Ok, I need some help/advice. Ages ago I had to move quite quickly and ended up having to ditch my cd cases and just got to keep the CDs. Ive since acquired some more and wish to store so I can easily view the contents. Loading to a hard drive seems most convenient but then I dont get the sound advantage of playing these on my new cyrus cd player. Any ideas recommmendations for a good storage/viewing solution? Also would buying clear cd cases and downloading the art work be the best way to go?
cheers

Not sure how deep your pockets are but there are some very good HD players on the market now. Naim and Linn both make one; the Naim is about £4k but I think the Linn might be stratospherically expensive. Reports are that they are indeed very good (they would have to be at the price).

Might be far simpler to get a CD book/folder. Before the advent of mass storage MP3 players (that was only 7 years ago but it's hard to remember a time before we had iPods!) I had friends from overseas who brought large collections of CDs with them in A5 size folders with pockets on each page for the CD and artwork. You must still be able to get them.

cheers but 4K is out of my reach!!
was thinking about placing all on a hrad drive but then I think there#s a massive loss of sound quality
have most in cd wallets at the moment but its a nightmare when I'm looking for a particular CD

You dont have to lose sound quality with a hard drive. You will need lots of storage space though… (i used to install hi end multi room and hifi before i did bikes n stuff)

I have been using uncompressed itunes and an airport into my linn amps and speakers for a few years now. Used to have a Unidisk SC and the sound was directly comparable to that.

You can guess how cheap that solution is…

How much storage for about 300-500 CDs?

Completely uncompressed, 1 CD = about 600mb, so for 300 cds, you'd need 180gb. Which is probably about £30 worth of hard disk at most. With lossless compression, you might get that down to roughly half of the size with no loss in quality.

You can get a fancy 2 channel (stereo) studio quality audio output for your computer for about £100, which will reproduce CD quality audio pretty much perfectly.

If your amplifier has digital input, you can use any old £20 sound card, and send it over that, it'll make no difference (neither will the CD player you use either for that matter).

Joe

Thanks Joe for the info
Are you saying my CD player is redundant?

Hitman, I run a Cyrus CD and amp with Monitor Audio speakers. Unfortunately the CD player is now pretty much redundant. I load everything into iTunes, sync with my iPod and connect that to the system. I burnt everything at 128K AAC which gives the same quality as 256L MP3/WMA. Perhaps I don't concentrate on the music that much but can't say I really notice any degredation. Make sure you get an iPod docking station and a very good quality lead.

The other benefit of burning everthing and getting it onto the iPod is that you can get a car head unit that gives you full iPod control so you can listen to anything in your collection on the move

I have a Squeezebox 3 and a Netgear ReadyNas Duo (0.5Tb), Audiolab 8000s, 8000p (both British built), TEac VRDS-7 CD player and Castle Howard S2's. A good £4k's worth of kit in it's day.

The Squeeze box was a bit of an experiment, but I have found that 320kbps MP3 (lossless – allegedly) doesn't hold a candle to my Teac VRDS-7.

However, a mate has the same speakers as me, but uses a Creative Xfi audio card in his HTPC, running into his Roksan Caspian amplifier. Comparing this to his £1000 Caspian CD player there is no dicernable difference.

I conclude that the SB3 is not hifi, MP3 lossless is near as damn it – lossless and that I need an HTPC.

HTPC?

Does it not depend on what you play through the Squeezebox? I can't see how running a Creative Xfi card/computer combo is any different?

If you want better sound quality out the SB, you can always take a digital feed out of it and through an external DAC (which is what I was considering doing, but my Sony DA1200 amp isn't really good enough to need such things!)

HTPC = Home Theatre PC

Cyrus do a music streamer box you know! http://www.cyrusaudio.com/product.asp?ProductID=31&text=indetail

there is another one, but I can't find the details for it… but it looks like a regular piece of cyrus kit as opposed to this one which is 'normal' width

I had some involvment with an AV firm in leeds a while back, one of the lads used a squeezebox & a custom DAC – but if you already have a DAC either built in to the amp or seperate, i'd consider exploring that idea.

i'd be interested in chosen your solution though!
jt

I ripped all my CD's to my iMac using apple lossless (20 days of music = 165GB) & feed it to the hi-fi via an optical out. You can control it remotely using an iPod Touch (also gets the album art) & supply different rooms using airport express. The fact that hi-fi geeks spend a lot of time debating if there is any difference between this method & using very expensive disc spinners (with no general agreement) suggests to me that I am unlikely to notice/appreciate any difference.

The fact that hi-fi geeks spend a lot of time debating if there is any difference between this method & using very expensive disc spinners

I'm wondering if anyone had ever done the experiment to compare the ripped audio with the original file used to burn it ? Of course, it may be possible for a CD player to sound better than that, but only (as I suspect) if we actually like distortion :o)

The fact that hi-fi geeks spend a lot of time debating if there is any difference between this method & using very expensive disc spinners

What you mean as opposed to MTB geeks who will debate the differences in suspension designs and tyre choices for particular trail centres until the wheel evolves into a square?

Exactly……………..if the obsessives can't agree the differences are unlikely to be discernable to a mere mortal like me.

The thing that may be letting my Squeezebox down is the interconnect. The cd player and amplifier interconnects are Nordost "Blue Heaven", the SB has a £20 interconnect of no known quality. The difference in sound quality between streamed lossless MP3 and the CD player is easily noticeable. Must try experimenting by swapping leads around, but at £125 a pair, I won't be upgrading anytime soon!

BTW, the sonic improvement in my system justified the spend (I used to be a big cable sceptic, if not THE biggest, until I had a few demonstrations).

I also see there are some "silly expensive" upgrades for the SB3. Maybe I should look at an alternative streaming device.

With hifi you have to faff about trying different bits until the whole thing sounds as good as it can. This quest can be a little frustrating at times (and damned expensive). There's no easy option, you have to take your time and let your ears do the deciding. If you can't be bothered, buy a £300 all in one system and forget about stunning audio reproduction.

Dunno about the sound quality but THIS seems a good price.

da funk

it's all relative and down to personal choice, if you can hear the difference in your hifi stand as you change from green glass to black, then that is money well spent.

Yep, good quality cables do make a difference! As the old saying goes, your system is only as good as the weakest link. If you do look at the squeezebox/roku soundbridge (I had one of the very first when slim devices owned the company .. anyway ..) or whatever you choose, a good quality DAC if you choose to output by digital is really quite important. the analogue outputs aren't particularly great in these devices (imo).