RFC - Archiving Music CDs for Backup Purposes

[Steve]

On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:58:06 -0000, Joep L. Blom <jlblom at neuroweave.nl>  
wrote:

> Steve wrote:
>> On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 12:01:25 -0000, Joep L. Blom <jlblom at neuroweave.nl>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> 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)
>>>
>>>
>> A true audiophile would never listen to digitised music anyway:-)
>>
>> Just rip the CDs to ogg, flac, mp3, whatever, listen to them and  
>> carefully
>> store the CDs away.  If a CD, or any other original media, gets damaged
>> beyond use you have to replace it anyway. Do  you backup books.
>>
> Justin,
It wasn’t Justin it was me, Steve.

> That's untrue! All CD's are digital. Or do you mean that the only
> musical reproduction to listen to is a vinyl recording? or an audiophile
> only listens to a life performance? (as it was >120 years ago).
The audiophile comment was something I overheard in a HiFi shop some  
months back and wasn’t to be taken seriously, hence the smiley.

> I agree partly. I record my own performances (jazz piano) on 24-bit (OK,
> it's not analogue!) but the commercial recordings I work(ed) on are of
> course all 16-bit. But the gist of the matter is that you should never
> make a backup with a lesser quality than the original.
No argument there.
>
> About replacing that can sometimes be a problem. Older CD's are often
> not available any more (at least with respect to classical music and  
> jazz).
This is true of all musical styles.
I also have a collection of books, a lot of which are out of print and  
therefore cannot easily be replaced, and are rather problematic to  
'backup'.
My suggestion was simply to rip them to a suitable format for listening to  
and store the originals away.

-- 
Steve