The Data Migration Thread

I rip things to WAV - I know FLAC files are a lot smaller, but FLAC support hasn't made the jump to hardware. FLAC is great for Internet transmission, but not if you're going to burn a CD for somebody.

I also don't get rid of CDs unless it's something I don't care about. I can hear minor differences between a ripped CD and the original, but I'm a little on the anal audiophile side.

I was figuring flash players would be the next thing in hardware. Has anybody heard about any up-and-coming lossless compression schemes that look like they might compete with flac? It seems to have replaced SHN and APE almost completely.

I can hear minor differences between a ripped CD and the original, but I'm a little on the anal audiophile side.

This worries me, but it's a little too late for that. Could you elaborate on these differences? I have a picky ear as well.

Let's not even talk about disk storage unless you know what "SDLT" means.

Nothing for Macs, huh?

goodbra, you obviously know more than I do (although I at least know what stiction is), are there any options between rolling the dice on DVD-Rs and going for some insane system like this? Or is my best bet to dump it all onto a LaCie external HD and keep my fingers crossed until the next media becomes affordable?

FWIW, I am backing up to individual CDRs as well as flac DVDRs.

1. Multiple disks: For every one disk of data, have 2 for backup. Keep your data mirrored on these, and do not leave them connected to ANYTHING. Barring theft, it's unlikely you'll lose all 3 at once. Although disks die (at my job, I see about 10 disks die in over 100 servers, per year), they don't often die simultaneously, so you could replace a bad disk fairly quickly. If you leave them disconnected, you won't be as vulnerable to electrical events, but you really have to plan for at least one such event occurring during a backup, which is why suggest 2 disks.

2. Multiple DVD-Rs: Mirror yr data 3-4 times on DVD-R and keep the media in cold, dry storage. This is extremely labor-intensive (it took me about a year to record 200 DVD-Rs at work using this method, although I had other responsibilities to keep me occupied). I do this with some of my less-important data, but I've already permanently lost data because of failures in the process. In particular, I lost a DVD's worth of data due to bitrot and miscounting the number of DVD backups I had.

I think that 2 is a giant PITA and I don't really recommend it, since it's much more error-prone than solution 1. It's only about half-cheaper than 1, too: Depending on where you get your DVD-Rs, you'll probably pay $100-200/TB, not counting the burner. HD-DVD-R is currently about one order of magnitude more expensive, so it's gonna be awhile before it's price-competitive to the disk-backup solution.

The best solution of all, though, is to keep your CDs in the original format. I've been buying CDs since 1988, and I haven't seen one die of natural causes (I have about 1000). At worst, I had a Misfits CD go through a "coma" of about a year where it skipped in any device, but then it came back to life and has performed just fine since then. Granted, CDs do die, but they're a lot more robust than any DVD-R I've used.

Myself, I don't backup any music at all. Most of what I have I ripped from my own CDs, and the remainder I either can't get, and thus burn to multiple CD-Rs, or I really ought buy myself anyways. That cuts my backup needs down from a few hundred G to about 30.

So, yeah, backup to multiple disks. Buy the cheapest, slowest large disks you can find and some $30 enclosures for 'em. I know it's expensive up-front, but how much do you value your collection?

Easy to clone and way better for random access then tape.

For system backups I use Carbon Copy Cloner.

thanks for all that info goodbra, exactly what I was looking for.

I've been buying CDs since 1988, and I haven't seen one die of natural causes (I have about 1000)

I've been buying CDs since 1990, and I have had several go down. Just last week I opened up my TG1 CD on Mute (1986 vintage) and the entire data side of the disc was a horrifying spiderweb of cracks and oxidation. Some of my World Serpent discs have gone bad, and others have obvious oxidation eating in from the outer edge.

I have also lost 2-3 CDRs of about 300 due to the aluminum layer literally flaking off. Bye bye, Hermann Nitsch!

given this, the risks of backing up to *multiple* DVDR copies or a couple of external HDs doesn't seem like too much of a gamble.

Thanks again for the info.

If only streaming media could approximate my music collection.

