CD - Hard drive

[unknownuser]

Ok...
After spending too much time searching through my CD's for that one disk I cant find, I am seriously considering buying an big external hard drive and ripping all my CD's to a lossless format or high bitrate MP3. It just seems like a quick and easy way to organize and access all my music. Can anyone out there give me some advice as to the best way to setthis up so that I lose as little fidelity as possible? What are the most important components??? What should I be thinking about? If possible I would like some sort of interface other than my PC.

An aquaintance recomended the sqeezebox2, and the little research that I have done suggests that it is a very cool little box! Can anyone familiar with this type of product give me some suggestions. Whats the best configuration?

Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated.
-Nate


(Originally posted by: Nate)

[joker]

> Ok...
> After spending too much time searching
> through my CD's for that one disk I cant
> find, I am seriously considering buying an
> big external hard drive and ripping all my
> CD's to a lossless format or high bitrate
> MP3. It just seems like a quick and easy way
> to organize and access all my music. Can
> anyone out there give me some advice as to
> the best way to setthis up so that I lose as
> little fidelity as possible? What are the
> most important components??? What should I
> be thinking about? If possible I would like
> some sort of interface other than my PC.

> An aquaintance recomended the sqeezebox2,
> and the little research that I have done
> suggests that it is a very cool little box!
> Can anyone familiar with this type of
> product give me some suggestions. Whats the
> best configuration?

> Any help you can offer is greatly
> appreciated.
> -Nate

All of what you want can be done. I have ripped all of my collection to high bitrate MP3 instead of lossless once I determined, via A-B testing, that I can't hear the difference. I used a program called exact audio copy (or EAC), which is free and spyware/adware free, to rip the music and LAME (free, opensource, and one of the best MP3 encoders out there) to encode it to mp3. you just have to point EAC to the lame encoder and then you can rip your CDs and encode them with one click.

As far as a good interface, I have an homebuilt HTPC which works great (PVR, DVD player, Jukebox, Gameconsole) but is probibly a little overkill for what you want to do I think. Another option is a video IPOD with a dock that allows for remote control and on screen display, I have heard they work pretty well too.

[bryanjackson]

I love/adore my Squeezebox2. There is a SB3 out now, but the ONLY difference is cosmetic and an additional regulator, however you can replace the SB2's power supply with a linear regulated power supply for cheap and get better results anyway (I doubt it is audible anyway though).

It sounds quite nice, and has a nice DAC, it interfaces with the computer easily, it can be controlled from virtually any device with web access and has skins for the PSP etc. It can play almost any format I can think of.

If it matters to you, I can not ABX the difference between 320 MP3 and FLAC on my system (Sennhesier HD650 headphones, Pimeta amplifier and SB2).

If you have any more questions about the SB2, don't hesistate to ask.

[rudyjakubin]

Go here and pick a codec;
<A HREF="http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central.htm">http://www.dbpoweramp.com/codec-central.htm</A>

I use OGG mostly at the highest bitrate.
For my MP3 Players I then covert it t 320 with LAME.