Making the move from CDs to Hard Drive based music listening
Over the last year I have boxed up my CD player and CDs and moved to a 100% hard drive based listening environment. I find myself listening to a much broader range of music (that in many cases I forgot I had) and the search capabilities and smart playlists of the music library software makes it much easier to play the music you want rather than rooting through CDs and trying to read the small lettering on the side of jewel boxes. It has also resulted in freeing up many many shelves that used to be filled with CDs, and replacing them with an external hard drive the size of a paperback. If you are interested in how to do that, read on.
Transferring CD audio to a lossless digital format
Standard audio CDs are in an uncompressed LPCM 16-bit (2 to the 16th or 65,536 possible values) two-channel digital audio with a sampling rate of 44,100 Hz, which means it can capture (and reproduce) frequencies up to 22.05 kHz.
Uncompressed: You can rip audio from a CD in its native PCM form and save it as either a wav file (Windows) or AIFF file (Mac). The disadvantage of these uncompressed formats is their size (606 MB/hour of music) and the fact that they generally do not hold tag information such as artist, genre, etc.
Lossy: Formats such as mp3 or AAC (Mac) can, depending on the sampling frequency you select, reduce the size of the file to less than 1/10 of the original size. They also support tagging. However, this reduced size comes with the cost of reduced sound quality, which can easily be distinguished on a reasonable stereo. There is no way to revert to the original uncompressed information after compression, hence the term "lossy."
Lossless: Formats such as Apple Lossless (ALAC) and FLAC offer the best of both worlds for audiophiles. The files are roughly half the size of an uncompressed file, but the audio signal is identical, files can later be translated from compressed to uncompressed with absolutely no loss of information, and they hold tag information. I prefer ALAC but many folks also like FLAC because it is open source and not controlled by a corporation (Apple).
How do I rip my CDs?
The cheapest and easiest approach is to use iTunes, which is probably already on your computer. Before you do any ripping go to the Preferences page on your menu, and on the General tab select "Import Settings." There you can select the format you want, including ALAC, but iTunes does not offer FLAC encoding. Unfortunately, iTunes is not the most advanced tool for high quality ripping. There are several options out there, but I prefer JRiver Media Center. It is currently only available for Windows, but a Mac version is expected very shortly. I will discuss the library and playback quality features of Media Center later, but higher end library managers have much more robust ripping algorithms that verify every byte that is transferred and continue to re-scan the CD when a perfect transfer can not be verified. This ensures that the file on your hard drive is identical to the information on the CD, which is important, especially when listening to music on a high-end system.
Depending on how many CDs you have, your budget, and how much time and patience you have, you can also outsource the ripping to a service such as MusicShifter which will rip to a hard drive for $0.69/CD.
Where do I keep the data?
You can keep your data on any hard drive, including the internal hard drive of your computer or an external USB drive, but I recommend you invest in an external NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive. These drives connect to your network via an ethernet cable either plugged directly into your wireless router or any other ethernet port on your network. The advantage of the NAS drive is that any computer or audio system that is connected to your home network by wired or wireless can "see" the music, and it is available 24/7, not dependent on a particular computer being turned on. Depending on the size of your library you can select a 1 TB (terabyte, or 1000 Gigabyte), 2 TB, or 3 TB drive. Since the incremental cost of the larger drives is relatively small, I recommend a 3 TB drive. I have had good experiences with the Western Digital My Book Live drives, but there are many choices. Most of these NAS drives can be read by and written to by both Mac and Windows, unlike the USB drives which need to be formatted for one or the other. It is very important that you back up your data offsite, lest you lose your entire audio collection by hardware failure or damage. For that I would recommend purchasing a similarly sized USB drive and either storing it in a fireproof media safe, or preferably at another location. You'll need to refresh it periodically, I use a great piece of Windows software for these backups called Vice Versa Pro.
What software do I use to organize my library and play the music?
You generally use the same software you use to rip your CDs to organize and play your music. You will need to "point" the software to your NAS drive and then instruct the software to build a library but NOT to copy the music to your local computer. As I mentioned earlier you can use iTunes, JRiver Media Center, or many others. Higher end software such as JRiver offers many advantages. Their library tools are generally stronger and more flexible, they do not try and push music on you from the iTunes store, they handle all audio formats including FLAC, and most importantly they allow you to completely bypass the audio software in your computer's operating system and route the information directly to your external audio hardware. This results in a much better audio experience.
