Considering Slim Devices Transporter - Need Your Help - PC Music Storage Questions

[Nightfall]

As the title notes, I am considering purchasing a Slim Devices Transporter. I've previously been a dedicated cd only based audio user, but the flexibility offered by this unit, and the ability to access my entire cd library at will may be too tempting to pass on.

My questions regard using my pc as a music storage device. Please forgive my complete novice status regarding ripping cd's, storage requirements, etc. I do know pc's, and have built a lot of them but I have zero experience with music on pc's.
From some initial research I've done here, using EAC (I want the absolute best audio quality possible) would seem to be the best option, but I have no idea how much storage it takes to store a standard length cd using that format. I have a cd collection of something over 1500 cd's. so the answer can be important. If I have to spend a thousand dollars to buy 2 TB of storage, this becomes a really expensive move. So, my essential questions are as follows:

How much time does it take to rip a cd and store it on your hard drive using EAC? (I have 1500+ to do, so this is important)

How much storage space does it take for one cd using this method? Or, even better, how many cd's, roughly, could one expect to store on say, a 500MB external drive?

Hard drives can fail, though typically, not for some years. If I spend all the time it would take to rip my 1500 cd's to a hard drive(s) how can I effectively back that up? I'm guessing that a striped RAID array wouldnt be the way to go. Not to mention that if I needed even just 1TB of space, a second drive of that size would dramatically add to the expense.


Thanks for any help with this. Your assistance is greatly appreciated.


JC

 

[Iron_Dreamer]

Time will depend on your CD drive (a lot only rip at 4x in EAC secure mode, some can go much faster) and processor (for compressing losslessly into your chosen format [hopefully FLAC]). If you have a fairly modern computer (think P4 3+GHZ, A64 2.4+GHZ, C2D any), the lossless encoder will be faster than the CD ripping process, so the speed will come down to the drive and how scratched the disc is. Assuming your CD's are all in good condition, I'd give you a best case scenario of 4 minutes per CD, worst of 12min. If your CD's have scratches, it can take a very long time to read, again depending on the severity and frequency of scratches, and whether you set it to have a high or low tolerance to allowing errors.

For storage, I'd say my average CD ends up taking 350-400MB in FLAC. This can vary depending on length of the CD, and type of music/recordings (i.e. loud metal doesn't compress nearly as well as quiet classical).

I've currently got about 12,000 tracks or about 1,000 hours of audio in FLAC format, taking up almost exactly 400GB of my 500GB drive.

My guess is that you will certainly fit your collection into 1TB, and likely into a single 750GB drive if you want to go that route. Right now you can get the 500GB Samsung SATAII drive on Newegg for about $140 shipped (I have this drive and it is quiet, cool, and quick, what more could you want?)

If you wanted to backup via RAID 1, the cost would be about $560 for four of those drives. Of you could use RAID 5, and get away with three drives for $420. Since my collection currently fits on one drive, I back up to an external drive, which also doubles as a handy way of taking my music along with my laptop when I need to. Backing up to optical media is nuts these days, considering the low cost of hard drives. Perhaps if blu-ray burners were cheaper....

 

[mkozlows]

Space: If you compress losslessly, figure 3 CDs per GB, on average. For you, this is 500 GB, which is right in the range of what modern hard drives can hold on a single unit.

Ripping time: This is going to depend primarily on how picky you are about metadata, and how good your tools are at filling it in. If you take whatever freeDB (or whatever) gives you, it's a few minutes per CD. If you actually edit the metadata for consistency, or have CDs that aren't in databases... well, how fast can you type in 20 tracks worth of German phrases for your Wagner operas?

Backup: Get an external drive big enough to back up your whole collection, and use that. Or get an internal drive in a separate, networked computer, and use that.

 

[forward1]

I've had the Transporter for four months and it's been great. 90% of my music listening is done through it, (the other 10% is SACD)

My system is Magnepan 3.6's driven via an active crossover by a Bryston 4B-ST for the bass, and a VAC 80/80 tube amp for the mid range and ribbon tweeter.

It's a very revealing system, and the cheaper Squeze Box wasn't good enough. The Transporter is good enough - in fact I can't tell the difference between it and my $2500 cd player.

