Squeezebox
 

Approximately how many CDs does 300 gig hold? And under which compression format did you save them?

Squeezebox
 

This morning, iTunes told me that I had about 13,700 songs at about 50.3 gigs. I have iTunes save in ACC, though I have a bunch of balt's music in MP3 format. I think his stuff came to about 20 gigs.

I have ripped about 700 CDs, and I have another 30 or so to go until the entire music collection is in a small box instead of three towers and a cabinet.

I figure I probably could triple my CD collection and still have more than enough room for pictures and other assorted crap on this hard drive.

Squeezebox
 

Figure 4Mb/song, so ~50Mb/album. So that's 6000 albums.

That's based on 128kbps encoding. Adjust accordingly for higher encoding rates.

BTW, what are you doing with balt's music on your computer? pirating?

Squeezebox
 

HMM. i'm interested b/c I have 3 full 300 CD carousel changers, with probably another 400-500 CDs in a box on the floor, and this doesn't include any of the GF's stuff (and - my god - there is very little overlap)

I did the math a while ago based on a 100 gig, and it was nowhere near larger enough.

300 gig might work.

RT - how are you interfacing to your stereo?

Squeezebox
 

While I'm sure you can get it done cheaper, you might want to just get a service to rip them for you.

slim devices

Looks like about a $1/cd for the quantities your talking.

Squeezebox
 

Backup. :D

Squeezebox
 

One of the aux-outs on the receiver is hooked up to a Y-cable that I plug into the headphones out on the laptop and/or iPod.

Squeezebox
 

Does that include the hardware or software because - hell - I could pick up a day worker near the 101 and pay him a lot less than that?

Squeezebox
 

I'd go with teh day worker, because all they give you is DVDs to copy in.

Squeezebox
 

But how is the music streaming to the receiver?

Squeezebox
 

My computer is slow as shit. It doesn't have USB2 for quick transfer over to the hard drive, and the CD rip rate is at best around 5.7x. Takes me about an hour to rip six CDs, which isn't that big of a deal when I'm ripping the three or four that I just bought, but is a fucking pain in the ass when I'm trying to get through all of the classical stuff in one evening.

Sorting all of it is the next project.

BTW, iTunes is very confused about classical music. It's a crapshoot as to who the "artist" is and what the "songs" are.

Squeezebox
 

Oh, though iTunes.

Squeezebox
 

My stuff is ripped as 196kbps MP3s, so it takes up a bit more room per song. About 28G for 8K songs (a couple of hundred are AACs downloaded from iTunes). No idea how many CDs that is.

I think there are cheaper ripping services. There was a review a year or two ago in the Wall Street Journal. As I recall from that review, cheaper services are fine if most of your CDs are pop stuff (since all the info can be pulled from CDDB), but the higher end places are worth it if you have a significant amount of esoteric jazz or classical, because they are more likely to get the names right.

The $1 per disc may be a good deal though: even my relatively new, pretty damn fast Mac will only burn about 8 discs an hour, assuming someone is watching it like a hawk to replace discs.

Squeezebox
 

Third time is the charm.

How are you linking your computer (Itunes) to your AV tuner/receiver?

Squeezebox
 

With a y-cable from an aux-out (I think I'm using the LD aux, but it also worked with the phono) on the receiver to the headphones jack on the computer and/or iPod.