Now that music is being made available as direct downloads, there is a growing interest in higher sampling frequency recordings. As I mentioned above, standard CD Audio is sampled at 44.1K. These hi-def tracks are sampled at 48K, 88K, 96K, and 192K. The largest vendor of these is HD Tracks. While some folks argue that sampling rates higher than 44.1K can actually result in a worse listening experience, some folks think it is better. With the limited number of A/B tests I have done, I found that in most cases the higher sampling resulted in a less pleasing result, and in only one did it improve the sound to my ears. If you want to play higher sampling rate files you either need a DAC with USB input that handles those rates, or the USB to SPDIF converter (see below) has to specifically handle the sampling rates you choose. In addition, the library software will need to handle higher sampling rates. JRiver does, but iTunes does not. On the Mac, many higher sampling rate listeners choose Decibel.
Most of the library programs have separate apps for your mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, Android) that act as remote controls for the library program. This way you can sit in your favorite listening chair, browse through your music, and change tunes at will. iTunes has a free Remote, and there are several alternatives for JRiver, including my favorite JRemote.
How do I connect my computer to my stereo?
First, you need to get the digital information out of the computer. You do this either by means of a digital output from your sound card (it looks like a regular analog RCA connection, but it is a digital SPDIF connection) or via the ubiquitous USB port on the computer. If the former, you need an SPDIF cable like this one. If the latter, any reasonable USB cable will do the trick, it just has to be long enough to reach from your computer to your stereo.
Second you need a DAC, or Digital to Analog converter. This converts the zeros and ones on your hard drive to the analog waveforms that you hear on your stereo. Your DAC is the single most important element in the audio chain for achieving the best musical results, it makes a huge difference. You have many alternatives for where the DAC is in the chain.
a) Conceptually you could use the DAC on board your computer, but the quality of DACs on $39 sound cards is atrocious and I don't recommend using it. If you do, then just connect a cable with 1/8" stereo on one end into your sound card and connect the two RCA plugs into the analog in of your receiver. Caveat audiotor.
b) Some receivers have DACs on board, and have SPDIF inputs in the back. Use your ears to decide if the on board DAC is suitable. High end receivers may have good DACs, but they vary widely in quality. If you use this approach you will connect to the digital out of the computer either with an SPDIF cable (see above) or a USB cable. If you are using a USB connection on the computer you will need an adapter that converts asynchronous USB to SPDIF such as the Musical Fidelity V-Link or the Halide Bridge. There are different models that handle different ranges of sampling frequencies (not all handle 96K and 192K), shop carefully.
c) External DACs are often the highest quality solution. Individual DAC choice is highly personal and pricing ranges widely. At audiophile quality one of the best performance/cost units is the $479 Arcam rDac which also saves you the cost of a USB to SPDIF converter since it handles USB input. The $379 Musical Fidelity V-DAC is similar. For a higher budget many folks recommend the $995 Rega DAC. I have a Naim system, so I use their DAC. If your DAC does not accept USB in, you will need to use the USB to SPDIF adapter above in (b).
Using other streaming music services
In addition to listening to your own music, once you are set up to drive digital content from your computer to your stereo you can use music services such as Spotify and Pandora. Their premium level subscriptions offer higher quality compressed audio, but it is still going to be lower quality than ALAC or FLAC. For remotes, I like Remoteless for Spotify.
What if I have more than one stereo?
You can set up as many locations as you want with one computer, DAC, and stereo in each room. Each computer's music library software would index the same single set of music files on the NAS drive, and a single remote app could control all of the rooms.
Whole House Systems
There is an alternative to everything to everything on this page that comes after ripping the music and storing it on a NAS drive - Sonos. Sonos starts with a $49 Bridge which connects the Sonos system with your music sources (your files on your NAS, streaming services, etc.) and sets up its own separate wifi system for the Sonos devices to communicate amongst themselves, saving bandwidth on your wifi network. Then you add as many additional units as you want, one per room. There are 4 basic units:
The $399 Play:5 which is completely standalone - contains larger speakers, DAC, amp, and wireless.
The $299 Play:3 which is a smaller version of the Play:5 for smaller rooms.
The $499 Connect:Amp which has a DAC, an amp, and wireless, but is designed to play through your speakers.
The $349 Connect which has a DAC and wireless, and is designed to connect your files and streaming services to an existing stereo. You can either use the Connect's DAC (connect your receiver or pre-amp to the Connect's analog outs), use your receiver/pre-amp's DAC (Connect digital out to receiver digital in) or an external DAC (Connect digital out to DAC digital in to pre-amp analog in). While I have not auditioned the Connect's DAC, I think you would be better off using an external DAC for higher end systems.
