going to take the plunge, and re-encode all my cds to ogg vorbis. now, what would be the best settings for encoding? i was thinking of making the bitrate 192vbr. what would be comparable to --alt-preset standard, anyways?

Personally, I'd re-rip all of my CDs to FLAC first. Then you can change your mind about Ogg vs MP3 vs WMA and bitrates later.

--alt-preset standard ~= -q 5 (IIRC)
Check out the Hydrogenaudio.org forums...

I did that and have been quite pleased with the results. I have an achive of FLAC files (about 140GB) of my CD's. I got all of the tags correct and never have to worry about getting them righ again. The CD's are now in storage since I play my music at home from the FLACs. I wrote a shell script to convert them to mp3 or ogg or whatever whenever I need another format - which is much faster than re-ripping and all.

I Highly recommend doing this. Now all I need is some terabyte backup system to back up the FLACs in case the hard disk fails

"in case the hard disk fails."

err, you mean WHEN, don't you?



-Zeke

Personally, I'd re-rip all of my CDs to FLAC first

yeah, was playing with that idea. i've been hearing APE has better compression though. i'll be encoding like this i guess.
eac->flac->ogg -q6

Now all I need is some terabyte backup system to back up the FLACs in case the hard disk fails

i've been playing with the idea of using dds3 tapes for permanent storage without degregation. yeah, its only 12gigs, and in convenience, burning to DVD would be better, but dvds do degenerate over time. exabyte has several 40gig tape systems that would be optimal, but its way too expensive.

Hmm, never thought about ripping to flac then burning to DVD. Anyone care to do a fag packet calculation of how many DVD's for 30gb of flacs that currently are about 30gb of 192bps vbr mp3's?

(Assuming 192kbps)

30gB * 8gb/1gB * 1024mb/1gb * 1024kb/1mb * 1s/192kb == 1310720s (364h, 5m, 20s) of music

32b/1 sample * 44100 samples/1s * 1310720s * 1gb/(1024^3)b * 1gB/8gb == 215.33gB of wav files

FLACs compress WAV files by about a quarter to a third, so:

215.33gB wav * 2gB flac/3gB wav == 143.5 gB FLAC

143.5 gB FLAC * 1 DVD/4.7gB == 30.5 FLAC DVDs

Damnit wfaulk... First you beat me to the actual post, then you beat me to the # of DVD thing with an edit...

err, yeah, "when" would be the more appropriate word. I needed to be pulled out of that fantasy that it would last forever

30gb of flacs that currently are about 30gb of 192bps vbr mp3's?

i hope you're not transcoding vbr mp3s to flac. that would've been the first no-no i learned in the mp3 era.

err, yeah, "when" would be the more appropriate word. I needed to be pulled out of that fantasy that it would last forever

Yeah... but cheaper and faster is backing up to another hard drive.

I use Drive Image to make a bootable mirror copy of my C: drive onto my D: drive whenever I have enough changes to the C: drive that I start to feel vulnerable.

It's extremely unlikely that both drives would fail at the same time (I'm even somewhat protected from power spikes, etc, running through a UPS) so I feel pretty secure.

In the event of a total catastrophe (I come home to a pile of burning rubble where my house and computer used to be) I still have my music stored on my empeg.

tanstaafl.

Yeah, that is along the lines of what I've got in mind. I'll just enable RAID in my kernel and stick another drive in there. I'm not too concerned with performance on that box.

umm..isnt a CD permanent storage?

umm..isnt a CD permanent storage?

Yes and no.

Yes, because it's a CD.
No, because re-ripping CDs is a PITA.
No, because the CD will get scratched, scuffed, lost, whatever.

So, in all, looking at ways to archive the digital data in a form that's easily backed up makes more sense (to some of us anyway).

I agree with your observations...but essentially you are looking for a way to back up what is on the Empeg...in the same format...for if one were to purhase one or more of the mega-cd changers (300+) cd per...then for a cost of <$500 you would have permanent storage and would never have to touch the CD to play....

I have on ny pc hd over 30gb of music that is also on the Rio....i keep it there in the event that the hdd is corrupted on the Rio and i want to reload all of it....but then my pc is even exposed to external gremlins....

so i guess it would be best to sort it on some form of digital tape and store it on remotely...just in case

so i guess it would be best to sort it on some form of digital tape and store it on remotely...just in case

Well, one possibility would be for us to offer each other mutual off-site backup ... Of course, I wouldn't *dream* of listening to your music while storing it on my hard disk...

Well..what if i stored it by you..then we both listened to it..is that sharing!?

Well..what if i stored it by you..then we both listened to it..is that sharing!?


Absolutely not. It's simply excercising due diligence and quality control to make certain that the backup files are not corrupted.



tanstaafl.

Hmm. Anyone want to write a p2p backup protocol?

Hmm. Anyone want to write a p2p backup protocol?

No, no no! A *distributed* backup protocol. P2p is illegal, immoral, fattening and a threat to Homeland Security. And surely a communist plot.