Total Newbie needs help with husband's gigantic CD collection

[Davisra]

Hello. Please forgive me if this topic's been posted somewhere else. I've browsed the internet until it feels my eyes will bug out, but I haven't been able to find simple answers that I, the audio clueless, can understand.

 

Here's the situation:

Husband has a huge CD collection - roughly 1,400 CDs that he's collected over the years. Initially he had 10 CD changers (each capable of holding 100 CDs) daisy-chained together on the top of his office cabinets. He had them plugged into a receiver of some sort and had 2 speakers also attached to this receiver.

 

In trying to help him better manage the collection (since he had trouble remembering which CDs were on which changers), we started trying to get them into itunes. After loading 11,000 songs, we of course found that they wouldn't all fit on one ipod. So he has 2 ipods - we've listed what genre of songs are on which ipods. He puts the ipod into a Bose ipod speaker. The problems - he still can't see his entire collection AND some of the songs he's played have blips or skips. I'm guessing that in the process of ripping them to the iMac some may have had scratches, etc. I also have to tell you he is a true audiophile - he has such a discerning ear that there is NO WAY I can use the compressed formats.

 

Now that the cost for external hard-drives has come down, I bought him a 3T hard drive and am starting over from scratch, ripping each CD into iTunes using AIFF and the "check for errors" so it's slow going. The entire iTunes library is on the external hard drive which is plugged into our home iMac before we log into his user name. I started this around Christmas and have gotten 643 CDs loaded so far, so I've got a little while to get the next step figured out and this is where I need your help please!!

 

Once the entire collection is loaded onto this external hard-drive, we want to organize it, label it, whatever, so that it's what he likes. We will then copy the entire hard drive to a second hard drive that he can take to the office. Now, once he gets it to the office, how can he play his songs?? We have Windows PCs at work, not iMacs. The work computers have alot of proprietary info and security encryption, etc. so I don't want to try to coordinate using them to this iMac-formatted external hard drive. What do I need to purchase to allow him to scroll through his music to find what he wants to play, control the playback (volume and ability to mute) and hear the music such that it's pleasing to his picky discerning ear? Do I need to buy an iMac laptop? iMac mini? Airport extreme? Airplay? Wireless speakers? DAC (whatever that is)? Receiver? Again, all I have now is an iMac-formatted 3T hard drive loaded with music that husband wants to listen to. I need to know what else I have to buy & do to make this work for him. He's already whining that it's been over 3 years since we disconnected those 10 daisy-chained changers and he misses his music.

 

Whenever I google, looking for answers, or at least some verification that I'm on the right track, all I seem to get are people who are having troubles trying to move their libraries to external hard drives. I haven't found anyone with my problem, but I'm sure there have to be others in this boat!

 

The ideal situation would be if he could have the office-based external hard drive sit there on his desk, use his ipod classic as a remote and have wireless speakers sitting on the cabinet that would play the music the way he wants to hear it. I also have to figure out how he can listen to the home-based external hard drive since the iMac isn't very close to his basement work-out room, but that's a separate problem. I need to resolve the "listening at work" problem first. Keeping the total cost for needed components to $2,000 or less would be great.

 

Thanks everyone for your patience with this long post and for whatever help you can give me.

 

[Bear]

In order to point you in the right direction it would be helpful to know what budget you have for this project as it sounds like we are pretty much starting from scratch in regard to the system at the office. Does he already have speakers or other equipment at the office that can be used as a starting point?

 

A DAC by the way is a digital-to-analog converter. In simple terms it converts or translates the digital information from your CD's, hard drive etc. into an analog or electrical signal that can then be amplified to drive your speakers.

 

[Davisra]

He has a Bose Sounddock (single speaker) for iPod with remote control. I don't know if his Sounddock model has the auxiliary input or not. He's been reasonably happy with the Bose sound quality (haven't heard any complaints, other than that some of the songs had "blips"). He also has an older-model receiver (not sure of the specs) and 2 individual bookshelf-sized speakers that he used back when the 10 CD changers were being used.

 

I think the office itself is 12' x 12' (or thereabouts).

 

Can we do this for $2,000 or less?

