Compressing and Getting Ready to Live Aboard - CDs

[JennyM]

Have loads of CDs from over the years and think it is time to put them on laptop and get rid of the discs.

 

1. I was just going to load them into directories, i.e. music/motown/gladysknight (please don´t laugh at my collection, they are my memories ) - but then I thought of putting them into itunes software, but I don´t altogether like itunes - does anyone know of a good software (preferably Open Source) that works well?

 

2. Thought of selling the CDs to Music Magpie or similar internet company http://www.musicmagpie.co.uk/. Anyone had any experience with such a company?

 

3. Finally - I´m having a bit of a disagreement with Dear Heart, he says the laptops should be backed up to the expensive hard drive we bought for the purpose - I say we should pay a fee to Google and put them on their Cloud server backup. You never know, if we tip the boat up, all will be lost! Am I right or is DH?

 

Thanks for any help. (Sorry it´s not a problem re nav lights )

 

Regards, Jen

[DJR]

Old fashioned me has vinyl in son's loft and need the physical presence of cds. Make marvellous ballast to trim and counter stove,cooker and heads. How do you decide what to listen to if you can't scan the plastic?

[MoominPapa]

3. Finally - I´m having a bit of a disagreement with Dear Heart, he says the laptops should be backed up to the expensive hard drive we bought for the purpose - I say we should pay a fee to Google and put them on their Cloud server backup. You never know, if we tip the boat up, all will be lost! Am I right or is DH?

 

Back it all up to Google whilst you still have a fast and reliable net connection, then move to using the hard drive on the boat. Backups over a 3G connection will be a lot of a pain.

 

 

MP.

[Grace and Favour]

If you're going to scan all your CD's onto your lappie / HDD / whatever, I suggest you use FLAC software (Full Lossless Audio), the file sizes are larger than MP3's, but much better quality - and will stand up to being played on even the best equipment

[carlt]

I copied all my CDs to my mp3 player and external hard drive. The CDs went in the loft (if you sell them you are not allowed to keep copies).

 

I now find that I never use either.

 

I am a member of Napster which, when at home, I can listen to streaming, on the broadband and, when on the boat, I can download to my Android phone and listen offline.

 

I think it's well worth £10 a month.

[Smelly]

Backups over a 3G connection will be a lot of a pain.

 

 

MP.

 

and bandwidth!

[cotswoldsman]

I am not as they say a techy. I put all my cd's onto Itunes and then put cd's into storage. I bought a small stereo thing with an Ipod docking so listen to my music via stereo. For me Itunes is ideal for boating as it clears up all that storage space, the same as Kindle cleared up all the space that books used to take.

[Robbo]

Have loads of CDs from over the years and think it is time to put them on laptop and get rid of the discs.

 

FLAC is the best choice for pure storage terms and best quality, but hardly any device supports it. Another decent one is lossless AAC, more devices support this format, esp. in the Apple world.

 

Hard drives are cheap, I use a few for backup (mainly photos) and keep one off-site. As long as you have off-site backup, go with whatever will work for you. I use dropbox for documents, it's free up to 2gb.

[Lady Muck]

I use Foobar 2000 as my player, it's free, easy to use and will play most formats. Foobar 2000 download

 

I've been told that media monkey is best for managing your music http://www.mediamonkey.com/

Edited July 12, 2011 by Lady Muck

[Robin2]

Have loads of CDs from over the years and think it is time to put them on laptop and get rid of the discs.

 

1. I was just going to load them into directories, i.e. music/motown/gladysknight (please don´t laugh at my collection, they are my memories ) - but then I thought of putting them into itunes software, but I don´t altogether like itunes - does anyone know of a good software (preferably Open Source) that works well?

 

2. Thought of selling the CDs to Music Magpie or similar internet company http://www.musicmagpie.co.uk/. Anyone had any experience with such a company?

