Ripping CDs, storing CDs, CDs CDs CDs! (1 Viewer)

[mjp]

Does anyone have any recommendations for a good storage unit that will hold 1,000+ discs? I've been looking for a week and most of the stuff is pretty cheap, or it's like custom furniture expensive, which I appreciate, but I'm not down for paying $1200 for some skinny wood shelves. Nothing in between really. Nothing utilitarian and high quality anyway.

I'm in the process of ripping all of our CDs (for the second time), and we outgrew the 720 spots in the cluster of old IKEA cd towers a while ago.

I just ordered a big wall unit actually, but if anyone has any good recommendations I'm all ears. I'll cancel the order for this thing. In a perfect world I'd just go to IKEA and throw a couple more of those tall, skinny towers into the car, but they stopped making them five years ago and my time machine is in the shop.

This is what I ordered, you can adjust the shelves all to CD height and stick 1500 of them into the thing. It'll take up an entire wall of our music room, but hey, it's a music room after all. It's not super high quality, but it will probably be fine, since it doesn't have to do anything but stand there and hold the CDs.

 

[mjp]

I don't know why I mentioned ripping in that first post, but that's what I'm doing. I'm doing it for the second time because the first time around I used the Windows Media Player to rip to WAV, and I've come to find out that about half the rips have errors that prevent them from being burned to a CDR.

Now I'm using dBpoweramp to rip and it does an accuracy check of every rip against some huge database somewhere out there in the ether. It also comes with a really good file converter to knock all the WAVs down to MP3.

Anyway, just a word of warning to anyone relying on the Windows ripper. Might not be your best option.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Anyway, just a word of warning to anyone relying on the Windows ripper. Might not be your best option.

Ask me about chemistry or environmental persistence, mobility or toxicity, and I can talk you ear off. If the electrons are in a molecule, I understand them. If they're in a computer transmitting information, I'm a complete idiot.

I ripped my CDs (about 700 of them) to my hard drive using lossless format in Windows Media Player. I plan to get an external HD to transfer the files for backup. I have no idea if I made .wav files or what. I ripped them. They are there. I plan to archive. Dr. Smith, why are you looking at me like that?

 

[mjp]

Lossless in Windows Media Player is WAV.

Maybe you'll have better luck than I did, though when I ripped the first time I was on my rickety old Windows XP laptop, so that may have had something to do with it. But data should be data. In any event, when I realized I had to do all of these things again I was...unhappy.

Didn't we talk about an external hard drive a long time ago? Don't wait. Backups are important.

 

[zobraks]

This is what I ordered

Your shelves look royal. :D I have 7 of these (picture taken from eBay):

It's a plastic storage/shelf and each holds 99 jewel cases/198 slim CD/DVD cases.
I guess it's a cheapest decent way to store (& transport) discs.

BTW, I've paid mine less than 20 bucks (each) and at eBay it's $35.

 

[Purple Stickpin]

Didn't we talk about an external hard drive a long time ago? Don't wait. Backups are important.

Yes, and I appreciate your input. But I have backups. They're called CDs. :wb:

Also, I think the set of wood shelving units you ordered is the way to go. I bought a ~450 wooden case from Tower records about 15 years ago. I wish I had picked up two more. My CDs are housed in three different rooms of the house now. About 600 in the music room, ~500 in my office, and another ~200 in the living room. Along with ~400 LPs. Nothing like organization.

 

[the only good poet]

Wall-mounted shelving could be the way to go. Far more choice and it can be cut to order. Depending on the type and thickness of the wood, it is as inexpensive as you want. Carol could have them up in no time.

 

[mjp]

I have backups. They're called CDs.

I thought the rips were the backups, what do I know?

My reason for making a lossless copy of everything is mainly disaster recovery. If the house is on fire, I can pop the hard drive(s) out of this thing on my desk and all my computer files and music are right there in my hand.

