RFC - Archiving Music CDs for Backup Purposes

[Joep L. Blom]

Justin Gruenberg wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 1:38 AM, Amichai Rotman <amichai at iglu.org.il> wrote:
>> My questions:
>>
>> 1. Is it the right way to go?
>> 2. Will I be able to "play" the CD in Amarok (or any other audio player, for
>> that matter)?
>> 3. If this isn't the right idea - can you give me some others?
>>
>> My main goal is to store them in digital format that is easy to manage and
>> reproduce in case the original CD gets unusable. Disk space is also an
>> issue. My original idea was to convert them all to FLAC format - but that's
>> about 250 MB per CD...
> 
> You aren't going to have any space savings over FLAC if you're making
> exact bit-for-bit copies of the CDs, although you would be able to
> mount them and play them in any application that plays cd audio.  Each
> CD will be as big as 700mb (so you're wasting a lot of space).
> 
> Honestly, I'd just rip to mp3 unless you're a serious audiophile.
> You have the benefit of adding metadata to all the files, making it
> easier to find music instantly.  mp3 plays on just about any device.
> If the lossless bit is really important to you, go for flac... enough
> hard drive for your 100 cds is pretty inexpensive now.
> 
You don't need to be an audiophile to not use mp3 as serious backup for 
CD's. It depends on the sort of music you want to backup. NEVER use it 
for classical music and jazz. I have no experience with other kinds of 
music.
Joep (musician)