Shifting to lossless

[DevO]

Hi skanks,

 

I know that a lot of you are seasoned users of lossless formats, and some have recently gone through these 'changes'  so was hoping to gather some input from you. For a while now I've been considering making the shift towards a lossless audio format for my music collection. I've always stuck with the MP3 format to date, which has been very convenient as I use iTunes, an iPod and an iPhone. 

 

One of the things that has been on my long term to-do list, which I may actually have time to do during the holidays in December if I commit to it, is to digitize all of the CDs that I have sitting around collecting dust.  If I'm going to go to the trouble of carrying out this task, and if in the long term I intend to switch to a lossless format, it occurs to me that I should convert to lossless and not MP3.

 

- Format: I assume FLAC is the way to go. It seems to have come out on top as the most common lossless format that I see being peddled around on the internet.  Would you agree?  (I'm going to refer to FLAC in the questions below instead of 'lossless formats' but this can be substituted if it makes more sense that way.)

 

- What is the best (most user friendly) media player for FLAC?  Is there any downside to going FLAC in terms of what is available for media players?

 

- How compatible is FLAC with portable music players?  What is the best portable music player to get that I can play FLACs on, that doesn't cost like $400+?  What are the limitations that you have faced in making your FLAC collection portable?

 

- Any recommended software for converting CDs to FLAC? 

 

- Any other tips or factors that I haven't taken into consideration?

 

And finally: Is it worth going to all of this trouble? Won't we all just be streaming FLAC quality audio via services such as Spotify like 2-3 years from now?  How soon will this practice of having audio data stored on a local drive become obsolete altogether?

 

Thanks for whatever you can muster!  Cheers.

 

 

[Esau.]

As someone who has (and really still does) use my digitized music more than streaming, I'll offer my experience. I did FLAC, but a lot of my live collection was also in SHN and those were simply copied over. For my purchased CDs, I converted to FLAC. I used https://xiph.org/flac/download.html and EAC http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/. There may be better options now-a-days but I stuck with what I liked and trusted.

 

I did what your planning, so maybe something to consider, I bought a 2.5 tb external HDD and filled it - 2tb worth of CDs & a lot of my CDRs. I spent hours transferring & converting them (I would EAC to PC, then convert to FLAC). About 2 years later though, the HDD started to fail (bad sectors). If you go this route I'd recommend you have another (same size or bigger) HDD and use it only for back ups. I now have 3x 3tb HDDs, two media and one for back ups. I have two pcs though, one I use to connect & surf internet and the other used only for media, but connected to my network, home stereo & tv. I should just build a home server.

 

As for media players, I still prefer winamp. I've tried Music Bee, Media Monkey and a couple others but Winamp servers my needs best.

 

Can't help you with a FLAC portable player, I still haven't owned a portable player of any type or brand.

 

Is it worth it? I thought so, for my live collection anyhow. I'd guess the majority of my purchased studio CDs are easily found via streaming though, save for those bands that don't see much radio play.

[DevO]

Thanks a lot Esau! This is very helpful. Not a lot to add beyond that for now, but as I get into the process I will keep posting.

[hamilton]

Ditto most of what was said by Esau, especially what was said regarding FLAC, EAC, and backup storage. I also know pretty much squat about portable devices that play FLAC. Also like Esau, I don't use streaming services. I took me *months* to convert all my CDs, but it was totally worth it.

 

For my playback, I invested in a now-discontinued product called a Logitech Transporter (there are similar products out there that do the same thing). It's basically a fancy D>A converter with an easy-to-use interface. The main benefit of it over something like winamp is that my computer isn't powering the music or processing the signal, so there is no chance of computer noise or other artifacts making it through to the speakers. The computer simply houses the music; the transporter converts the digital FLAC files to wave forms and sends the signal to the amplifier or receiver.

[c-towns]

This player looks and sounds promising.

 

[Weirdness]

Greetings earthlings,

Yes FLAC is the way to go.

J River is supposed to be the best media player but you have to pay for it - Foobar 2000 is free so I would use that one - it works and sounds just fine...

For players, the Fiio X1 player is like $150 which would do the trick, they have a few higher models as well. Yes the Sony players are also supposed to be quite good. A lot of Android phones will handle FLAC no problem as well. If you're Apple all the way it's an obstacle if not you have lots of options.

Good software to go CD->FLAC is called EAC - exact audio copy.

Even if you just have a decent set of headphones it's worth it - memory is cheap now so you may as well have the resolution that was on the original source.

Streaming is great, I've been using Tidal for awhile which is FLAC quality and they have lots of shit that I don't have but I also have tons of shit that they don't have so it's good to have both options at your fingertips.