I also am not buying any World Serpent discs from prior to 1995 or whatever (although this label CD defects is a long known problem.)

my late 90's CDRs are definitely starting to rot, though -- they look fine, but towards the end of the disc they start to skip or just fail. the cheaper CDs (ones that cost under 50-75 cents each) are failing first, especially generics.

very disturbing that there's no visual indication of rotting. once this happens you still have some time to rip them, CD players fail easier because they're reading them in real time so if it gets to an iffy section it just glitches, whereas a computer can read the section many times and then go with the highest incidence.

still -- what in hell do I do now? every storage medium seems to have half the life of the one previous to it -- from digital tape to hard drives to CDRs to DVDRs (the worst yet, those things, and not looking forward to HDDVD). they really have us on the hamster wheel, they're prepping us for the 'convienence' of streaming by poisoning the stability of all physical media -- it is not unintentional. so looking forward to backing up my own archives of 300+ CDRs once every 8 years, then 4 years, then 2 years... this is a real problem

early paranoid estimates had maximum CD length at 20 years, maybe they'll all make 40, but they won't make 100. if something happens, it's all dust. the history of recorded music will end with vinyl. perhaps that's for the best.

I seem to recall a manufacturing defect discovered in CDs made before sometime in the late 80s that caused the CDs created with the inferior process to die ignominiously. The major pressing plants fixed the matter, but I never heard an update on whether it was successful. The problem didn't manifest itself in oxidation or flaking, however, so I don't think it can be blamed for any such disc failures.

I have also lost 2-3 CDRs of about 300 due to the aluminum layer literally flaking off. Bye bye, Hermann Nitsch!

This is one area in which DVD-Rs are intrinsically superior to CDRs: Cheap CDRs are basically an acrylic (or some kinda plastic) disc with the recordable material sprayed on top. Slightly more expensive CDRs add a layer or two on top of that, but it's usually not enough to protect the disc from a knock on the corner of a table. Some folks have hypothesized that sharpie markers are so caustic as to soak through the upper layers of CDRs, eventually damaging the underlying data layer. I haven't seen much proof of that, so I dunno whether it's been relegated to urban legend status.

DVD-Rs, however, sandwich the recordable layer between two acrylic discs, which offers a lot more physical protection than CDRs. Unfortunately, that fact does little to explain why DVD-Rs are so incredibly flaky.

Funny, I had heard the data on DVDs is closer to the surface than on CDs, which is why DVDs are more likely to suffer scratches affecting playback. Agree that DVD-Rs are sketchy storage media. And it's much easier to recover data from a failed hard drive than it is to get it from a rotted DVD-R.

There was a pressing plant in the UK that had a lot of problems in the late 80s/early 90s with CD rot - most "famously" affecting Skullflower's Xaman, but they supposedly bunged up a bunch of other releases.

I can hear minor differences between a ripped CD and the original, but I'm a little on the anal audiophile side.

This worries me, but it's a little too late for that. Could you elaborate on these differences? I have a picky ear as well.

It's usually in the bass frequencies, I detect some wobble/murk in the low-end - and I use Exact Audio Copy configured properly, too. Some people say "It's all in your head, they're exact digital copies!" - piffle. If you want an extreme example, try ripping the Iggy mix of Raw Power and let me know if the rip sounds anything like the original CD.

I'd be interested to see if you could tell the difference in a double blind test. "Some murk in the low-end" sounds like the sort of qualitative difference even a bit of increased jitter couldn't account for; usually people talk of loss of imaging or smearing in the high frequencies (I'm even dubious about that, mind).

But then again, I'm just an ex-audiophile who is just naturally sceptical about any of these sort of claims!

Aside from perceived differences in audio quality, do you think the copies are not actually copies?

Me too! I can definitely hear the difference when I play a ripped file back-to-back with the same song straight from the CD. I'm not saying I can hear the difference in every piece of music, certain CDs are affected more than others by conversion.

Aside from perceived differences in audio quality, do you think the copies are not actually copies?

I'm not sure exactly what you mean here - it's an audio file, so what else is there to measure besides audible fidelity to the original, aside from doing spectrographs? But I'll go back to Raw Power. You don't need to be an audiophile to hear the difference between what's on the CD and a ripped copy. It's an extreme example since that CD's mastered in the red, but if the actual sounds encoded on a disc can disrupt the ripping process, logic tells me it's possible for frequencies to be lost in the conversion.

After all, audio on CDs is not just a series of 0's and 1's, there is encoding and decoding going on (see http://www.ee.washington.edu/conselec/CE/kuhn/cdmulti/chap1/encode.htm ) which could account for differences between an original and a copy.

As mentioned before, the music on a CD is stored digitally (in other words, in 1's and 0's). The recorded music, however, is encoded in a format that allows it to be stored on the CD. So, if you were to read off the bits of information on the CD player without decoding it you would not get music. Encoding is necessary because of algorithms that are incorporated in the music at recording time.

Ripping a CD is going through an decoding/reencoding process, not just copying a file one location to another. If it were, you wouldn't need a specialized program like EAC to rip a CD, you could just copy and paste it.

Two questions:

1) Does copying an audio disc as a single ISO file provide better sound quality then ripping it track by track?