The advantage of Sonos is that you can control music throughout the house with one interface, available on your iiPhone, iPad or Android device. And you don't need a dedicated computer for each listening location. I haven't gone this way (yet), but it has its appeal.
Good luck, and happy listening!
Transferring CD audio to a lossless digital format
Standard audio CDs are in an uncompressed LPCM 16-bit (2 to the 16th or 65,536 possible values) two-channel digital audio with a sampling rate of 44,100 Hz, which means it can capture (and reproduce) frequencies up to 22.05 kHz.
Uncompressed: You can rip audio from a CD in its native PCM form and save it as either a wav file (Windows) or AIFF file (Mac). The disadvantage of these uncompressed formats is their size (606 MB/hour of music) and the fact that they generally do not hold tag information such as artist, genre, etc.
Lossy: Formats such as mp3 or AAC (Mac) can, depending on the sampling frequency you select, reduce the size of the file to less than 1/10 of the original size. They also support tagging. However, this reduced size comes with the cost of reduced sound quality, which can easily be distinguished on a reasonable stereo. There is no way to revert to the original uncompressed information after compression, hence the term "lossy."
Lossless: Formats such as Apple Lossless (ALAC) and FLAC offer the best of both worlds for audiophiles. The files are roughly half the size of an uncompressed file, but the audio signal is identical, files can later be translated from compressed to uncompressed with absolutely no loss of information, and they hold tag information. I prefer ALAC but many folks also like FLAC because it is open source and not controlled by a corporation (Apple).
How do I rip my CDs?
The cheapest and easiest approach is to use iTunes, which is probably already on your computer. Before you do any ripping go to the Preferences page on your menu, and on the General tab select "Import Settings." There you can select the format you want, including ALAC, but iTunes does not offer FLAC encoding. Unfortunately, iTunes is not the most advanced tool for high quality ripping. There are several options out there, but I prefer JRiver Media Center. It is currently only available for Windows, but a Mac version is expected very shortly. I will discuss the library and playback quality features of Media Center later, but higher end library managers have much more robust ripping algorithms that verify every byte that is transferred and continue to re-scan the CD when a perfect transfer can not be verified. This ensures that the file on your hard drive is identical to the information on the CD, which is important, especially when listening to music on a high-end system.
Depending on how many CDs you have, your budget, and how much time and patience you have, you can also outsource the ripping to a service such as MusicShifter which will rip to a hard drive for $0.69/CD.
Where do I keep the data?
You can keep your data on any hard drive, including the internal hard drive of your computer or an external USB drive, but I recommend you invest in an external NAS (Network Attached Storage) drive. These drives connect to your network via an ethernet cable either plugged directly into your wireless router or any other ethernet port on your network. The advantage of the NAS drive is that any computer or audio system that is connected to your home network by wired or wireless can "see" the music, and it is available 24/7, not dependent on a particular computer being turned on. Depending on the size of your library you can select a 1 TB (terabyte, or 1000 Gigabyte), 2 TB, or 3 TB drive. Since the incremental cost of the larger drives is relatively small, I recommend a 3 TB drive. I have had good experiences with the Western Digital My Book Live drives, but there are many choices. Most of these NAS drives can be read by and written to by both Mac and Windows, unlike the USB drives which need to be formatted for one or the other. It is very important that you back up your data offsite, lest you lose your entire audio collection by hardware failure or damage. For that I would recommend purchasing a similarly sized USB drive and either storing it in a fireproof media safe, or preferably at another location. You'll need to refresh it periodically, I use a great piece of Windows software for these backups called Vice Versa Pro.
What software do I use to organize my library and play the music?
You generally use the same software you use to rip your CDs to organize and play your music. You will need to "point" the software to your NAS drive and then instruct the software to build a library but NOT to copy the music to your local computer. As I mentioned earlier you can use iTunes, JRiver Media Center, or many others. Higher end software such as JRiver offers many advantages. Their library tools are generally stronger and more flexible, they do not try and push music on you from the iTunes store, they handle all audio formats including FLAC, and most importantly they allow you to completely bypass the audio software in your computer's operating system and route the information directly to your external audio hardware. This results in a much better audio experience.
