Re: New Thread: Preferred Formats

Glen,

My workflow is almost identical to yours, except that I'm still using
alt-preset-standard and I use Tag&Rename.  However, with such a huge
amount of time invested in your collection, I recommend that you keep
your periodic backup in a more geographically diverse place than your
closet.  I take a 120G USB drive to work, then bring it home once every
month or two.  Sounds extreme, but with the portability of digital
media, you might as well protect against a disaster (fire, flood, theft,
etc...).  I actually have 3 copies of all my data...production (HD in my
PC), daily backup on a server in my basement, and monthly backup
residing at work.)  Storage is cheap, my music and memories are priceless.

I too would like to archive losslessly, with a duplicate library in MP3
for portable players.  However I just don't see a lossless format taking
hold at this point.  I suppose I could start with WAV, and then if
Windows Media Lossless or FLAC or something else gains popular
acceptance among hardware, I could always convert.

Cheers,

Kyle


Glen wrote:

> Having read all the replies...
>
> I started (long ago) using EAC & LAME alt-preset-standard.  Then
> alt-preset-extreme.  Then, well over a year ago, alt-preset-insane.
>
> Hard drives are cheap enough.  If I were doing it all over again (15,000
> MP3s), I would stick strictly to WAVE.  Unfortunately, I can't go with
> FLAC
> since I am heart-set on my 2 trusty and beloved AudioTrons, and my older
> 20GB Archos Jukebox needs MP3s (I bought it when it first came out, and
> still use it today.  It is great when travelling!)
>
> Every MP3 I have was created with EAC & LAME, then I used MP3Gain
> (http://mp3gain.sourceforge.net/) to adjust the "standardized" volume to
> 89db.  Note, for those who don't know, MP3Gain is *NOT* "normalization".
> That is a crude and ineffective sound-adjustment.  MP3Gain analyzes
> the song
> to determine how loud "it sounds, on average", and adjusts accordingly
> -- in
> a non-invasive way (so it can be done over and over, then un-done, and
> not
> affect the encoded quality of the MP3).
>
> All my tags are meticulously created using ID3-TAGit.de...
>
> The result? I have spent so much time on my collection, that I keep an
> extra
> 100GB hard-drive in my closet with a periodic backup (and incremental
> backups of my server on my workstation hard drive).
>
> My next goal: A low-power, RAID-5 server with at least 500 GB of storage,
> for all music and my increasingly-valuable digital photograph collection
> (also cross-backed up on 2 drives).
>
> Glen
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Jay" <[email protected]>
> To: <[email protected]>
> Sent: Friday, December 31, 2004 10:16 PM
> Subject: [AT] New Thread: Preferred Formats
>
>
>> All:
>>
>> I was just wondering ... of those who read this list, what format /
>> sample
>> rate etc do you use and why? Speaking for myself, I elected to rip
>> everything to WAV as I use the ATs in fairly good home audio systems; I
>> have a separate drive to which I rip the content to MP3 at 192 (which I
>> find to be a reasonable compromise between fidelity and file size as
>> well
>> as manageable for portable devices). I elected WAV as ny de-facto
>> standard
>> as I figured if I was going to archive my collection, given the
>> affordability of drives (and getting more so every year) I should stick
>> with the best fidelity possible.
>>
>> I only ask the question because I have read with some interest comments
>> about the quality of the DACs in the AT and I wonder how much of the
>> grousing about them comes from playing back (heavily) compressed
>> files and
>> expecting uncompressed results. I don't want to start a flame
>> war...but to
>> my ears...playing WAV files using the on-board DACs is actually very
>> good
>> overall.
>>
>> Just wondering...
>>
>
>