Best Practices for a Lossless Music Archive?

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!"

Comments

FLAC.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

The Free Lossless Audio Codec sounds perfect for you.

(all answers below are quoted from wikipedia's FLAC page).

Important factors would be true losslessness,

A digital recording (such as a CD) encoded to FLAC maintains the quality of the audio perfectly.

filesize (smaller than PCM WAV would be nice),

Audio sources encoded to FLAC are typically reduced in size 40 to 50 percent.

embedded metadata (ID3v2-like),

with support for tagging, cover art and fast seeking.

existence of automated ripper software,

Yup, lots.

and (to a lesser extent) an open-source implementation of such software.

See above.

Widespread playback implementation of the lossless codec is not an issue for me

Well, bad luck, you're going to get it anyway :-) Both hardware and software support.

Also, consider SHN, (although it seems superceded). I'll also mentiuon wave pack - because it uses an interesting approach (splitting the file into a small lossy standalone & a lost bits diff). don't bother with Apple's lossless format - it's going nowhere.

Re:FLAC.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've built this kind of system for the record company i work for and our digital distribution needs.
I've used FLAC - it just works. Also I like the Application Metadata blocks you can put into the FLAC files. I use this to store the full logging information from cdparanoia. It allows me to perform a quality analysis of the rip and look for jitter, skips etc. If i find a certain pattern which leads to audible artifacts I can just go back through the archive of tracks and perform an automated analysis of anything else which mught show the same problem.

Because of the amount of metadata which we need to store for business reasons (P&C, ISRC, barcodes, etc) I have developed an XML based format for entering the info - you wouldn't need this on a personal system I don't suppose.

For work it's great because I can encode to AAC/MP3/WMA for retailers. At home i use it to export to Ogg because we have an iAudio player, but it's trivial to export to MP3 or AAC instead if we got another device.

I store all the files in a flat system - each track has a unique ID generated when it was ripped - when I export out to the encoded versions I use the tags to create a Artist/Album/Track hierachy which again can be changed at at time fairly trivially.

Periodically rsync the exports out to my gf's machine and i've got the collection whenever I want it :)

At the risk of asking a stupid question

[Dogtanian]

Bearing in mind that you're not going to save that much file size using lossless storage, and that you already have an "archive" of CDs in a box in your basement (or wherever), is it really worth the hassle of creating another lossless copy that'll take up even more space?

If you're planning on re-converting from these lossless copies, it sounds like you're going to be doing a *lot* of work based on some second-guessing of where you'll be in 5 years time; and things may have changed then.

Re:At the risk of asking a stupid question

[MMC Monster]

Well, a cabinet of CDs in the basement may just convert to a few drives in a storage area network. Network storage is getting cheaper every moment. Besides, he will have random access to his entire music collection (presumably well tagged) in lossless format, which really can't be beat.

Re:At the risk of asking a stupid question

[vakuona]

This is the RIAA maths department calling.

We have done the math for you. (We will charge you for this service)

You have ripped 300 CDs and you admit sending music to friends. Well, 300 CDs at about 12 tracks per CD to on average 5 friends means you now owe us well, 5 * 300 * 12 * $0.99 so this comes up to $17,820.

For the hard math, we will charge you $1,000.

Please make out your check to RIAA-R-US.

Thank you for your cooperation.

RIAA

My advice

[adam1101]

Don't use FLAK or some other monkey sound formats. Go with a real standard, like Windows Lossless, or
Apple Lossless, they just sound sooo much better. But you do need high end Bose equipment and gold
plated Monster cables to really bring out the warmer and fuller mid-range and the increased bass response.

Re:Ape

[TeknoHog]

Ape compresses a few % better than Flac at the expense of much more CPU usage. When compressing lots of CDs at once, the difference is significant. Flac was designed to be light on resources to facilitate portable devices, but it helps with modern computers as well.

Also, Ape is not free software, despite the availability of source for certain versions. It's only officially released for Windows.

So, in line with most others, I'd recommend Flac, but you might also look into WavPack as it also seems to be free software.

Re:Mod parent troll

[Anonymous Coward]

He couldn't see the sarcasm because his monitor isn't using monster cables.

Re:My advice - use PKZIP for DOS

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I agree with the parent. Use those most excellent formats for storing your music or else use PKZIP for MS-DOS and then copy the ZIP file to a IOMEGA ZIP drive for safekeeping

Re:Ape

[Surt]

You can get all the free beer you want, and it's just a sex change operation away!