Now That You've Ripped Your Entire Collection...

My insurance company will cover the full replacement cost for each CD I own if it can be sourced. I had this specifically outlined in my policy before signing. The same goes for vinyl. They will not insure 1's and 0's on SSDs and HDDs. Not yet at least.

The suggestion given to me was to buy digital from companies that offer a "redownload" policy like Apple with iTunes. Otherwise, ripped discs without the discs = nothing given theft or a disaster. Same with the data on drives, if I can't redownload, I've lost my music.

Tbg --

I know what you mean. Just last night our cable service went out for an extended period. No phone; no internet; no TV. (It was bliss, in a way.)

Thing is, I was using WiFi to run my headless Mac Mini, so no tunes, either! Plus, I have a driver on the Mini that runs the Off Ramp, which I had not installed on any other machine in the house.

Figured I'd hook up an aged MacBook Pro to the disc and DAC to replace the Mini and. It played, but it really sounded bad. Although the tunes were appreciated, it was all I could do to hang in.

Lesson learned. Have a backup plan that includes a laptop with all the appropriate drivers and software, just in case the internet goes down.

Rhanson, I have no Mac experience, but I would think that it should be possible to set things up such that the wifi device (an iPad, perhaps?) and the Mac Mini can communicate with each other without the cable service and the internet (or the cable modem, for that matter) being involved. Either through a router, if your setup includes one and both devices can access it, or directly between the two devices via a wireless "ad hoc network."

Just a thought.

Regards,
-- Al

Thanks, Al, I'll look into that further.

Never knew you could do that! It sounds like a fine Plan B.

After 18 months of ripping my 1,100 CDs, I did another activity I'm happy about. I recycled all the plastic cases. Most went via craigslist, apparently folks need them. Then I bought a bunch of paper cd sleeves, in 5 colors. Color coded best I could into 5 genres, and here's the benefit. My big heavy pile of cases are gone, and all my CDs fit into 3 shoeboxes and one larger box. The space & weight saving alone is dandy. Esp when I moved cross country last year.