2) Anybody remember when there was a hacked cdfs.vxd file for Windows 98 available that would let you copy a CD via a cut and paste? Wonder how that worked?

The truth is out there!

WAV to WAV or AIFF to AIFF is ostensibly a bit for bit copy, if your hard drive is perfect, but once drives hit 120 GB I started occasionally seeing crazy things during file copy -- glitches, failures, you can no longer depend on an accurate copy, you have to listen.

Yes, that's another World Serpent one.

I've definitely seen differences in the waveform going from WAV to redbook audio CD and back to WAV

I've done multiple rips of CDs with different software (EAC, CDex, etc) and been able to verify that the resultant WAV files are bit-perfect clones of each other. Now, this only proves that you can rip and rip and rip and every CD-R dub is* identical to every other, but I'll accept that it doesn't prove that the CD-R is identical to the pressed CD.

(or can be, I'm not saying that every combination of drive, software app and target media does it flawlessly).

However, I've also done mastering for commercial releases and been able to verify that a particular WAV file on my hard-drive (that I burned to the master CD-R and sent to the plant) is bit-identical to a rip of the subsequently released CD (or, if there are differences, it's been things like "six more zero samples at 00m00s00f", little offsets). Which is maybe a bit more convincing, I dunno...

I've never been able to perceive a quality difference between a CD and its CD-R copy (but then, I'm not expecting to hear one, so perhaps I'm not really listening for differences).

I've also heard spikes, glitches and dropouts when doing the same -- you have to listen and check every single second of the master when ripping from audio CD. Also, a speck of dust on the CD tray or disc itself can refract the laser and pass on an uncaught error.

Certainly this is true but this creates isolated, discrete glitches (or, if they're really bad and cluster together, an unplayable or skipping disc) not the wholesale changes in audio quality I think Edward is talking about. Changes in bass response require the application of a transform to the data - changing the amplitude values of tens of millions of samples, not a few dozen here and there which are full-scale or missing. I can't really think of a mechanism in ripping and burning which could cause this.

But I'll go back to Raw Power. You don't need to be an audiophile to hear the difference between what's on the CD and a ripped copy. It's an extreme example since that CD's mastered in the red, but if the actual sounds encoded on a disc can disrupt the ripping process, logic tells me it's possible for frequencies to be lost in the conversion.

I don't see why "mastering in the red" should produce data that disrupts the ripping process. Extreme brickwalling just produces a sequence of full-scale samples (+/-32767) which should simply be duplicated on the CD-R. But you're pretty adamant about this disc so maybe I should get it out of the library (are you talking about the 1997 Sony reissue?) and have a go myself.

Y'know, 10 years ago I'd have sworn that I could tell you the sonic signature of Nordost, Chord and Audioquest interconnects; a couple of blind tests later and I wasn't even sure there was such a thing as cable sound...

Yes and no. "Ripping" CDs to WAV or AIFF is usually an isometric process, and thus totally reversible, process. If you involve the sound card, then there's a non-reversible real-time encoding, but folks don't often do this. Programs like EAC/cdparanoia/cdda2wav are used for two reasons: 1. If a CD is defective, they can reread the bad sections multiple times to ensure that the "right" data is extracted, and 2. Many operating systems simply do not support reading from CDs as if they contained a filesystem, as most data CDs do. If you happen to use an OS that DOES support "audio-CD filesystems" (Windows XP is not one of these, natively), then you CAN just copy the raw audio tracks wherever you please.

The reason that CDRs burned from pristine rips don't sound like the originals is because the rips aren't 1. created as audio masters, or 2. burned as audio masters. In other words, if you have an audio file, say a WAV, that represents a pristine CD rip, then tossing it into your fave burning app will result in a remastered CD, which may sound very different than the original, depending on the liberties taken by the recording/mastering software. If, however, you create a CD master from an audio CD and burn it as a CD master, then the result will be aurally indistinguishable from the original.

In other words, if you want a truly exact copy of a CD, then you should use software designed to create exact copies. Used correctly, both Nero and Toast can do this, as well as many other titles. The only way to prevent these applications from doing their job is to give them a CD that contains deliberate "errors" that cause their error-correction routines to fail, or worse, to prevent them from reading the CD at all, as some copy-protection schemes do.

What relevance does this issue have to archiving CD audio in other formats? Well, for one, if you don't store the audio "as a master", then don't plan on burning it to an exact CD duplicate later. If you store the audio in a lossless format (e.g., FLAC, WAV, or AIFF), it is possible to recreate the original CD, although this may be more of an art than a science.