 

[phatoldsun]

You are quite the trooper ripping thousands of discs for him. My first suggestion is make him do it

Taking a step back, you may want to consider ripping to the Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) for the remaining discs. This retains the sound quality for your audiophile's discriminating ear and will cut your file size in roughly half.

Another suggestion to get rips without blips and skips is use a different cd ripper like XLD (free). There are dozens of scratched up discs of mine that I ripped with iTunes and had skips when I played the files back. I re-ripped the discs with XLD and they no longer have skips when played back. Consider XLD only if you are feeling adventurous. Using XLD is second nature to me now, but there was a learning curve and some configuration needed to point the files in the direction to output them to your iTunes library. I'm not trying to add complexity to your task, only trying to save you from doing the ripping again. For more on ripping, check out some great articles on this site.

 

As far as your playback at the office, there are many ways to go. Have you considered headphones? You can get some outstanding sound from headphones for $400-500 or less compared to speakers. This would give you more money for a new Mac and DAC.

 

For the hard drive, my wife has two identical 1TB Mac formatted drives (Iomega), one at home and one at work. She uses a 2011 MacBook Air and uses it for home and work and connects it to the hard drives in each place. The Air has limited on board storage so she saves files on drives. You could put your iTunes library on the hard drive, then boot up the Air with it finding the library on the hard drives. You would have to connect the Air to a DAC though USB. I don't think the Air has an optical connection.

 

Off the top of my head, the Peachtree products may be a good amp and DAC in one box option. The Decco2 or Nova would fit in your budget depending on the speakers or headphones you decided on. I have no personal experience with Peachtree, but there are many reviews and they have a good reputation.

http://signalpathint.com/index.php/decco2/

 

I hope this is helpful rather than adding more confusion.

 

 

[Paul R]

Well, you are pretty much in luck. You can copy the entire media library and the iTunes library files onto a NTFS formatted hard disk, load iTunes on a Windows PC, and awayyyyyyy you go. Just like at home.

 

There are some other solutions - for example, you could buy him an inexpensive player, like a Squeezebox touch, which can read the media directly off a hard drive with no issues, and be easily controlled from a iPhone or Android phone.

 

Lots of nice solutions to play with in this case.

 

And you sure are a nice person to RIP all the those CDs!

 

-Paul

 

 

[cjf]

Hello,

 

The first thing that comes to mind based on the information you provided about the work PC not being a MAC is that you may want to format the 2nd hard drive as a Windows File System to open up your options a bit for that system. This is assuming the current file system isn't already formatted as FAT/FAT32 ..etc which windows can read without issue.

 

I didn't notice if you mentioned what type of connectivity the external hard drives uses (ie..USB, NAS/Ethernet, Firewire..etc)?

 

If the external drive were a NAS device, although not necessarily required to accomplish your task, it certainly would open up your options more in terms of connectivity to the music files stored on it.

 

Using a work based PC can introduce many unexpected challenges depending on how they are configured. Some issues include network based policies and local permissions on the PC. The IT Dept may have policies in place that restrict certain actions for non administrative users of the PC that could hinder his ability to connect external device that use USB or the installation of 3rd party software.

 

The first question to answer here is if he is an administrator of his own work provided PC and if so is he allowed to install 3rd party software that would control the music library?

 

If we go with the assumption that he IS an administrator of his own PC then a nice option may be to use a Squeezebox Touch

and a set of self powered speakers like the ones below:

 

http://audioengineusa.com/Store/Audioengine-2#overview

 

The Squeezebox Touch comes with very nice music library management software that would be installed on his PC and then configured to use the external hard drive where the music resides.

 

Basically you would connect the Squeezebox to the powered speakers and then control playback via the included remote which has volume control. Total cost would be under $700

 

Of course this is just one option of many.

 

 

 

 

[phatoldsun]

Squeezebox and powered speakers would be a simple, low cost option. As previously stated, he would need admin. rights to add software to the PC.

BTW, the iPod Classic cannot serve are a iTunes remote. You will need an iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad to serve as an iTunes remote or the Squeezebox will let you see the music collection I believe.

