To some extent it depends on what you want to do with the music. If you are going to be playing your music on a quality sound system in your living room (i.e. big speakers) then I would recommend ripping to a lossless format like FLAC. If you are going to be playing your music using a portable device with ear buds then I would rip to MP3 (the iTunes format has DMR with can cause problems if you want to share the music or if you want copies on more than three devices). For MP3 I would recommend using LAME. LAME using a variable compression scheme that gets the most quality for the least amount of space. Both FLAC and LAME are open source if that carries any weight for you. Let me know what you come up with after getting advice from the hidden tech community. Andy. From: hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net [mailto:hidden-discuss-bounces at lists.hidden-tech.net] On Behalf Of Stacy Kontrabecki Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2011 11:10 AM To: hidden-discuss Subject: [Hidden-tech] music collection management So my 300 CDs have been taking up space on my office floor for 3 years b/c I don't know how to deal with them. Looking for recommendations. I have: * 1 Macbook Pro for work that my iPhone 3GS 32 GB is connected to through iTunes - maybe 20 albums of music is synced to the phone. 14 GB free on the phone. * 5 year old Dell laptop restored to factory settings that I only use for occasional GPS points downloading. * iTV -not used for media access currently since media is still on disc! * External drive I back up my Macbook to. Additional PC formatted 160 GB external drive not being used. * What is the best way to get these CDs ripped and accessible? I don't want to store the music on my work computer hard drive. Options I've considered: 1. Purchase another external Mac drive just for music, create 2nd directory (?) on Macbook iTunes (I need to sync my photos & contacts to the Mac still) referencing the music I store on the external & sync it to some new MP3 player. 2. Install the music to the Dell (via USB vs. Mac firewire) and use the existing PC external drive to sync to an MP3 player. 3. Retire the 3GS to iPod status and update my phone? 4. Crawl into a hole with my vinyl albums and turntable, swearing off new technology. Before the iPod/Phone/MP3 phenomenon, I bought a slew of CD sleeves and binders that I was going to shrink the size of my collection down to. That never happened. May still do this for "backup" so I can trash the jewel cases once I figure out the dilemma outlined above. I so need the real estate in my office and miss playing my music, too. Thanks for your recommendations in advance. Stacy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.hidden-tech.net/pipermail/hidden-discuss/attachments/20110913/3d66a7ec/attachment.html