If I were interested in this kinda thing, I'd rip to FLAC and use cdrecord to create CDRs from extracted WAVs. This wouldn't guarantee me a perfect copy, but I'm sure that cdrecord, which works just fine on Mac, wouldn't attempt any bizarre mastering moves, virtually ensuring that the only difference from the original would be the levels.

Note that if you use EQ, then you might perceive alterations in timbre when listening to recreated CDRs, since if you record at a lower volume than the original master and you simply turn up the volume to compensate, then any non-linearity in your equalizer will be correspondingly magnified. Furthermore, other parts of the audio chain, from the amplifier to the speakers, don't necessarily have a linear response, and audio software may have its own reasons for tweaking its output. In short, if you do not create a CD from a pristine "master" rip, there are many reasons you may not hear the same CD when burned later to CDR.

it could only improve things.

i have one of these: http://www.cowonglobal.com/product/product_X5_feature.php (albeit the earlier silver one) which plays flacs natively (yes, it points out that this is rare. big in asia though).

but flac's not really good for portables, too large. so now i rip everything to flac and ogg at the same time, use the (default settings) oggs for mobile listening, flacs for backup. (means two copies of everything and makes it fiddly copying things to portable device though - can't copy entire directories anymore. must think of a way around that. on the fly encoding isn't it - too slow.)

the other advantage with flacs (apart from them being about 2/3rds the size) is that they store metadata within themselves - no need for stupidly long filenames containing artist and track name.

(i am so fed up of tagging mp3s what with the 3 different versions of id3 and different players supporting some but not the others. with ogg and flac there is ONE tag format (um, not quite true, but it seems to be pretty universal))

> FLAC is great for Internet transmission, but not if you're going to burn a CD for somebody.

decent burning software will expand flacs during the burn, the same way programs will let you burn mp3s as audio cds. the only thing it needs is a flac decoder and the whole point of flac was that the decoder was open source...

-- scott seward (skotro...), January 19th, 2007.

Haha, we'll have to take that one to the "Raw Power Remix C/D?" thread Scott.

But you're pretty adamant about this disc so maybe I should get it out of the library (are you talking about the 1997 Sony reissue?) and have a go myself.

That's the one, give it a whirl! Though some of what libcrypt has said about EQ may also be a factor here. What do you use to do bit-comparisons of the files?

I'm not saying that every combination of drive, software app and target media does it flawlessly

I think this is usually the culprit - if you're using EAC/cdparanoia and a Plextor drive and a reliable hard drive you're in good shape. But most people are using iTunes and whatever came with their computer.

I've never been able to perceive a quality difference between a CD and its CD-R copy (but then, I'm not expecting to hear one, so perhaps I'm not really listening for differences).

I always thought a digital copy was an exact copy, until I actually started hearing the differences. They're subtle, and I can hear them on close listening - but your point about EQ makes sense, and may be a primary factor.

Thanks to everybody for droppping all the knowledge!

Cool Edit 2000. And if it tells me that every single sample is in precisely the same place on the timeline with precisely the same amplitude value, that's good enough for me! (Of course, there's always jitter on playback...)

A comparison I've never done, actually, is between something ripped by CDex or EAC (which are installed on the desktop PC upstairs) and something ripped by iTunes (on the laptop). Or, indeed, a comparison between something burned by Nero or Roxio and something burned by iTunes. I do make sure that normalisation or any settings that might fiddle with the audio are firmly off with iTunes but I guess there could be something else going on.

But you say you're using EAC, so I can't explain your reported audible differences.

"On to the other piece you slippedd in there about, "it's nice to have these in a final definitive CD version before that format starts to slip away," I think you just started a whole new thread there. There probably already is a thread or one million pieces of a thread spread across other threads, but do you think the record industry is heading towards abandoning the cd format? All downloads? No physical form for releases (cause you know majors aren't going to revert to vinyl)? And why did I read that the music industry actually had total higher sales last year that 2005 but since a much higher percent was from paid downloads, "they" still weren't happy because downloads aren't as profitable as physical album sales (or somesuch)? How could that be possible? Where are we headed Ned?"

Not really about the exact same thing, but a similar topic. What are folks' thoughts about the future formats of actual releases? Are we heading to an era of no actual physical form for music?

If bandwidth and storage catch up to support lossless formats, it could happen a lot faster than 10 - 20 years.

Yup yup yup. I shall hedge my bets until then on the stuff I really want while ditching the rest bit by bit -- as I've mentioned elsewhere, one thing that's always struck me about everything I've ripped and sold back is how often I've wanted to listen to the respective mp3s. Answer: uh, none.

