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I Hate to Admit It

If I live to be 100, I expect to still be cleaning vinyl records in 2064. Or perhaps tinkering with my turn of the century Sony SCD-1 and the quaint discs that were sold with it.

But it seems that computer based audio would be useful for archiving things and enable me to throw away hundreds of CDs that I rarely, if ever, want to listen to and basically just clutter up my cabinets.

I am sure there are some threads on this subject, but I don't even know where to search:

My only experience is using a Rio MP3 player and the supplied software. The MP3 sound is pretty bad and recordings often skip.

Could someone therefore explain the quickest, easiest way to get good sounding (uncompressed?) music on a hard drive? I can buy a new computer if necessary.

Is there a consensus in the audiophile community on software/hardware to use or not to use? Is there a program with an amazing interface for a computer based jukebox?

Also, for burning CDs, is it true that high fidelity compilations can be easily made? Again, do I need any special hardware or software?

(At the moment, I have a Sony VAIO laptop about 2 years old and a CD burner that I purchased at about the same time.)

Thank you.
cwlondon
sogood51
2,157 posts
 
You can get musicmatch jukebox for free off the internet. You need to burn your cd,s as wave files to get uncompressed music on your hard drive NOTE-wave files take up more space on hard drive so get at least 60 gig hard drive if you have lots of music to put on. If you buy a new computer get one with usb-2 not usb-1,it is faster. You can get a usb dac off the web from a company called stereo-link.com to hook your computer into your sound system. I have one and they work very nice (way better than hooking in from most sound cards). I think I payed $200 for it. You can email me if you want,I know other ways to get you good sound with other programs/software. I did lots of research when I did mine but it really depends on how much $$$ you want to spend.I only wanted to spend about $300 for cable+dac so I went with the stereo-link and am very happy.
sogood51
2,157 posts
 
Cwlondon, I went to the stereo-link site and I was off on the price, it,s $149 for blue/$159 for gray, comes with cables to hook you up, has headphone jack and rca outs are gold plated. It will work well off of any usb out just fine. My computer is older model with older usb-1 outs and it works fine.
mdomnick
332 posts
 
Sogood has got all the bases covered here. I can offer an alternative; buy SoundBlaster Audigy 2 Platnium Sound card (along with your new PC;)) which has good DACS along with digital outs to make that connection to your stereo. I find Jukebox a little cumbersome, but haven't put much effort into it since Roxio EZ CD Creator v.5 is so easy. I usually do not recommend that software since I have had so many problems with it, but it works pretty well with their latest patch, and you can rip some high quality MP3s. A large HD is a must (size is up to you, but make sure its ATA133 running at 7200 RPMs) and USB 2 is a wise recommendation. If you want to use the laptop, buy the Extigy by SB which gets you 80% of the way there, and an external HD, but in my experience with Sony, you'd be happier with a new PC. Dude, get a Dell!!!!:)
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,273 posts
 
I'm a big supporter of using computer based hard disk systems as digital music jukeboxes. Click on my system and look at the Imp/perfection system for details of my current setup. However, as far as archiving goes, nothing beats the original vinyl disk, with the original CD coming in second. The reason is that hard disks drives are not a proven long term storage medium. Ten years is a real long time by hard disk standards. Compare that to vinyl (40+ years) or commercially stamped CDs (20 years minimum). My advice is if you do convert to a hard disk server that you keep the originals as your backups.

All current Apple computers are bundled with the appropriate software (iTunes) to rip CDs to hard disk and to organize the music for playback. If you are looking to convert vinyl the then I would suggest acquiring an external A/D converter (I recommend the Apogee Rosetta $1,150 street price) and some recording software (I use Spark XL, but there are others). Converting vinyl to digital is a fairly tedious project.
cwlondon OP
1,210 posts
 
Thank you everyone.

I would love to hear more about the SOTA in hard drive based formats. Why is vinyl to digital so tedious? And what about the pro recording devices for home use?

Also, it seems that the SB Extigy requires and AC adapter. Are there any mobile solutions to this?

It would be great to use my Grado external headphone amplifier (40 hours from 2 9V batteries?) with an ibook, or my Sony notebook on airplanes. But I want to bypass the cheesey internal DAC and amp. Any solutions for this?

Thanks.
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