Then I can go back in and rescue Carol and our dog.

Wall-mounted shelving could be the way to go.

I considered building something myself, but, you know, all that sawdust gets in my hair. And by the time I'd finish I'd have spent $2000 of my time building a $500 shelf. I couldn't really do a wall mount, since the walls in this place are lath and plaster, and attaching anything (heavy) to that is a real pain in the ass. So whatever I do has to be free standing.

 

[mjp]

Mission accomplished. FTW!

 

[Faramir]

Is that a Beethoven bust on top of that unit? Could be anyone I suppose, my eyes aren't what they used to be.

 

[mjp]

That's Anderson Cooper wearing a fancy shirt. Or Mozart.

But most of those little bust things from that period (mid 20th century) look the same. I think they just used one European looking guy and put different name plates on them. It certainly doesn't look like Mozart really looked.

Also, breaking news update: those two empty shelves above the DVDs are mostly full now.

 

[chronic]

It's been quite some time since I did any ripping, but the gold standard tool for it at the time (about 5 years ago) was Exact Audio Copy. I would boot into windows on my mac (a pain in the ass) to use it just because it was such a great and accurate ripper. You might want to also consider encoding them to FLAC if storage space is any kind of an issue (it'll cut file sizes by 25-30% with no loss of quality), though these days it probably isn't.

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

https://xiph.org/flac/

 

[mjp]

Yeah, I used EAC and really liked it before I found dBpoweramp. Both of them are comparable in rip quality, but EAC development isn't on par with dBpoweramp. And as I'm sure you can attest, EAC is a tremendous pain in the ass to configure. For most people who just want to rip CDs, EAC is like using the space shuttle to drive to the grocery store.

I don't bother with FLAC conversion, because like you say, storage is really not an issue anymore. That changed pretty quickly, didn't it. My first (modern) computer had a 250MB hard drive. Now a couple of scans or a browser download eat more space than that.

And it's good to see you around here again.

 

[chronic]

Thanks, MJP. I'm here from time to time, just trying to keep current on the world of Bukowski and to see how everyone's doing.

 

[mjp]

Somehow I filled up all the empty pace in the damn thing in less than two years. I wasn't aware that my consumption was that conspicuous. Or that I still bought that many records. Well, I still have the very bottom shelves (a.k.a. the dust collectors) I guess.

 

[hoochmonkey9]

Is that Marc Maron's house?

 

[mjp]

Maron wishes he had a metronome as cool as mine.







Wait, that's Carol's metronome...

 

[roni]

there's still room to build another shelf on top.

 

[mjp]

Well, things change, I suppose, so now all those CDs are in these:

We moved and I set up the CD wall tower thing, and I was going to put all the CDs in it, and I thought, "Why do I need to have these things out?" Ever since the HAP came in to my life, I don't really play the CDs anymore. I don't want to get rid of the CDs, but I don't need to have them available, so, what then?

So I stuck them into these 32 litre "Really Useful Boxes," ("extra strong" version) which are really useful for jamming CDs into. Now I guess they are going into the garage, since they take up a lot of really useful space in the house.

I do miss the awe-inspiring CD wall, but you can't fight the future.

For those keeping score, there are about 800 CDs in the boxes, and they weigh about 250 pounds. The HAP weighs about 15 pounds. And your soul weighs 0 pounds, ounces or grams.

 

[mjp]

On a related note, I'll give you a great deal on a 1500 CD wall unit!

But you'll need six feet of wall space you aren't doing anything with...

 

[Black Swan]

Well, things change, I suppose, so now all those CDs are in these:
For those keeping score, there are about 800 CDs in the boxes, and they weigh about 250 pounds. The HAP weighs about 15 pounds. And your soul weighs 0 pounds, ounces or grams.

I think that the soul weighs 21 grams! :hmh:
which is irrelevant in this case.
https://www.historicmysteries.com/the-21-gram-soul-theory/