As for the ripping questions above, I'd guess that if you are using EAC and getting changes in sound quality that do not have to do with your playback setup, you probably have a problem with your EAC configuration. Easy to do with that program. If you indeed find that the a cdr made from files securely ripped from the original cd sounds different than the original cd, it probably has to do with your equipment's response to the different media involved (pressed cd vs. burned cdr) rather than any difference in the digital data.

Funny you should say that, because I'll never forget reading a technology article from 1988 that said "Who knows? Maybe one day you'll be able to carry your entire record collection around in something the size of a Walkman!"

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10351

!!! I just took your advice and ripped the Coil disc I referred to above that exhibited discrot symptoms in my regular player. The rip sounds fine. The data is saved!

I realize that this is from a label with well-known pressing problems, but this makes me have just a twinge of doubt about the "original CDs are the best backup" claims on this thread.

how much money you getting for your stuff, ned??

I made a nice four figures selling my bullshit on amazon just a couple years ago or so

TOMBOT'S Amazon Marketplace Blowout (wherein you make jokes at the expense of my juvenile obsessions)

how much money you getting for your stuff, ned??

Some pretty reasonable hauls via Amoeba, actually. I'd say for this year alone it's been well into four figures. A LOT of randomness I've been shedding (keep in mind that there's still thousands of CDs left -- that'll change).

keep in mind that there's still thousands of CDs left

tower records r.i.p., amirite???

;-)

Actually that's a pretty small amount in comparison.

So, to those of you who have decided to migrate the majority of your physical collection over to the digital realm, how is that going?

Recently, I decided to go digital as much as I feel comfortable. I decide to begin a partial purge of my CD collection, selling things in waves until I'm only left with my favorite records, which I want to hold onto for archival purposes. Anything that isn't essential is getting sold, and I've started buying new records through iTunes and Amazon mp3. It seems more or less inevitable that most people will either be buying or streaming new music online in the near future. It's kind of already gotten to that point, as my good local indie store doesn't reliably have copies of all the new records I'm looking for.

For those really interested in this subject, Maura over at Idolator recently posted an entry, What Have You Done With Your CD Library? (If You’ve Done Anything With It?), which started an interesting discussion in the comments section.

*decided

I haven't migrated the majority over, but I am up to probably 500 (CD and vinyl, all ripped) so far, with 150+ CDs on the chopping block. I'm still trying to rip most of the stuff to flac as well as a straight CDR copy, but some of it I just don't care enough about. I would never consider replacing any sold disc with MP3s, gotta have lossless. I can live with whatever sonic ephemera comes with digital copying and manipulation, so far I haven't heard anything that gave me pause except for the aforementioned CDR disc rot, a single bad DVDR, and World Serpent problems.

As far as checking the condition of older stuff, I have mostly been going back and checking the things that were ripped under unusual and dubious conditions in the early 2000's (CD player straight into pro CD burner in real time, hence limited track marker ability). The levels mostly came out OK, only one so far was overmodulated (Ora's Aureum 2LP, bummer cause that was my fave). I have been using Peak to fix some of the original tracking problems and saving the results as new flacs.

Like Ned noted somewhere on here, I have not really missed a lot of what I sold. But I have also pulled out backups for a radio show or just to play and been glad I had them.

also I wish I had possessed this technology when I was selling tons of stuff at record shows in the mid-90's.

I sold every CD I didn't care about without creating a backup. Then, I imported everything that was really important to me to my computer in 192kbps, saving the CD as a physical backup. I had a rather modest CD collection, which I don't think ever exceeded 200 records at one time. So far, I've sold at least sixty records, I think, with more to go probably.

I'm not an audiophile, so I don't mind buying new records from iTunes or the Amazon mp3 store. 256kbps sounds good to these ears. And while the fact that mp3s are ephemeral gives me some pause, I appreciate the fact that they don't take up anything except for hard drive space. One of the big impetuses behind me selling so much back in the first place is to just have less physical stuff cluttering up my life.

Has anyone else been working on any data migration-related projects lately? Continuing any old projects? Anyone else getting rid of most of their physical CD collection?

Well you linked that Idolator post so I already weighed in there but I'll c/p what I wrote there here:

--

As any number of friends of mine know my CD library is a bit...large. (The term “Raggettstacks” was coined some time ago.) That said I’ve actually been reducing it bit by bit over the years, as I sold off CDs in waves just to clean the place up a bit — even so, however, we’re talking a huge amount. I had always had vague ideas about making some sort of continuing archive out of it, but wasn’t too sure what the best approach would be — while I work for a university library, I didn’t necessarily know if there would be interest in it here, especially since it is fairly idiosyncratic.