Now that music is being made available as direct downloads, there is a growing interest in higher sampling frequency recordings. As I mentioned above, standard CD Audio is sampled at 44.1K. These hi-def tracks are sampled at 48K, 88K, 96K, and 192K. The largest vendor of these is HD Tracks. While some folks argue that sampling rates higher than 44.1K can actually result in a worse listening experience, some folks think it is better. With the limited number of A/B tests I have done, I found that in most cases the higher sampling resulted in a less pleasing result, and in only one did it improve the sound to my ears. If you want to play higher sampling rate files you either need a DAC with USB input that handles those rates, or the USB to SPDIF converter (see below) has to specifically handle the sampling rates you choose. In addition, the library software will need to handle higher sampling rates. JRiver does, but iTunes does not. On the Mac, many higher sampling rate listeners choose Decibel.
Most of the library programs have separate apps for your mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, Android) that act as remote controls for the library program. This way you can sit in your favorite listening chair, browse through your music, and change tunes at will. iTunes has a free Remote, and there are several alternatives for JRiver, including my favorite JRemote.
How do I connect my computer to my stereo?
First, you need to get the digital information out of the computer. You do this either by means of a digital output from your sound card (it looks like a regular analog RCA connection, but it is a digital SPDIF connection) or via the ubiquitous USB port on the computer. If the former, you need an SPDIF cable like this one. If the latter, any reasonable USB cable will do the trick, it just has to be long enough to reach from your computer to your stereo.
Second you need a DAC, or Digital to Analog converter. This converts the zeros and ones on your hard drive to the analog waveforms that you hear on your stereo. Your DAC is the single most important element in the audio chain for achieving the best musical results, it makes a huge difference. You have many alternatives for where the DAC is in the chain.
a) Conceptually you could use the DAC on board your computer, but the quality of DACs on $39 sound cards is atrocious and I don't recommend using it. If you do, then just connect a cable with 1/8" stereo on one end into your sound card and connect the two RCA plugs into the analog in of your receiver. Caveat audiotor.
b) Some receivers have DACs on board, and have SPDIF inputs in the back. Use your ears to decide if the on board DAC is suitable. High end receivers may have good DACs, but they vary widely in quality. If you use this approach you will connect to the digital out of the computer either with an SPDIF cable (see above) or a USB cable. If you are using a USB connection on the computer you will need an adapter that converts asynchronous USB to SPDIF such as the Musical Fidelity V-Link or the Halide Bridge. There are different models that handle different ranges of sampling frequencies (not all handle 96K and 192K), shop carefully.
c) External DACs are often the highest quality solution. Individual DAC choice is highly personal and pricing ranges widely. At audiophile quality one of the best performance/cost units is the $479 Arcam rDac which also saves you the cost of a USB to SPDIF converter since it handles USB input. The $379 Musical Fidelity V-DAC is similar. For a higher budget many folks recommend the $995 Rega DAC. I have a Naim system, so I use their DAC. If your DAC does not accept USB in, you will need to use the USB to SPDIF adapter above in (b).
Using other streaming music services
In addition to listening to your own music, once you are set up to drive digital content from your computer to your stereo you can use music services such as Spotify and Pandora. Their premium level subscriptions offer higher quality compressed audio, but it is still going to be lower quality than ALAC or FLAC. For remotes, I like Remoteless for Spotify.
What if I have more than one stereo?
You can set up as many locations as you want with one computer, DAC, and stereo in each room. Each computer's music library software would index the same single set of music files on the NAS drive, and a single remote app could control all of the rooms.
Whole House Systems
There is an alternative to everything to everything on this page that comes after ripping the music and storing it on a NAS drive - Sonos. Sonos starts with a $49 Bridge which connects the Sonos system with your music sources (your files on your NAS, streaming services, etc.) and sets up its own separate wifi system for the Sonos devices to communicate amongst themselves, saving bandwidth on your wifi network. Then you add as many additional units as you want, one per room. There are 4 basic units:
The $399 Play:5 which is completely standalone - contains larger speakers, DAC, amp, and wireless.
The $299 Play:3 which is a smaller version of the Play:5 for smaller rooms.
The $499 Connect:Amp which has a DAC, an amp, and wireless, but is designed to play through your speakers.
The $349 Connect which has a DAC and wireless, and is designed to connect your files and streaming services to an existing stereo. You can either use the Connect's DAC (connect your receiver or pre-amp to the Connect's analog outs), use your receiver/pre-amp's DAC (Connect digital out to receiver digital in) or an external DAC (Connect digital out to DAC digital in to pre-amp analog in). While I have not auditioned the Connect's DAC, I think you would be better off using an external DAC for higher end systems.
The advantage of Sonos is that you can control music throughout the house with one interface, available on your iiPhone, iPad or Android device. And you don't need a dedicated computer for each listening location. I haven't gone this way (yet), but it has its appeal.
Good luck, and happy listening!