I am looking to purchase an Escient or similar music server to copy my 600+ CDs to. If I save them as MP3 files at a bit rate of 160 or 192, what can I expect sound wise when compared to the actual CD? Will there be a significant degredation in sound quality?

Thank you!

It depends on the type of music and how you listen. Modern pop stuff compresses well (IMO); Jazz doesn't compress well. Casual background listening while you're doing something else-- compression works well. Sitting in the sweet spot with a beverage while listening with your eyes closed-- compression will become evident.

Compressing music with lossy algorithms like MP3 has recently become dumb. I did it, I know. :)

600 CDs uncompressed takes up $150 worth of disk space (a single 500GB drive with room to spare). Going with lossless compression method saves you 50%, compressing them into MP3 or similar lossy method saves another 50-75%.

Pony up the money for the drive - your 600+ CD collection is really small, data wise.

If you want, store a second copy of your music as MP3 on the room left over from the uncompressed (or lossless compressed) versions.

P.S. To directly answer your question, I would use VBR (variable bit rate) to compress my MP3s. That will increase the bit rate during challenging passages and lower it for easy ones.

Thank you both for the input. I am new to this, so, bear with me. Part of the attraction of using the music server for my collection is being able to scan through them on my TV, with album artwork, using a remote control to make selections. If I wanted to accomplish this in a lossless format, what would be most affordable option?

Billped-

Are you advocating storing music files in WAV (uncompressed) format? With the cost of drive space falling every day, I agree that it has recently become affordable to budget 40-50MB per 3-4 minute cut for the best quality.

But what would you suggest to do about the "tagging" issue? I have ripped some of our CD collection as WAV files (mostly just the classical stuff) for the best quality, but can't find a way to use the common artist-album-genre metadata tags for search or library functions.

I know there are some "lossless" compression schemes such as EAC and FLAC out there, but don't have any experience with them. I presume they support ID tags? But then not every media player reads those file types...

Thanks,

Mike

The escient will allow you to rip your CD's into FLAC format, it's LOSSLESS which means you don't lose a bit of the music and it saves a ton of space. You can then use a converter like DB power amp to create mp3 copies if you want to use an ipod too.

FLAC is fully tagged and includes coverart, so you will have everything you need.

The escient will allow you to rip your CD's into FLAC format, it's LOSSLESS which means you don't lose a bit of the music and it saves a ton of space. You can then use a converter like DB power amp to create mp3 copies if you want to use an ipod too.

FLAC is fully tagged and includes coverart, so you will have everything you need.

Ditto.

The escient will allow you to rip your CD's into FLAC format, it's LOSSLESS which means you don't lose a bit of the music and it saves a ton of space. You can then use a converter like DB power amp to create mp3 copies if you want to use an ipod too.

FLAC is fully tagged and includes coverart, so you will have everything you need.

In this format, isn't storage space an issue. What size hard drive would be needed to store 600 CDs in FLAC format?

In this format, isn't storage space an issue. What size hard drive would be needed to store 600 CDs in FLAC format?

I have all of my music stored as FLAC and it takes up roughly 420 gigs. SlimServer tells me I have:

Your music library contains 1066 albums with 13441 songs by 1593 artists.

How about some "rules of thumb" for disk space needed per minute for the various formats?

I know from experience for example that MP3 at 128kB needs about 1 MB per minute, and WAV needs more like 10-11MB per minute. I had assumed FLAC and other lossless schemes are more efficient than using WAV, but what would be a good budget per minute for them? And I suppose variable rate schemes wouldn't be consistent, but maybe an average?

Macattackamn's 13441 songs look like they average 31MB per song, so that doesn't seem like much of a savings over WAV (unless a lot of those songs are over 3 minutes long...), but since FLAC apparently supports tagging, then I might consider it "better" than WAV for that benefit, even if it's not very space-efficient.

Mike

My "understanding" is that FLAC saves about 50% over WAV. I originally began encoding everything in WMA lossless but then quickly figured out that I didn't want to be tied to the Windows platform and re-encoded in FLAC. I'm not sure if you can add metadata to WAV files (but I don't think so), so if the choice is between WAV and FLAC, I can't offer any guidance.

I have a total playing time of 967:67:19 (according to slimserver) unsure of the units: 967 days, 67 days and 19 hours? [probably not but I"m enjoying some beer on the 4th so forgive my math skills] I'd say going FLAC makes things a bit more difficult: iTunes (on Windows) doesn't understand FLAC so I have to run through hoops to conver to MP3 to import into iTunes but the point of my music system is to listen (loslessly) through my Squeezebox and I don't care nearly as much about my iPod... and if I move my music collection from my Vista system to a NAS system, then format doesn't matter..

anyway, happy 4th and the point is to enjoy your music (losslessly)

i use DbPoweramp to rip my CDs to FLAC format, with replay gain, and make a copy for iTunes(mobile) using DbPoweramp's format converter to AAC (m4a) using Nero's AAC codec.

i use mp3tag.de's tagger to clean up the metadata and usually get a folder.jpg from amazon.com

Please make sure to use RAID1 or RAID5 or have a separate copy on another PC or NAS device - you don't want to have to re-rip your collection because of hard drive failure!