 

3. Finally - I´m having a bit of a disagreement with Dear Heart, he says the laptops should be backed up to the expensive hard drive we bought for the purpose - I say we should pay a fee to Google and put them on their Cloud server backup. You never know, if we tip the boat up, all will be lost! Am I right or is DH?

 

Thanks for any help. (Sorry it´s not a problem re nav lights )

 

Regards, Jen

 

I have Ubuntu rather than windows and when I put a cd in my (external) dvd drive it just copies it and figures out the names of the tracks. It's a while since I did it so I don't recall what the software is called or exactly how it works. The point I want to make is that it figured out its own directory structure - quite like what you have suggested I think. Based on my own painful experience use the directory system that the software chooses rather than trying to force it to match a personal preference. Otherwise you will be forever fighting with it.

 

I have put all my CDs and DVDs (and the paper sleeves out of the plastic cases) into large CD wallets that I bought in B&M bargains - but they are widely available. I haven't bothered to rip my DVDs. One wallet 155x290x70 mm holds 96 discs.

 

I have a philosophical problem with "the cloud". I reckon if the backups are really valuable for you then you need to have them firmly under your own control. I could see a purpose in using the cloud for convenient day to day storage because of its ease of access (assuming you have the internet bandwith) but not as a backup. And I know you won't care if someone hacks into your CD collection but I would not trust the cloud to keep anything that I really didn't want anyone else to see - such as PI Numbers (another bit of pedantry off my chest).

[Robbo]

I have a philosophical problem with "the cloud". I reckon if the backups are really valuable for you then you need to have them firmly under your own control. I could see a purpose in using the cloud for convenient day to day storage because of its ease of access (assuming you have the internet bandwith) but not as a backup. And I know you won't care if someone hacks into your CD collection but I would not trust the cloud to keep anything that I really didn't want anyone else to see - such as PI Numbers (another bit of pedantry off my chest).

 

The cloud is good because it's off-site and a backup solution has to have a off-site solution, and the backup software tends to work in the background saving stuff to the cloud as you go along.... There are solutions that encrypt before it leaves your computer so as long as your encryption password/key is good it is secure from prying eyes. I'll get the names if anyone is interested...

[Robin2]

The cloud is good because it's off-site and a backup solution has to have a off-site solution, and the backup software tends to work in the background saving stuff to the cloud as you go along.... There are solutions that encrypt before it leaves your computer so as long as your encryption password/key is good it is secure from prying eyes. I'll get the names if anyone is interested...

 

Encryption only protects you from non-mathematician criminals. And it isn't as good as a strong box that can't easily be found. And its no good at all if you lose the key. And what if the cloud provider gets tired of providing the service? or decides to jack up the price because you have become dependent? I suppose one answer is to have your data on two different clouds (can you be certain they are on separate physical servers in different locations?) but that must double the opportunities for hackers.

 

And there is another downside to a cloud. Hackers are unlikely to be bothered to take the trouble to look for offline stuff for a person of no public or financial importance like me but if I put it on the cloud they might find it in a fishing expedition within the cloud.

[Robbo]

Encryption only protects you from non-mathematician criminals. And it isn't as good as a strong box that can't easily be found. And its no good at all if you lose the key. And what if the cloud provider gets tired of providing the service? or decides to jack up the price because you have become dependent? I suppose one answer is to have your data on two different clouds (can you be certain they are on separate physical servers in different locations?) but that must double the opportunities for hackers.

 

And there is another downside to a cloud. Hackers are unlikely to be bothered to take the trouble to look for offline stuff for a person of no public or financial importance like me but if I put it on the cloud they might find it in a fishing expedition within the cloud.

 

As I said, it's not a backup if it's just in one place, you need multiple backups. A cloud service can be one, but having at least one off-site backup is what I'm getting at.

 

Incorrect, (apart from forgetting the passcode/key) on the encryption. Symmetric Key encryption these days is impossible to crack (bar time), even with the computers that are expected in our lifetime (including quantum if it ever happens) your still looking at over our lifetime to break. They say Asymmetric key encryption when quantum computing happens (if), is pretty much foo barred, but I can't remember the reason to why...

