18/177756358/we-get-mail-do-cd-hoarders-need-an-intervention

Also relevant (try this with a CD collection!)
Taking iTunes Smart Playlists To The Next Level of Music Nerdery

I miss smart playlists so much. Spotify needs them.

i bought double vinyl record store day release. went to put in download code only to find there's a cd version available that nobody's mentioned before. it's £6 cheaper and lossless and would take up less space. 8(

Yeah, there's something wrong with offering up a lossy download code to someone who's purchased a format presumably out of preference for higher fidelity. Seems it'd be far more appreciated if flacs in 24bit/96kHz were made available.

Really wish vinyl editions of albums would be a 7" of their two best songs on pretty colored wax and a CD or FLAC download of the entire album. Who has room for all these 12" records?

(i only bought the vinyl because i didn't know the cd existed until redeeming the download. i don't generally buy vinyl, just seems too mechanical, scraping a needle down a groove, it's 2013! still, the cover's nice)

is this, btw
http://boomkat.com/vinyl/706887-isan-beautronics-limited-vinyl-edition

I've been trying to get my collection under control lately, and ready to digitize all of my CDs before selling them. I'm curious about what utilities you are all using. That Karen's Backup program looks interesting. Is it Windows 7 compatible? I've been using some freeware thing called SyncBackFree that does scheduled backups to my external, but the UI is complicated and I keep missing the backups because I forget and put my computer to sleep before bed. I think I will like this better once I know both main and backup versions of my mp3 collection are perfectly in order.

Right now one of the most annoying things about managing my collection is duplicates. I tried a backup to external a few months ago and now I have these two immense out-of-sync folders that are almost the same. I've found tons of sub-folders containing albums that have their own dedicated folders, as well as differing ID3 info, where I'd fixed one version and not the other. I've been messing around with a tool called WinMerge to weed out duplicates. This is a program that I've noticed a dev team at work using from time to time and is worth checking out if you have the same issue as me. The interface does take a little getting used to.

I also like Treesize (I just use free at home, but we use the pro version at work) for looking at directory structure and folder sizes.

FreeFileSync does about the same thing as SyncBack, but the UI is better imo.

Thanks I'll check that out.

i bought double vinyl record store day release. went to put in download code only to find there's a cd version available that nobody's mentioned before. it's £6 cheaper and lossless and would take up less space. 8(

Really wish vinyl editions of albums would be a 7" of their two best songs on pretty colored wax and a CD or FLAC download of the entire album. Who has room for all these 12" records?

does a CD really take up less space than a record? I don't know, cds seem to take up a lot of space to me. most record jacket spines are only 1/8th of an inch thick while CD jewel cases are about 3/8ths. That means the total surface area of the spine of a CD is 1.875" compared to 1.5" for a record. The depth doesn't really matter to me because it's still taking up wall space either way. The record shelf just eats into your floor space an extra 7" but that seems negligible to me. Wall space is more critical imo.

then if you factor in shelving it gets even worse for CDs. Say your shelves are at least 1/2" thick. You can fit 300 records in the same horizontal space that you can fit 100 CDs so the records plus shelving would be 12.5" while the three rows of CDs plus shelving would take up 16.5"!

If you have a 5x5 foot space on a wall and you have shelving that's 1/2" thick you can either fit 1760 CDs (11 rows of 160 CDs) or 2400 records (5 rows of 480 records).

and the wall of records looks 1000x better

So what are the best options for playing digital music through a proper stereo? I don't really want a "dock" system because I want to also be able to play off of my laptop.

Sonos or AirPlay. I use both. Sonos is incredible and I'd recommend it to anyone.

I have no problems with my airport express - 1/8" plug to RCA plugs into the back of my receiver. I can send iTunes, my iphone, or the audio from my macbook to it so spotify or the occasional YouTube video goes through my main speakers. You can find them for like $75 on ebay, no idea how any of this works with windows or android though.

audiophile types claim the audio output from typical mac products is not that good. I don't know if the airport or airplay are better.

