clevermanka | Can we go for three?

And so begins my first day of Life With A Bulging Disk. Good times!

In other Well Isn't That Just Typical news, last night I determined that our CD player--the ancient old Sony in the living room (or Entertainment Room, as

mckitterick calls it, and which is more accurate now that I think about it) is headed to the junk pile. Financially, this does not come at a good time for me. In fact, I am a wee bit stressed about it. CDs had been skipping in it for a while, but most of them were old CDs, or CDs that I'd made (like the Best of Bootie compilations), so I attributed it to the flaws of the discs, not the player. Wrong. Last night I put in my brand-spanking-new Duran Duran CD (it's excellent, btw), and it started skipping on the fifth song. Oh hell no.

So, yeah. Bye-bye Sony player, and bye-bye another couple hundred bucks to Kief's. Ngggg. Definitely not going to be purchasing those docking speakers for the iPod anytime soon, now.

mckitterick wanted to digitize everything so we wouldn't have to worry about a CD player, but I can't imagine that the computer and drive space required to rip all our CDs at lossless quality would be cheaper than a CD player, and I don't know that I care to invest the time to ripping all these CDs. Again. We have approximately 560 CDs.

I'm up to the letter R in my project to get everything on the iPod. Almost there.

Apropos-of-nothing Edit: How is this man so sexy? How? How? I don't even know.

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I should look and see how much music Taj got shoved onto his old iMac....the thing is basically a really expensive iPod at this point....but it was so much music....

Seriously, Abed.

If you plan to throw out the CD player, you might as well try this first: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/3/24/45212/6874

This sounds like a fun weekend project. Thanks!

How much storage does your iPod have? I was surprised, when we went digital, that it didn't take up more space. And it's so nice to have all your music so accessible. I would seriously look into it before you buy a new player. You'll have to digitize someday, may as well be now. :)

Depending on how particular you may be, I may have a random CD/DVD player you can use/barter from me. There really isn't much of a difference, unless this one's not set up for the right audio outputs.

I can't remember if I already got rid of it, but I can look in the basement room.

It's the 160G, which means ~148G of memory. Plenty for all the CDs and a few playlists recorded at lossless format, but not the whole collection.

It's worth giving it a shot, if the fix that

stuology suggested doesn't work! Thanks!

Ah, so I think when you say "playlists recorded at lossless format" we're thinking of two different things, because playlists in my music universe don't take up extra space, and all my music is uploaded at full-quality by default. So I suspect you may know a good deal more about it than me. :)

Since I don't have enough room on the iPod to have CD-quality songs as the default, I'll be re-ripping certain songs for party playlists onto the device.

From what I've read, an average CD-quality song uses about 30MB of storage--that's a conservative estimate. This seems about right, since on any mix CD I've made using loss-less transfer, A 700MB CD holds about twenty songs.

Estimating our 560 CDs at ~12 songs per (I'm rounding down here because a lot of my CDs are albums from way back when you could only fit ten songs on an LP), that's 6,720 songs. At 30MB each, that's a bit over 200GB.

To allow for future album purchases (I don't see myself slowing that down anytime soon), I'd want something no smaller than 300GB.

The top shopping hit of a Google search for "300GB HD" shows an Intel internal drive for $490. Significantly more than a CD player would cost, and that's just the drive, not the CPU or other necessary equipment to put together a digital jukebox.

Wow, that was a lot of technology and math for so late in the afternoon.

Edit: And that's assuming I can get CD-quality rips, which is something I've not yet been convinced of, 100%.

Edited 2011-12-14 21:22 (UTC)

Wow. Yes, hat all makes sense. I'm working with different hardware here -- I store all my music (full-quality) on my laptop and then beam it from iTunes to the speakers via the wireless router. I upload just the playlists I want onto my iPhone, which only has enough storage for a fraction of my music. It's all super convenient, but does require a laptop with a pretty major HD (something I had in mind and intentionally spent an extra $80 to upgrade when I bought this computer years ago). It was really, really freeing to dump all those CDs, though, and I now feel like I have better access to everything. ...which is why I'm such an annoying advocate of digital music now. :)

Ha! And see, I'm coming at it from a you will pry these CDs from my cold, dead hands standpoint, so I'm going to take some convincing.

Hell, I was a little resentful that I had to give up my LPs, even though I quickly saw the benefits of CDs. Hated cassettes, though, practical though they were.

Ha! Fair enough. :)

I agree that there is something magical about an LP. I'm *just* old enough to know that. :)

I used to go to a record store every weekend with my Dad when I was very little, and he would let me pick anything I wanted out of the bargain bin. I remember sitting in his lap as he would connect the "stories" from each song on Abby Road together as we listened to his album. I think the necessity of staying close in case of a skip means you had to invest more attention, resulting in a really special listening experience. That very Abby Road record is the only thing of his I have (I made sure I had it before I cut ties with my step-mom; it's rightfully mine, I think.) I actually don't have any way to play it at the moment, but I do remember the sound and experience vividly, and love the idea that it's possible to recreate, at least in small part. The CD/digital version is better in many ways, of course. But it's really not the same.

That story is fantastic. Fantastic.

Last summer, I shared a wonderful experience with

mckitterick's dad's wife Patti (neither of us can bring ourselves to call her "stepmom" even though she is a charming person).

I love music. I love it. I love it probably more than most people I know who aren't musicians. I love music, I love all sorts of music, and I love loud music. Little did I know that Patti loves music, too. I discovered this when she and I decided it was just too damn hot to go to the demolition derby with the guys, so we stayed home to hang out with a bottle of wine.

One bottle of wine turned into two (I think I might've opened a third, actually), and five hours later, we'd spent hardly any time talking, but a lot of time just sitting and listening to music. I'd put something in, and we'd sit, eyes closed, and listen together while she decided if she liked it or not. It was fantastic.

I've only got two or maybe three other friends in my life that'll do that with me. Just sit and listen and let the music wash over us. No talking. Just .... music.

Fantastic.

Yeah. That's it, exactly. I remember holidays where I'd think, "Where's dad?" and then I'd always look at the stereo and follow the headphones line to where he was sitting.

I admit it has been years -- since 2005, the very year I started my PhD program, actually -- since I have just sat and listened to music. But I used to, all the time. And now I have a New Year's Resolution.

Thanks. :)

2012 The Year of Moar Music

Huh. I bought my 2-terabyte (that's 3x more than 300gb) hard drive for about a hundred bucks.

Hm! Well, then, it's certainly worth looking into. First thing we should do, probably, is check to see that the receiver has an outlet for a computer input.

And you can get a stack of them to swap out with this: http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-NexStar-NST-D100SU-2-5-Inch-3-5-Inch/dp/B00180MMZC

Word. I love my CDs. I dread converting to all-digital. Rin & Jay have already ripped our entire CD collection, so I guess all I need to do is familiarize myself with the digital process, but I don't wanna. Not yet. [gazes lovingly at CDs]

YES. THIS.

*fistbump*

LOOKIT DAT MOUTH.

Can we go for three?

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2012 The Year of Moar Music

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