That all said, at the end of last year for a variety of reasons I decided it was time to bite down hard and make arrangements to pass most of it on, outside of a variety of discs kept for their rarity (especially CDRs and limited run efforts), for sentimental reasons or just because I could never see myself actually parting with them under any circumstance. It’s still a fair amount of discs but the amount of what I wanted to let go completely overwhelmed it.

After thinking about selling it all off in a heap, then chatting with a couple of friends who urged me to consider finding some way to keep it together, a good notion occurred — I still live near where I did college radio all these years, and am in touch with both current station staff and a couple of old veterans still there. So I decided to see if there was any interest on their part for a donation of discs — I’m pleased to say that there was. Since then I have been engaged in a thorough effort to back up each of my discs (and make backups of the backups) with an eye to completing the mass donation by the end of the year.

By giving the collection to an organization that is dedicated to music, as well as to maintaining a deep catalog, I figure that it’s the best of both worlds — doubtless there will be some duplication but there’s always room to fill some gaps, while any extras could conceivably be used for fundraising efforts or the like. Either way, by benefiting the station, both now and in the future, I like to think that I’ve made a positive contribution to an organization where I made and maintained friendships to this day, and which in no small part shaped who I am as a listener as much as a DJ and presenter. Lord knows I spent a large amount of time scrounging through the station archives turning up music I’d never heard of before — why not encourage this cycle to continue, and to help secure the role of such stations to continue to share out music to listeners?

Financially this option might not be everyone’s — especially now. But I’d encourage people who might have this option to hand to consider it. On top of which, frankly, I look forward, given all that I do have, to not having to move any of it ever again when I do my next inevitable house move, whenever that will be!

Ned, I actually read your post over at Idolator, and this is such an awesome project!

If you don't mind my asking, what percentage of your CD collection are you planning on holding onto?

I'd say around...20%? And that'll actually probably skew downward after I go through that remnant.

In 2009 I did a major amount of ripping, getting down to under 500 CDs and CD singles left to go - the absolute dregs of my collection, much of which I need to consider selling. I try to get rid of 100 every year to make space for the new acquisitions, thus keeping a steady amount that fits on my rack space. Having all this music on my PC has allowed me to review old stuff that hadn't been spun in a decade, sometimes finding gems, other times making an easy decision to sell. I've got a big barrier about hanging onto the physical item that I've been slowly chipping away at. I'll never get rid of EVERYTHING, but I feel like I could probably ditch that last 500 and never notice. My ultimate goal is to get a couple of those large drawer systems (http://www.can-am.ca/), get rid of as many jewel cases as possible and reclaim a ton of wall space.

I've already bought 5 individual digital tracks, mainly from compilations that I already had most of. I expect that trend to continue - there's already a couple of digital-only releases I have my eye on but I'm waiting to see if they get a physical release as I'd always prefer to make my own rips.

I also have been ridiculous about managing my tags. I added cover images to over 3000 files, mostly singles, and try to be consistent about my naming conventions, my folder designations (Singles/Radio Sessions/Demos/Live for non-lp material) and preserving original album tracklistings while siphoning off bonus tracks to aforementioned non-lp folders. I mine for duplicates - I can't stand that, and it mainly impacts the integrity of compilations but that's how I like it. Speaking of compilations, I change the artist tags to some variation on "Compilation" because I don't want to see all the individual artists on my iPod or Sansa. I standardize the volume of everything by adjusting the gain. I do some other things to verify the quality of the MP3s themselves. It's taken me about 8 years to get to this point and I'm very happy with my system and my collection.

got a 1.5 TB external today, a Seagate Expansion. Starting at the beginning of around 250 DVDRs and getting them onto the drive. I'll be interested to see how the older ones have held up.

I am now on DVDR #4.

note: this is all flac

No matter how much music I have on my hard drive, I still end up doing my primary listening on CDs

all music collecting is ultimately just a pain in the ass and hoarding digital files is just as pointless (if not more pointless) as hoarding CDs.

yeah, I know. this is more for the convenience of not having to go dig through 200 discs to find some file or show or album.

all music collecting is ultimately just a pain in the ass and hoarding digital files is just as pointless (if not more pointless) as hoarding CDs.

yeah but if you have a hard time coming around to the "get rid of anything I'm not listening to" position, it's easier to have a hard drive filled with useless shit you don't need than it is to get rid of closets & attics & basements full of actual CDs.

Revive - a year on anything digitally related is akin dog years...

I now have over 600GB backed-up to two drives + 200 CDRs. Oberservation:.