Audiophile types can eat shit. I want convenience and flexibility. I don't have 20K to spend on speakers.

i do

(not)

Although I'm obviously a touch jealous of the disposable income that allows a person to become an audiophile.

I have the basic old Squeezebox and it's great. The newer ones may be more feature overkill w/ touchscreens and whatnot, but when I got mine, it was way cheaper than Sonos. It was actually pre-Logitech and had a vibrant open source community. In any case I have two. One sits on my stereo, has a little 2 line readout and a remote control and I can stream anything on my computer or internet radio. The other one is the radio one with the little speaker and that's in my kitchen. I actually have them sync'd so they're playing the same thing, which sounds pretty fancy.

Logitech killed the Squeezebox line in 2012, which is a shame because they were fantastic.

yeah i have always just used the cable at radio shack with 1/8 inch on one side (for computer) and rca on the other (for stereo). Works fine.

oh n'/m you said you need wireless. i don't know anything about that. audiophile-wise, i would imagine most wireless stuff is not up to snuff.

You don't need to spend thousands to be an audiophile.

I ended up doing both... AirPlay is surprisingly reliable in an "it just works" way and it's what I use if I'm in the kitchen, in front, etc. I have wired speaker systems for my office area and back studio.

For Audiophile levels of spending, Linn,Arcam & Naim are all good.

However it can be done on the cheap with a WD TV live into a cheapish DAC and into the stereo.

there is also a WD TV Play which has analog out, but you're better letting a DAC do all the audio stuff.

the WD TV live just needs to be able to see your laptop, any other media servers and output digitally.

if you can use the app, you shouldn't need a screen for it, (bar the initial set-up)

I use an old xbox1 running XBMC, a £50 DAC and a remote XBMC android app. it works for me, and what I saved on the set up, allowed me to put the money into a Linn amp & Speakers

I guess what I mainly need is a good DAC? I would be willing to spend like, idk, a couple hundred bucks.

My new receiver unexpectedly had AirPlay and it works great.

Audioengine makes a reasonably priced yet high quality alternative for streaming from your laptop/desktop:
Audioengine W3
Audiooengine supposedly makes outstanding DACs as well.

I was looking for more of a whole home alternative, and my four Sonos Play 5's (set of two for two different rooms, with stereo separation) were worth every penny. It took me forever to bite the bullet and buy the first set, but I was blown away once I did. Worth every penny.

hmmmmm.

See the thing is I have this vintage McIntosh amp and receiver that I inherited, and I've been thinking about setting them up and getting some kind of DAC to go into the receiver, but I also need new speakers. I'm wondering if I shouldn't instead just sell the McIntosh components and spring for a high-end system that's designed for digital.

I kind of don't get why so many of these systems are so SMALL (in terms of their speakers) -- don't speakers kind of need to be big to get a full dynamic range, or have there been technology advances that really obviated that need?

people who care more about high fidelity are likely to buy a streaming source they can plug into their component stereo with giant speakers, like a squeezebox (RIP) or a sonos connect... most folks are fine with a clock radio-sized device or similar with built-in speakers. those small devices can sound pretty good, but if you want good-sounding bass and mid frequencies, stereo separation, etc... sooner or later you'll need larger speakers.

The DragonFly USB DAC has been getting good reviews. $249

I'd get an old Squeezebox of ebay for little money. I have the 2nd gen, what later was called "classic" and it works fine. I'd just look into the server software, will it go back to open source? Will it continue to be updated?

Signed up for iTunes Match the other day. Can't upload my library, keeps failing. Shoulda bought an external HD instead.

I just bought another 3 TB external yesterday, time to do another backup and send the previous externals out of the house to some lucky friend. I had partial off-site backup before, but this is much more complete.

^living the dream

I don't know about the current status of development (if any), but it looks like the Squeezebox server software has always been open source.

I'm happy with my old Squeezeboxes but am starting to research how I might replace them. The Audioengine stuff looks interesting -- is anyone here using it?

BTW if you have Squeezeboxes and an iPhone, iPeng is a useful remote control app.

oppo seems to keep building all this stuff into their universal disc players -- dac, usb connections, wireless, etc.