I have 5,200 tracks (487 CD's) ripped via EAC and compressed into FLAC files. Total space needed is 130 Gigs. You should be well under a Terabyte for your larger collection.

Ripping your collection is time-consuming, but it is fun to re-visit your music this way. I'd start with 2 or 3 of you favorites and try different rippers, then get a process down. I used a mid-range laptop and did it over the course of a few months while watching TV.

While you building your library, you can sample some of the Internet music feeds via the Transporter. I especially like Pandora and the Internet Music Archive. The sound quality is not perfect, but it is a wonderful way to hear new music.

Good luck and have fun.

Ed

 

[Kees]

5Mb per minute in WAV format. (you can of course recalculate Mb/min for other formats)
I find that the easiest way to calculate.

 

[fstxhorn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iron_Dreamer /img/forum/go_quote.gif Time will depend on your CD drive (a lot only rip at 4x in EAC secure mode, some can go much faster) and processor (for compressing losslessly into your chosen format [hopefully FLAC]).

Oh crap, I have been encoding in Apple Lossless, did I screw myself?

 

[pedalhead]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fstxhorn /img/forum/go_quote.gif Oh crap, I have been encoding in Apple Lossless, did I screw myself?

Well, only that you're limiting your playback options. FLAC is pretty much universally supported amongst "audiophile" products in this area, whereas the Apple codec more proprietry to them. If it were me, I'd re-rip everything to FLAC.

 

[HFat]

Why re-rip? Can't you transcode from that Apple format?

 

[Sleestack]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HFat /img/forum/go_quote.gif Why re-rip? Can't you transcode from that Apple format?

Yes. dBpoweramp will do it for you.

 

[nismo96]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HFat /img/forum/go_quote.gif Why re-rip? Can't you transcode from that Apple format?

Yes, dbPoweramp would be a great tool for that.

Doh! sleestack beat me to saying that.

 

[pedalhead]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HFat /img/forum/go_quote.gif Why re-rip? Can't you transcode from that Apple format?

Probably a fair point, although I'm not aware of an app that'll convert ALAC to FLAC. I guess there must be one out there though, and one that'll hopefully keep the tags intact.

 

[pedalhead]

hrm, my copy of dbpoweramp doesn't appear to support ALAC. I'm probably a few clicks back though.

 

[Sleestack]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pedalhead /img/forum/go_quote.gif hrm, my copy of dbpoweramp doesn't appear to support ALAC. I'm probably a few clicks back though.

You just need to download their latest codecs and software.

 

[Nightfall]

I was seriously enthusiastic about the Transporter based on recent reviews in Stereophile, and others, especially including some very informative comments by owners here. I have already begun taking the steps to put together the funding to purchase a Transporter fairly soon, but I may be beginning to rethink the wisdom of going that route.

It would appear that there is a distinct learning curve associated with ripping, and what to rip with, and compressing cd's, and what to compress with. Add in the rather daunting fact that I would then also have 1500 cd's to rip, and the time involved..........well, I'm wavering.

Add in also having to purchase a 750gb-1tb drive to store all of this on, and an equivalent drive to back up all of that hard work and the resulting stored files, and suddenly the once approachable $2000.00 price for the Transporter appears to only represent the beginning of the expenditures necessary to pull this off. I really, really wanted to take this technological step. Having all of my music readily available, easily accessible via the turn of a knob, and reproduced with exceptional sound quality sounds like a dream come true. But gods this would be both difficult and seriously expensive.

JC

 

[werdwerdus]

Just for reference I have 4423 FLAC files in 138 Gibibytes (149 "Gigabytes"). As long as you can find a good guide to setting up EAC with the lossless codec of your choice, that should only take probably an hour max. Then I would highly suggest purchasing a cd-rom that is well known for excellent digital audio extraction (probably a Plextor). Basically 99.9% of your time is going to be spent ripping since you have so many cds. Also if you're knowledgeable about RAID probably three 500GB drives in RAID5 would suffice (it's possible to get software RAID5 in Windows XP Pro with a simple hack, so no need for RAID hardware really). Good luck!