 

[Paul R]

You can hook up a USB drive directly to a Squeezebox, and run the LMS on the Squeezebox itself. Hook it to a amp or powered speakers, and Bob's your uncle...

 

-Paul

 

 

[Brian A]

Gawd! My sincere and heartfelt condolences. 1,400 CDs. Egad!

 

I just completed ripping my CD collection and really feel for you. The only think positive about the experience is that we all complain that time goes by too quickly; when ripping CDs, time actually seems to go backward. It is that boring.

 

But if you are at CD number 643, you know that already. If the old boy has 1,400 CDs it may well be time to go through them and cull the herd. I ditched about 80 of mine which the Public Library was grateful for (and I got a tax deduction). (Apologies to “Crumugeon”; one of the CDs that went was Wanda Landowska playing the Goldbergs; she and I just don’t get along.)

 

To my surprise, I discovered commercial CDs had decayed and couldn’t be ripped at all. I actually threw a couple out. It didn’t seem to be time related other than both were over 20 years old (my oldest CD – Ravel Daphnis et Chloe, London 400-055-2 – pressed in 1982, ripped just fine). CD-Rs that were over about 10 years old really decayed (they were digital recordings of some of my vinyl albums) and several of those I could not rip either. Be warned.

 

iTunes is a good music player interface but it is a terrible ripper. It’s bad because it ignores errors (even with error checking on) and encodes them as static and it doesn’t package together all the album info (metadata) into the data file.

 

I ripped about 200 CDs before I changed my ripping software from iTunes to dBpoweramp. I would not re-rip the 643 CDs you’ve already done with iTunes, but after you’re all done, you’ll probably want to go back to each of those 643 CDs and redo the album art and some of the metadata. You’ll see.

 

The Chris wrote a detailed procedure for ripping CDs. It is here:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Computer-Audiophile-CD-Ripping-Strategy-and-Methodology

Follow that, and you can’t go wrong.

 

Good news: In process of ripping, I discovered stuff I didn’t remember I had. Bad news: Now that I’ve got the collection ripped and iTunes is loaded up to the gills, I am surprised that I am having problems again with finding stuff. Now, I scroll endlessly instead of browsing drawers, boxes and stacks. I think it’s better but stuff is less easy to find than I expected. Certainly after discovering that some CDs had decayed, I am glad they are digitized.

 

As an aside, about 5 years ago, I copied all of my family’s home-movie videos off of video tape onto DVD format. We had enough video tape for 59 DVDs. I am currently in the process of ripping those to my data server because I am scared to death of the DVD-Rs decaying the same way some of my CD-Rs did. The home videos are priceless.

 

Just some thoughts. Hope this helps.

 

 

[Bear]

I really like the above suggestion of a Peachtree Audio Decco2 for an office system. If your husband is used to Bose sound (we all shudder around here) he will be blown away. It is a very versatile little component so once he has this the options are pretty much endless. They are running a special right now bundled with speakers for $849 with their smallest speakers (I also saw on Vann's for $800). That is such a deal I am very tempted to get for my own office. All you need from there is a player to hook up your hard drive to. You could pick up a used previous generation Mac Mini, which many on here consider superior sonically to the newest version. Get a decent USB cable to go from Mini to Decco2 and you are off to the races. That should put you around $1,500 or so and I think your husband will be very happy!!

 

[Davisra]

I love your suggestion of having husband do it - it took me this long to stop laughing! Seriously, my husband is the champion delegator. If I didn't do it he'd be after the kids, the neighbors, relatives, probably even our cats, you name it...anybody but himself.

 

Since I have two 3T hard drives already formatted for Mac, I feel I'm okay as far as storage space goes. Guess I'm scared to change the AIFF to ALAC at this stage, especially since storage isn't an issue. I've been looking each CD over carefully before just sticking it in the reader; ones that look dinged up/scratched, etc. are being set aside for now. How many I end up will likely determine my next course of action - whether I just "accidently" pitch the scratched ones (oops, do you really think he'll miss them??), replace them, or try your suggestion of the XLD software.

 

He's the senior partner of a financial planning practice and is in various meetings all day, every day. Wearing earphones isn't an option.

