Have your say & ask the experts

We've just moved house and space is at a little more of a premium than before. So whilst the amp, CD player and speakers can stay the massive CD collection has to be stored in the loft. What with this and that I now buy a lot of my music online and listen via laptop to amp I think the time to change is here.  What do I need in order to store a large quantity of CDs on a dedicated hard drive of some description which can connect direct to my existing amp. I've had a look at various things, but all seem to focus on wireless connectivity, rather than being a repository for CDs that I can then use to play music? Budget isn't really an issue, within reason!

 thanks in advance

A

Hi Tony747. Your comment of 'a dedicated hard drive....which can be connect directly to my exising amp' makes me think of products such as the Sooloos from Meridian or Naim where the CD is imported into that system, which then connects to an amp or even straight to speakers. Such music servers are more than just a hard drive. Is that what you mean?

Otherwise you want a hard drive connected to your PC connected to a DAC connected to your amp.

Dim_span, in that case all you need is a DAC and the appropriate cables. As for SQ, I find Spotify and the Ogg Vorbis codec used to be very, very good indeed. I don't feel the need to get a CDP and retrieve my CDs from the loft and I hardly bother with my losslessly imported music.

I would go as far to say that once I am confident enough that Spotifys future is guaranteed and there are established equivalent services, such as Sky Songs, I will sell my CDs.

To the OP, the likes of Spotify and LastFM make PC based music so worthwhile. The access to music more than makes up for any, in my mind very slight reduction in SQ from CDs.

hi Tony

Firstly let my agree with the previous replies who recommend the squeezebox.

18 months ago, when all available shelves were finally full I decided to rip all my cd's to  a hard drive and bought a squeezebox duet to stream the files to my stereo. It was the best buy ever. Ripping 1000+ cd's was a ball-ache, but my living room is so much nicer now that they are all gone.

The squeezebox duet has the best interface for selecting music and as a bonus has access to various online streaming services for new music and internet radio. It has really changed how I listen to music. The sound quality is also excellent, easily on a par with standard budget cd players (eg rotel, arcam, etc) and of course can be attached to an external dac if you have magic ears.

Get one. They are fantastic. Although waiting 'til xmas for the touch version might be worthwhile (easier to set up). The main consideration for me is how to connect your hard drive music to your existing stereo with good sound quality and without having a pc in your living room, the squeezebox is just the ticket for that.

Anyway the most important thing to consider is what format to rip to, what program to use and so on. This all depends on how computer savvy you are and how hifi obsessed you are. I ripped everything to flac. Sound quality wise mp3 at 256kbps was indistinguishable for the majority of music but flac is more flexible and future proof, allowing re-encoding to other formats (for ipod etc) with no great loss in quality, so worth it for me,

Anyway - check out the squeezebox forum for endless information.

Also consider sonos, or a mac based set up with an itouch controlling.

Good luck with it.

Ant

So many ways to go!

I've bought a Linksys Media Hub with 2x1Tb disks - raided so that if one fails, the other has a copy. With anything like this, having a backup is essential! That's plugged into my wireless router, and I ( or the kids! ) access that anywhere else in the house.... in my living room that's a PS3 into the tellly, then the pre-amp etc....

Busy re-ripping to FLAC and looking at using an Archos-5 (or similar) to bypass the telly and go straight to the hifi...

Using DbPoweramp to rip the CD's... has a batch convert to anything else should you need it in the future...

Bit different to other suggestions, but again a viable way forward I think....

Cheers,

Dave/.

To be honest HDD Storage is the way I would like to go in the future, but without the P.C.

At the moment the lack of suitable products (IMO) on the market put me off. I'm thinking of the ripping technology to make sure that the disk as accurately ripped. The only product I know that has been designed to ensure that this is done correctly, from an audiophile's point of view is the Naim HDX.

Cyrus If your listening take note of this suggestion. Personally I think given their newly designed transports and thier existing DAC, two new ideal products would be a user interface machine that controls the SE transport for the optimum ripping, with a large screen that lets you have access to the ripped music and then an external harddrive storage in RAID configuration.

Given cyrus current product range, I honestly cant see why they havent already done it, as IMO it would just slip into their existing product range, and allow existing customers to upgrade their systems to use HDD's. Prehaprs it's becuase they feel this would undermine their CD player sales, but like it or not, it is the way the industry is going. Other audiophile brands should take advantage and follow NAIM's lead.

 If there are other existing products that just consist of a transport mechanism and user control, please let me know. As I personally would preffer the DAC to be seperate, so that you can upgrade this part in the future.

Hello,

Without breaking the bank I think Sonos is probably the way to go. The in-built DAC is decent and it plays a wide variety of files including lossless encoded ones. It also does internet radio, and can easily be extended to other rooms, allowing different or the same music to be played.

All you need to start in one room is the Sonos zone player without amp, (ZP90), amp, and hard drive attached on the network, plus a PC or Mac to do the initial setup, which is very simple. A computer can also be used to control the system, but if you have an iPod Touch or iPhone, then that offers a great interface with Sonos' free app. Alternatively you can purchase the standalone Sonos controller which has a similar interface to the iPod app.

Extra rooms can be added by putting in extra zone players, (with built in or external amp), and speakers. The player will connect wirelessly to the Sonos wireless network mesh.

I have all my CDs ripped as FLAC and have found the system really good.

There are other systems around, and the squeeze touch may be good, though I think it may have the control interface on the device itself, rather than it being a remote? I went Sonos wehn I purchased because the squeezebox needed s erver to stream from, whereas the Sonos doesn't. Not sure if that's still the case.

Hope this helps.

In my case I bought a 1Tb HDD and ripped my CD's to it in FLAC (a lossless codec/file format) using dbPowerAmp (a CD ripping programme).  I have a Squeezebox 3 / Squeezebox Classic attached to a pair of AVI ADM9.1's.  However, in your case, you could connect the SB3 directly to your amp or pre-amp using an optical cable.  That way you would bypass the DAC in the SB if you wanted to.  If your amp doesn't have an onboard DAC, or it's not good enough, you could use a stand-alone DAC - the DAC Magic is an example of one on here that people like.

I don't use wi-fi.  I use Powerplugs which allow you to create an Ethernet network using your home electric cabling.  Sound quality and performance is nigh on perfect.  Worth researching if you haven't heard of them yet.

I have to say the combination is absolutely excellent.

Thanks very much, this does sound like what I am after and you certainly give it a ringing endorsement! What interface does the squeezebox have? i.e how do I view and select the tunes?

thanks

ps great name by the way..