1. I've had two HD failures in the last year (not the Caviars) but I was able to recovery 99% of everything with recovery software (Stellar Phoenix). This first recovery kept my USB-tethered HD spinning for about 6-weeks. Use of a USB 3.0 or SATA connection may have helped (but who knows given the black magic involved in deep level HD scans) but I wouldn't know because I was unwilling to turn off the machine until the scan was completed.

2. Adhere to your category sections. I didn't want to go too genre-centric. Since I'm not an academic, I've found it useful to make my categories more general. I know use the following:

Alt Rock
Folk - Country - Blues
Electronic - Ambient
Hip Hop - Rap
Jazz
Rock - Pop
Metal - Noise - Avant
Soul - R&B - Funk
World

These get me on the right track pretty quickly when looking for anything in general or particular. I probably have a couple other sections for holiday or kids music, etc., but the main categories have really help keep me from getting bogged down in the minutia.

3. When I archive an artist with a sizable catalog - i don't need everything. I've assembled a 1 CDR "best of" for artists like Nilsson, the Stones, Springsteen, etc, where I've weeded out a bunch of individual tracks. I found it also to be good exercise for examining the full arc of an artist's career. I've yet to exceed the space of a CDR with a condensed discography and a hi-bit MP3s.

3. When I archive an artist with a sizable catalog - i don't need everything. I've assembled a 1 CDR "best of" for artists like Nilsson, the Stones, Springsteen, etc, where I've weeded out a bunch of individual tracks. I found it also to be good exercise for examining the full arc of an artist's career. I've yet to exceed the space of a CDR with a condensed discography and a hi-bit MP3s.

This is a great thing to do, for the reasons you outlined, as well as the fact that some artists lesser material simply isn't worth the effort to get into.

I don't understand backing up to CD-R or DVD-R.

they last longer than your average hard drive (if you store them under reasonably good conditions)... I haven't had a failure yet, but if I do I sure will be glad that I have a reasonably dependable and cheap form of backup.

really? a lot of cd-r's longevity rates are much shorter than the manufacturer's advertised length. I suppose you need to buy quality brands.

yeah, the only failures I've had (like 3 out of 1000) were with noname brands. having said that, I should note that I have yet to purchase a secondary external, so a lot of what I have is ONLY backed up on DVDR or CDR. one thing at a time, it took me forever to rip them all. a 2.5 TB external will provide another layer of protection, then I think I'm good.

My mom is an archivist and they have an acronym - LOCKSS (Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). I've tried my best.

you need an off-site backup. I would back your stuff up to two HDs at least (plus the primary one you use daily), and keep one at your mother's house or somewhere else, in case your house burns down (knock on wood).

lol I just put my hard drives in the fireproof/waterproof safebox when I was in Peru this last month!

and I definitely plan on giving the next external I buy to a friend.

I was pretty guffed to find out that some fireproof boxes aren't really 'fireproof' - that is, they're rated as being able to withstand X temperature for Y time, but if the fire exceeds either then there's no guarantee. ;_;

while this thread is up, if anyone has any advice about how to get FLAC ID3 tags to work on a Cowon player using a Mac it would be very appreciated. I just got a new player today and I can see the folder structures (i.e artist/album cause that's how I have them labelled) and the track title, but the tag fields are blank. I use xACT for FLAC coding but I've never been able to figure out an ID3 interface.

This is a great thing to do, for the reasons you outlined, as well as the fact that some artists lesser material simply isn't worth the effort to get into.

― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Friday, April 29, 2011 12:54 AM (3 hours ago)

I also try to include at least one track from even the poorest of releases as it maintains the visual integrity of the discog as well as putting some the "sour" times in context with the better material.

Also, i neglected to include the obvious "Classical - Opera" category; I doubt, however, that any of my beautiful Columbia Masterworks and vintage Blue Angel slabs of wax will ever be turned into "1's and 0's".

http://www.backblaze.com/ seems like the obvious answer here. surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet.

> FLAC coding but I've never been able to figure out an ID3 interface.

FLAC uses its own built-in tags, not ID3 tags as such. but anything that rips to flac should know that.

not sure about mac but on linux there's a thing called metaflac which will list and modify the flac metadata. command line tool though, so you'd probably hate it.

(actually, i hated it, until i wrote a wrapper for it based on vorbistagedit which presents tags as a file that opens in vim and rewrites the corrections when you quit)

don't recall having a problem with flac metadata on my old Cowon M5 but that was some years ago. my current iRiver LPlayer chokes on ogg tags which aren't ARTIST=whatever - the ARTIST bit needs to be uppercase...

