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Best Practices for a Lossless Music Archive?

Posted by Cliff on from the we'll-all-have-terabyte-RAID-arrays-in-5-years-anyway dept.

Sparagmei asks: "I'm a big music fan, and I like listening to the music I own on various pieces of digital gear. Right now, my library's at about 20,000 tracks, ripped from CDs to MP3 at 256kbps (enough that I can't tell the difference on my low-end playback gear). However, with the MP3 judgement rippling through the world, I'm interested in perhaps moving to a different compression standard. Before I do that, I'd like to ask a question: what lossless format would you recommend for making a digital 'master library' that could be (relatively) easily down-sampled to a compressed format?" Important factors would be true losslessness, filesize (smaller than PCM WAV would be nice), embedded metadata (ID3v2-like), existence of automated ripper software, and (to a lesser extent) an open-source implementation of such software. Widespread playback implementation of the lossless codec is not an issue for me; the lossless library would likely be burned to archival DVD media and stored after being down-sampling with the chosen compressor. The reason I ask is this: I've got a 20,000-track re-ripping job ahead of me. I'd like to do that just once, lossless, so that years from now, when I decide to jump from Vorbis to 'komprezzor_2039_1337' or whatever, I don't need to drag out the old plastic discs. Thanks!"

2 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ape by kilonad · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Monkey's Audio is free software, but it does not have free source code. You are able to legally download and use it at no cost, which means that it fits the English language definition of the word free. Quit trying to redefine the word free.

  2. Re:what's the point? by tomaasz · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Indeed, the only meaninful use for an archive of losslessly compressed (or uncompressed) music is for reselling it. Otherwise it's a waste of disk space, waste of time converting them AGAIN if you want to give someone with an iPod a copy and a waste of time even thinking about it.
    If you want this archive for your listening pleasure only, go with VBR MP3s. They will usually have an average bitrate of around 200kbps so you can fit many times more on a single harddrive.