It took a while to figure this all out - but it was fun! It doesn't make sense IMHO to rip your data in WAV or AIFF, lossless codecs can save up to 50% of your disk space, plus FLAC format is supported on the majority of open source players (don't buy a media streamer that doesn't support FLAC!)

The best part is, in the far, far, future, when FLAC has been superseded by another superior lossless codec, you can simply decompress the FLAC data into WAV format and recompress using the hypothetical new codec (don't hold yr breath!).

One word of warning - if your media streamer is wireless, it will probably work fine for mp3 or aac but might experience drop outs & rebuffering using FLAC. That's why I went wired 10/100Mb for all my media streaming needs!

How about some "rules of thumb" for disk space needed per minute for the various formats?

I know from experience for example that MP3 at 128kB needs about 1 MB per minute, and WAV needs more like 10-11MB per minute. I had assumed FLAC and other lossless schemes are more efficient than using WAV, but what would be a good budget per minute for them? And I suppose variable rate schemes wouldn't be consistent, but maybe an average?

Macattackamn's 13441 songs look like they average 31MB per song, so that doesn't seem like much of a savings over WAV (unless a lot of those songs are over 3 minutes long...), but since FLAC apparently supports tagging, then I might consider it "better" than WAV for that benefit, even if it's not very space-efficient.

Mike

FLAC indeed compresses ~50%. BTW, whose song collection averages three minutes each? A quick calculation from my mostly-rock collection shows that 4.5 minutes is the average with approximately 15% of the songs being under three minutes.

BTW, whose song collection averages three minutes each?
Good point and I guess my age is showing as a lot of my collection is oldies from the 60's and earlier, and 3:00 is not atypical.

Anyway I was looking for a space-consumption figure per minute (or hour or whatever). If we can decipher macattackman's total playing time, we can do the math for FLAC. If FLAC takes about half the space of WAV files, I'm going to consider using it for the higher quality material like classical and jazz, at least those recorded more recently than 1960! On the other hand, I'll stick with 128k MP3s for the oldies and the edison wax cylinder tunes... :D

Mike

Good point and I guess my age is showing as a lot of my collection is oldies from the 60's and earlier, and 3:00 is not atypical.

Anyway I was looking for a space-consumption figure per minute (or hour or whatever). If we can decipher macattackman's total playing time, we can do the math for FLAC. If FLAC takes about half the space of WAV files, I'm going to consider using it for the higher quality material like classical and jazz, at least those recorded more recently than 1960! On the other hand, I'll stick with 128k MP3s for the oldies and the edison wax cylinder tunes... :D

Mike

Yeah, Edison's recording of "Mary had a little lamb" isn't more than a couple of minutes. LOL!

As a music CD is ~60 minutes and ~600MB, then you can assume 10MB/minute for WAV and 5MB/minute for FLAC.


Bill

To give you a little more information on ripping, I use Exact Audio Copy with AccurateRip with a flac setting of -6 -V -T "artist=%a" -T "title=%t" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" -T comment="%e" -T "comment=EAC (Secure Mode)" %s

Here's Pink Floyd's The Wall (a few songs and their compression)

In The Flesh 3:16 compressed to 21,378kb
The Happiest Days of Our Lives 1:46 compressed to 10,871kb
Mother 5:36 compressed to 33,806kb

Probably one of my longest songs is Grendel by Marillion which 17:16 long and clocks in at 101,305kb

Hope this helps....

I appreciate the data, macattackman.

The four songs you cited range from 5.9 (Grendel) to 6.5 (Flesh) MB per minute for your particular FLAC config. I kinda thought it would be more consistent but maybe FLAC is actually a variable encoding rate scheme?

Anyway you answered the question and I'm going to use "about 6MB/min" to budget space for FLAC.

Thanks!

Mike

Yeah, Edison's recording of "Mary had a little lamb" isn't more than a couple of minutes.

And its high end tops out at maybe 3 kHz, with perhaps a 20 dB signal-to-noise ratio so it's not worth a high bandwidth rip...

This may not be the correct forum for this but I have quite a bit of ripped music on my computer that I would like to transfer onto my Escient. I can see the other computers on my network but not the escient. How do I transfer files from computer to escient? It seems I should be able to create a network drive for the escient where I can easily transfer files.