I back up to backblaze, but i've only got 75 gigs of music. 600 gigs would take a bit of uploading.

Check out Tag: http://sbooth.org/Tag/

CD-Rs may have lower failure rates, but you could just buy an additional hard drive. A 1 TB drive is like $80, that's 1,400 CD-Rs or so. Which I think would cost way more. Worried about both drives failing? Buy a third. I have had much more of a problem with scratched CD-Rs not able to be read.

Online back-ups are impractical with large stax. I'll stick too HD -- wish that Tape back-ups were still around at reasonable prices (why the hell does the hardware for LTO-5 cost $1K and up ?!?).

The cloud will save all? Maybe for the pedestrian listener, which means the products they make won't fit the high-volume customer.

I have yet to have a burnt CDR flake out. I keep them all in individual paper sleeves and out of direct light. Some are 8 years old and have been played dozens and dozens of times. Also, I only use Taiyo Yuden media which in my experience, has been nothing less than bullet-proof.

Got two backup disc drives today. Now I'm copying 300 gigs of vinyl/tape rips (in flac) to the first new one. 1.5 TB of CDRs will come next. Then I'm gonna take the backups over to a friend's house and leave them there. Finally, some serious redundancy - my old LaCie drive is almost dead.

Kind of a bummer that these new 3 TB drives only work with Leopard, I don't wanna upgrade (and don't even know if I can on an odler G4).

skip, thanks SO MUCH for that Tag recommendation, that program does everything I need it to. My Cowon portable recognizes any JPG or GIF as cover art, so I don't need to tag that art but just throw it into the folder.

Since I started this thread flac hardware support has gotten much better, I wish my Cowon understood shuffle play without repeating tracks but other than that I am totally happy with it.

Revive.

I'm still putting all the digital stuff to hard drive, and the only wrinkle i've added is that i'm now also saving pertinent video (mp4) files that i typically nab from youtube via keepvid.com. My WD Caviar Black drives are still holding strong, but i try to minimize the number times i even turn them on (all hard drives accessed via docking stations). So, in practice, i amass new stuff on my laptop and handle all the tagging and conversions (MediaMonkey is still my mainstay, but version 4 is not nearly as nice as version 3 -- even if the getting the album is a bigger pain) there before sending them to my external archive. The thing i like about this approach, is that my entire archive sets right next to my computer and have easy access to the entire stack simply by powering-up my docking station.

I doubt the new "Pono" format will have any bearing on my current methods, but cheers to Neil for giving a damn.

I will finally rip the remaining 250 or so CDs and reorgnanize my library into a single unit as opposed to what's-on-the-iPod vs. what's not. I've embraced the cloud - my own personal cloud using Subsonic - and accept having less than everything in local storage. Now that I can access my library via my TV, it's even easier to enjoy it all!

I really do need to create an off-site backup, though.

still rolling with the same setup - rip to the Mac, tweak or track it using Amadeus if it's a vinyl burn, back all audio & video up to an external, and back that up on a drive in the basement once a month. I need to get a new drive and copy the data from the last two years or so for offsite backup.

as far as trends, I'm wondering if 24/96 audio is gonna get popular in hardware/player options, I definitely see more of it out there in the wild. my listening is all still either flac, vinyl, or cd.

the guy who makes the xACT flac program for Mac said that the program would no longer work on older versions of OS X (10.5 and below I think), so I reluctantly upgraded my OS a notch to 10.6.

what about video? perhaps this isn't the thread for that, and i should create a new one, but i've been thinking a tiny bit about what i'm going to do with movies going forward.

like, i don't have any physical discs, and i'd rather acquire as few as possible, so it's prob gonna come down to between streaming, renting, and buying, all digitally

poss wrong thread

Videotapes Are Becoming Unwatchable As Archivists Work To Save Them

The Magnetic Media Crisis

Videotapes Are Becoming Unwatchable As Archivists Work To Save Them

― sleeve

except for leonard part 6, which was unwatchable from the beginning, am i right folks?

sigh

new 5TB hard drives are great, tiny and USB-powered, but the one I have is read-only on all devices except the one it was installed on. so if my laptop dies, the HD is frozen forever. I haven't had the time to dive into the manual to see if I can add permissions, or make it open to all.

they really have us on the hamster wheel, they're prepping us for the 'convenience' of streaming by poisoning the stability of all physical media -- it is not unintentional.

Milton Parker otm 12 years ago

Never did follow up on my earlier post -- I did make that big radio station donation I discussed, back in 2011. A great relief, really. The digital collection has migrated a couple of times since to larger hard drives and I currently rip all discs I get w/Apple Lossless, which is also my Bandcamp download standard.