Music storage

[Taz]

Have obtained new 2TB Hardrive for storing CD'S and possible family pictures. What I know about this is very little. I presume I just copy the CD and transfer to HD. Set up files for music and pictures. No special program needed for optimual performance? Should be able to retrieve from hardrive and interface to any of the receivers as desired. Pull up album to make copys on the lap top for the car.

I would also presume that to transfer from records to hard drive would be best to have good sound card or something. However as I use lap top, maybe this would be difficult?

[StephenM]

I presume I just copy the CD and transfer to HD.

You do need something that will rip the CD to the HD, preferably in a lossless format, although even Windows Media Player or iTunes can manage that.

Should be able to retrieve from hardrive and interface to any of the receivers as desired.

How do you desire to interface? Obviously, there is no shortage of means to get music from a hard drive to a receiver. Out of curiosity, what receivers and players do you own? A lot of these devices are wifi enabled these days and can stream music from your PC. Of course, you have to know which formats these devices are compatible with as well.

[usmcavenger]

It is difficult for me to figure out exactly what it is your asking but I'll try my best and will be pretty general until we get more specifics as to exactly what it is your working with, ect. This is what I found to be the easiest way to keep a mass storage of music and pictures. There are still a lot of people out there that are very against Apple, although at the same time there more and more growing to love what you can do with the Apple products.

I myself have a Macbook Pro that I keep all my music and photos on. On top of this I have the Apple TV which is awesome when it comes to viewing photos and listening to music and watching movies and music videos. Any CD's I have I just Import to my iTunes library by hitting the "Import" button and about 5 minutes later it has coppied to the library. Now when I want to play music through my home stereo I use the Apple TV. You have to make sure you have a WiFi network in your house to do this. But all you do is choose go to the computers section of the Apple TV and it'll have your computers library (every single song, TV show, Music video, ect. that you have in iTunes) at your finger tips. (also not that your viewing all of this on your TV screen) So then you just click what you want to watch or listen to and it starts playing.

So again, I have no idea if that's kind of what your asking but that's how I keep all my media files organized and that's how I view them. When I want to listen to this in the car I just take my iPhone or iTouch with me and plug it into my car stereo. So I hope this helps and if not then I apologize. Also having and external hard drive is the same idea. The only difference is that you'll have to keep your external hard drive plugged into your computer to access them on your Apple TV. There are other methods of organizing and playing your media that you have on your external but I think its safe to say that Apple has figured out how to make everything easy and seamless. Hope this helps!

[Bluehusky]

If you haven't already check out Vortexbox, either on web as a .com; or Amazon or Ebay. The sell hardware with their software of you can buy their software. I have had mine for almost a year, have ripped my entire CD collection approx. 900 CD's. I have the one TB drive, recall it will hold 3,000 CD's plus 200 plus DVD's, Can access and play on your entire network. I used Logitech squeezebox and play on my home system, the quality is incredible. My original CD's never sounded this good, I save as LossLess and have much flexiblity. Good luck, Jeff

[tromprof]

A very good and free program for ripping CDs is Exact Audio Copy. It will allow you to rip to almost any format, esp. the lossless format called FLAC. You can then import the files into the media player of you choice.

[Taz]

Have obtained new 2TB external Hardrive for storing CD'S and possible family pictures. What I know about this is very little. I presume I just copy the CD and transfer to HD. Set up files for music and pictures. No special program needed for optimual performance? Should be able to retrieve from hardrive and interface to any of the receivers as desired. Pull up album to make copys on the lap top for the car.

I would also presume that to transfer from records to hard drive would be best to have good sound card or something. However as I use lap top, maybe this would be difficult?

[:^)]Due to my lack of knowledge, it appears that I have confused some. I'll try to break it down.

#1 I have lap top that has wireless conection to something that plugs into telephone land line.

#2 I bought external hard drive that was for PC, brief instructions in box state it will work with lap tops.

#3 I would like to store and retreive music at will to play, and make copys for using in the car, one each. Thus preserving the originals.

#4 I think I would have to use the lap top to access the external hard drive for playing music.

#5 The stereo's I have range from Mac mc30s, Fisher 400, to 70s Marantz's and Sansui's. All vintage as far as the receivers and amps go. Have some other equip, but from same era.

#6 Have many CD players, and 1 Dual turntable.

#7 May want to convert some records to digital using turntable

#8 Don't want to degrade signal in transfer of music.

#9 Price is important as SHMBO is starting to look at equip with Funny look in her eye, and asking hard to answer questions like "WHY"

#10 I just gave up on understanding some things. We were talking about the speakers I put upstairs by the TV and how they did not look as good as the ones I replaced. Her reply, "I don't care what they look like, they sound really good!" [:^)]

[StephenM]

On number 3, something like iTunes can handle that for you, although they aren't the only game in town. Number 4 is correct, although depending on the size of the hard drive on your laptop, you could store a fair amount of music on it as well, using it to hold a couple playlists so you don't have to drag the external drive around with you all the time. For 4, something like a Squeezebox will get the job done. It connects to your wireless network, and it's small enough you can take it around to whichever system you happen to be on (so long as there is adequate signal in all rooms). Can't really help you on number 7; not a vinyl guy. On number 8, lossless files (as opposed to lossy mp3s) will not degrade the signal. On number 9, a Squeezebox retails for about $180. iTunes is free as is most comparable software.

[MikeFord]

Four of the forums I visit fairly regularly are basically about how to do what you suggest. Different variations, quality standards, and methods of hooking things up. Following the advice from those forums I built my first media PC last year and its still a work in progress, but much of that is due to movies and multichannel sound, not music.

That said having instant access to all your stuff is very nice and I can't see going back to older methods.

I'm not sure what FLAC stands for, but I am pretty sure it means, "I don't understand advanced mathmatics". OTOH drive space is cheap, so I am happy to let people pick whatever they like, and use 320k MP3 myself.