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Also, consider SHN, (although it seems superceded).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 :)

Re:Mod parent troll

[Anonymous Coward]

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