squeezebox!

sda2mike

ok...i got my SB all set up and jamming...cool as hell...like madmax, i'm diggin the internet radio...pandora, dead shows..

anyway, i ordered a 1tb hard drive...please post helpful hints before i dive in the process of burning 500+ cd's!!! btw, i know close to nuttin about these compooter gadgets:D

thanks!
mike

woofiepaws

Back up your hard drive.

Re-burning all those CDs really sucks.

heiney9

http://forums.slimdevices.com/

They have a large forum just like Polk does. I suggest you take a look there if you are *that* lost

H9

eeagle

EAC if you like free, dBpoweramp if you like hassle free, to rip you CD collection.

Enjoy you will likely not be using your mechanical players anymore.

Put each album in a separate folder on that new drive, and add cover art to that folder.

The radio is a nice feature, but nothing beats lossless CD quality for serious listening.

JimKellyfan

I ripped all of my audio cd's to my hard drive.
But, I had a hard drive crash one time and all was lost.
So, I made sure to back up to another computer and an external hard drive, once I was done with all of my cd ripping.
I wished I had done that years ago, as the wife doesn't really care when it comes to gouges in the cd's, plus, we would always lose the case somewhere, then double up, then never be able to find it again.
Now, it is as simple as a keyword search.
That, and I have burned what I want to listen to, currently.
No, having to carry all those discs.

Anywho, I use Windows Media Player, and set it to auto rip, so when I plop one in, it auto rips, and I also hit auto eject when done ripping.
Really, look in your options menu, it is pretty self explanatory. Click on all the tabs, looking at the possible options.
For burning discs, I use the Cyberlink program, with the Pioneer Blu Ray burner I bought.
During burning, make sure to put in that 2 second delay, so simpler players can find in between tracks.
Majorgeeks has many players and burners, as I heard Windows Media player may not burn some cd's as a protection type of thing ( wriet protected )
If you need any other in depth help, don't be afraid to PM me.
Good luck.

JimKellyfan

After you have burned all cd's to one pc, merely right click on the folder they are saved in, click copy, then paste in the other hard drives, whether networked or physically attached.

Tomasito

Try mediamonkey and rip the CD's to FLAC (choose no compression when ripping to flac)

sda2mike

thanks everybody!

Amherst

Tomasito wrote: »

Try mediamonkey and rip the CD's to FLAC (choose no compression when ripping to flac)

Good program here.

Need to warn users not to opt for the free (aheim...BS) gold version. You will be required to sign up with a company called TrialPay.... this company in turn sells your email address (they claim not...lies) to spammers, it will never end.
So do not use the free-gold option.

The program MediaMonkey is fine, just use the free version or if you like the paid for gold version.

Edit: BTW....TrialPay is associated with many,many legitimate company's. They should be avoided like the plague.

doctorcilantro

Tomasito wrote: »

Try mediamonkey and rip the CD's to FLAC (choose no compression when ripping to flac)

Do you mean no normalization, or are you referring to the levels of compression, and using the lowest setting to maximize decoding speed etc?

heiney9

doctorcilantro wrote: »

Do you mean no normalization, or are you referring to the levels of compression, and using the lowest setting to maximize decoding speed etc?

No, I don't think that's what he is referring to.

With FLAC you can choose your compression level. Less compression makes larger files but the "rip" takes less time.

I believe you can choose levels 1-8.

1 - being the least amount of compression

8 - being the most amount of compression

I always rip at level 8 just to save space, but it takes about 3-4 minute longer to rip an entire cd into FLAC at level 8.

That's all that means...............has nothing to do with sound quality, etc. Just final file size and time to convert.

H9

doctorcilantro

Well depending on your ripping machine and the app used it could vary quite a bit. I have yet to return to ripping and finally finish everything (started in 2003!). Using J. river you can rip on the fly and it it a multi-threaded app so I think it keeps ripping while transcoding. In the past I have ripped up to 5 CDs at once and transcoded 5 files at a time while ripping.

I would think compression level is considered also for decoding speed depending on the power of your handheld. On a LAN setup, JRMC Library Server though the server can decode and then stream PCM, like the Squeezebox setup. FWIW, one can integrate SlimServer into JRMC which is the most feature rich player for the Windows platform imo.

Tomasito

sda2mike wrote: »

thanks everybody!

What program did you go with?

sda2mike

mediamonkey

heiney9

Good choice, I love Media Monkey

sda2mike

heiney9 wrote: »

Good choice, I love Media Monkey

thanks...it's not set up for dummies, like me...but i'll get it:D

Tomasito

you'll get the hang of it