[Chertsey]

I have Ubuntu rather than windows and when I put a cd in my (external) dvd drive it just copies it and figures out the names of the tracks. It's a while since I did it so I don't recall what the software is called or exactly how it works. The point I want to make is that it figured out its own directory structure - quite like what you have suggested I think. Based on my own painful experience use the directory system that the software chooses rather than trying to force it to match a personal preference. Otherwise you will be forever fighting with it.

 

Rhythmbox - I've found it to be good too.

[Gunna Do]

I use I-tunes to record all my vinyl/tapes and CD's but then found difficulty putting my choices onto an MP3. A solution that worked for me was WinAmp. It reads I-tunes format and converts so that you can use any MP3 player and is free.

[MalcolmH]

I've recently researched all this for my boat. Its a mine field and gets quite complicated.

 

I dont think theres any need to compress. Burn you cd's onto a NAS drive in FLAC format. You can then convert these to mp3 if you use an ipod. The point is that with FLAC you have a direct copy of the cd with the quality of the cd as well.

 

I used MAX (on a MAC, theres more choice of burning software with Windows) and burnt all my cd's onto a QNAP NAS drive. I used FLAC format. I back all this up on another external hard drive. Eventualy I'll have one NAS for the boat and one for home.

 

The poster that says devices aren't available that read FLAC files must be thinking about something else. Sonos, Revo, Roberts, Squeezebox, Naim, Linn to name but a few, there are countless others, they all support FLAC.

 

In order to play your cd's from NAS to a streaming device you'll need a media server which sits on the NAS. I use Twonky. This came pre-installed on my NAS

 

When burning the cd's you need to have thought about a tagging strategy. This is very important when it comes to accessing your Cd collection, getting artwork to be presented etc. Particularly so if like me you like classical music. I need to re-do a lot of this as I got it wrong first time. This is where it gets complex and I'm not really experience enough to comment further. Your probably better of researching one of the audio forums for more info.

 

Having your CD/DVD collection on a NAS drive seems to me the ideal solution for a boat, it takes up so little space. You can also stream music to all parts. I have a device in the boatmans plus one in the saloon.

 

I'm waffling so I'll stop there, just hope you've realised that all this requires a little thought and planning up front. I also wanted to put right the fact that there are plenty of FLAC devices available.

 

Malcolm

[Robin2]

I've recently researched all this for my boat. Its a mine field and gets quite complicated.

 

I dont think theres any need to compress. Burn you cd's onto a NAS drive <snip>

 

This is interesting. Do you know how many amps a NAS draws at 12volts?

[MalcolmH]

Hi Robin2

 

Are you talking about during the burn process. For me this is all done at home so irrelevant.

 

I hadn't considered the power output during playback thinking it was insignificant. Go on, tell me it's going to exhaust my 4 leisure batteries after half an hours use?.

 

Cant use any more than a cd player can it?

 

Just checked the power consumption of my NAS drive.

 

12W in operation and 5W in sleep mode.

[Robin2]

Hi Robin2

 

Are you talking about during the burn process. For me this is all done at home so irrelevant.

 

I hadn't considered the power output during playback thinking it was insignificant. Go on, tell me it's going to exhaust my 4 leisure batteries after half an hours use?.

 

Cant use any more than a cd player can it?

 

Just checked the power consumption of my NAS drive.

 

12W in operation and 5W in sleep mode.

 

Thanks, I'm selfish - just concerned about what it would do to MY batteries - I had expected it to be higher.

Edited July 14, 2011 by Robin2

[JennyM]

The CDs went in the loft (if you sell them you are not allowed to keep copies).

 

 

Thanks CarlT for the reminder - forgot that. Minds made up on that one, don't think I'll bother with selling them.

 

Many thanks for everyone's help - lots to think about. At the moment I'm not at home to sort the CDs, but in the meantime, you'd provide great ideas!

 

Thanks all and well done this forum!