Thanks,
Jeff

Jeff,
The Escient has an import directory for this purpose.
In the Escient network/server settings, just give your fireball a server name. You don't have to be creative, the name "fireball" will work just fine.

I'd also suggest a static IP address on your internal network.

Once this is done, you should be able to browse to the fireball by either the network path //fireball in your browser or any open explorer window.

Test that you can see the fireball from your browser so you know it's on the network and available. Open "my computer" and click "Tools", "Map network drive" from the options.
The server name will be //fireball/import for the import directory. Once you've established the mapped drive, check the "reconnect" box so it's always reconnected when you reboot your pc.

Now you can simply drag and drop your music into the import directory and it will be made available on the fireball.

Note, it will take a little while for the fireball to import and catalog the music, The music is actually copied internally over to the "content" directory on the escient. The files that appear in the import directory will have a 0 byte size when the process is completed. And you can delete the stub folders if needed. Make sure you have your music properly tagged before import. You will also need to make sure the files you want to copy are in a format the fireball will accept and playback.

I'd highly suggest 2 tools that will make the process much easier.
1) DB Poweramp. For tagging, converting and adding cover art. It has great batch tools to make the process easy.

2) Beyond Compare from www.scootersoftware.com
This is a GREAT tool for copy, sync and compare of files, folders and drives. It is VERY easy to use and much faster than a standard windows file copy. If something happens to cause an error during transfer from your PC to the Escient, you can pickup right where you left off, and make sure the files copied correctly.
Free 30 day eval and well worth the $$$.

Thank you so much for the explanation and recommendations. I will try this within the next couple nights.

Thanks again,
Jeff

One quick correction...

When attempting to access the Fireball's file sharing/CIFS interface, make sure to use the "\\" rather than "//". For example, \\fireball

while i agree that converting to lossless makes sense since data-storage is so cheap, you (and almost everyone else here) will not be able to tell the difference between lossless and mp3 encoded at 192 VBR or higher...

I just ordered a ReQuest 120 gig with FLAC. It states it will hold aproximately 900 cd's in FLAC.

while i agree that converting to lossless makes sense since data-storage is so cheap, you (and almost everyone else here) will not be able to tell the difference between lossless and mp3 encoded at 192 VBR or higher...

You bring up a great point. I have a huge MP3 library that I listen to at work using headphones on the computer and at home using everything from tiny MP3 players to a new Yamaha RX-V1800 with a JBL 5.1 surround setup. It sounds great on everything, and encoded at 128. Years of sitting next to studio monitors and shooting guns haven't helped my hearing at all. Far from deaf, but...

But this is great in a way because I know that I'll never need or want the really high-end gear.

When I set up the Yamaha for the first time a couple weeks ago, my first opportunity to really "turn it up" was with Jethro Tull's Locomotive Breath. Swear, it sent shivers up my spine that lasted well after the track was over. I heard things I've never heard before in that cut, and I remember when it first came out.

Source? FM Tuner and the local classic rock station. No joke.

I appreciate your help on this. The Fireball is now online!!! One more question concerning your comment, "Make sure you have your music properly tagged before import". I have downloaded both DB Poweramp and Beyond Compare. Do I tag the files with DB Poweramp prior to trasferring usning Beyond Compare. I assume the answer to this is yes. Next, once I have a directory of songs I want to transfer to the Fireball how do I tag them and which tag should I use? Are FLAC tags the way to go?

Thanks again,
Jeff

Glad to know you are up and running. Just use the fireball supported tag format and it will work.

Here's a link to Escient's guide for tagging:
http://www.escient.com/support/supportdocuments/DigitalMusicFilesFormats.pdf

You need to make sure you have tags in the correct format, and that you've associated album art correctly prior to copying the files to the Import directory. Otherwise they will appear as "unknown" and with a lot a files it takes a long time to clean up.

It's easy to check your files BEFORE you copy them over. Just fire up the Fireball-PC app and browse your PC files from the fireball. If you have cover art and proper info then the tags are correct. This is much easier than copying them over and finding out you missed something.

Glad to hear that your fireball is up. I am having a hard time deciding between getting 2 SE-D1 or a DVDM-100. There are certain times it would be nice to play 2 dvds at once. Anyway, thats not the point.

When you point your fireball to music stored on your network, does it have to be on a PC or could it be a NAS ( like a slug ) with JBOD? I have done the " sure rip 900 cds store in raid 5" and have had 2 drive failures at once, what are the odds. NEVER AGAIN. Drives are cheap, just mirror them and don't worry about it. Keep one off-line and off site.

If you want to use the fireball to access a remote music store, it will need to be on a MAC/PC or a 3rd party NAS/Drive mounted by the MAC or PC.

The Fireball PC application does all of the heavy lifting between the drive and the fireball itself, so just having a NAS will not work.
I've tested it running external drives and mapped drives from other machines with no issues.