 

I've considered the MacBook Air - I think USB is the only way to connect it. I've worried that maybe the USB connection to such a large drive would be too slow?

 

[Davisra]

Help me understand - if my music is all loaded into a Mac-formatted drive, how can I just copy it into a PC-formatted drive? (told you I was clueless!). Assuming I could do that, would husband need to have anything else loaded on his work PC besides iTunes?

 

None of us have iPhones or Androids (with 4 people on a cell phone family plan we're already paying $160/month - none of us has any internet/data stuff on our cheapie phones).

 

[Davisra]

Thanks for your good suggestions. The 2nd hard drive came formatted for Mac (I bought it at the Apple Store), but the fellows there told me I could partition it (don't understand why). This is the description of the hard-drive:

 

Iomega 3TB Mac Companion Hard DriveMac-compatible design with high-speed interfaces. The Iomega Mac Companion Hard Drive provides plenty of additional storage for your Mac, along with the convenience of two high-speed FireWire 800 interfaces, a USB 2.0 hub, plus a charging/syncing port for your iPad, iPod or iPhone. The compact design fits neatly on the base of your iMac or LED Cinema Display.

 

Choice of FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 connections

7200 RPM drive speed

Integrated two-port USB 2.0 hub

Design complements your Mac

Front capacity gauge for quick status

 

I don't know if it has NAS connectivity (I don't know what that means, either).

 

Husband actually has 2 laptops, both with Windows 7 and both security-encrypted. I don't know if he has firewire on them or not. Would the Squeezebox library management system supercede the iTunes that we'd still have at home?

 

[Paul R]

Well, there are several ways to write an NTFS disk under MacOS, but this is one of the easier ones:

http://ntfsmounter.com/

 

The reverse is also true, you can mount HFS disks under Windows:

http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive

 

I like the MacDrive product enough to have purchased it myself.

 

Wow, wish my phone bill was that low, but I have seven folks on our bills.

It seems like you should be able to get a decent plan for four iPhones for about the same amount though. Ours is a little more expensive, but we include unlimited texting and a lot of "anytime" minutes.

 

In any case, if you look at a Squeezbox or whatever, you can control them perfectly through a web browser on most any machine. They also come with a conventional IR remote control. Not much bigger than a 3x5 index card too.

 

-Paul

 

 

[Davisra]

You brought up some interesting points - time does drag while I'm ripping CD after CD...until I look up and see that it's 3am and I'm still sitting at the computer (yikes!).

 

I've only run across 3 CDs so far that the iMac didn't want to read. I'm not sure why. They look old, but I can't tell for sure. Another thing I'm discovering is we have many duplicates and even a few cases of 3 copies of the SAME CD. Guess hubby couldn't remember if he already had a particular CD and rather than try to figure it out, just bought it again.

 

I strongly doubt he'll ever part with any of them. We still have a large collection of LP records. He was like a kid in a candy store when we were on a weekend trip to Marquette Michigan and he found a second-hand store with a bunch of LPs that someone else donated. You'll never guess who dragged them all home to Madison!

 

Sadly, your reply reminds me that I also have a huge collection of mini video tapes that also need to be converted someday. I've been meaning to get to them for several years now (sigh). I've read through the iLife Movie maker and realize I'll probably just copy them "as is" rather than try to be as creative as iLife thinks people are. What a laugh. Maybe I'll get around to that project when I retire.

 

[Davisra]

To everyone who responded to my initial posting - THANK YOU!

 

I must be really stupid. I don't know if I should "reply" to each responder, or if I should "add new comment" to address everyone. Please advise - thanks. And thank you for being patient with me. I WILL get the hang of things, I CAN be taught! Seriously, I'm the one my kids laugh at because I don't yet know how to use the Facebook account they helped me set up. It sucks to be technologically-challenged.

 

[wgscott]

How it looks to the outside world:

 

 

[beetlemania]

Yeah, those damned things never come with a manual! Good thing we're so simple . . .

 

[Davisra]

Ha Ha...I guess that tag (note, heading, whatever it's called) "newbie needs help with husband" describes me too well! I need alot of help - in more ways than one - but the other issues are beyond the scope of this forum!!