Ripping My Classical Music Collection

[Holden Fourth]

I have approximately 1700 - 1900 CDs sitting on my shelves. A few years ago I decided to rip them to a 1Tb HDD but unfortunately chose the wrong media. As a result my CDs are all encoded in MP3 ranging from 128kbps to 356kbps. It's a mess!

The program I used, Audiograbber, wasn't all that great. I chose it because of the databases I could access to save me having to name every track and it was free - you get what you pay for.

So I've restarted and made a few quality control decisions. I bought a copy of dBPoweramp CD Ripper. It's a very good program. I'm also recording using lossless encoding - FLAC Level 5. While this takes a bit longer it's worth it for the quality. My DAP handles FLAC files and with the quality headphones and iems that I own it's senseless to rely on 356kbps MP3. You can definitely hear the difference between it and FLAC.

I decided to start with my box sets and especially with the hardest one to get right regarding accurate recording data. The 142 CD Arthur Rubinstein Collection. When I got the set, Audiograbber had difficulty finding the first sets of discs in the box. No problems for dBPA. I just had to make sure the labeling was correct.

I've finished with the AR box and also the Cziffra 40 CD set and am now working my way through the 100 CD Russian Legends from Brilliant Classics. These are much easier than the AR pink box. Once I've finished my box sets (the rest are all much smaller) it'll be on to individual CDs.

All of this is going on to a LaCie 2Tb portable HDD. I"ll buy another and do a backup when I've finished

I wonder how long it's all going to take me?

[barney]

You are on to something - it is the way to go.

I have a friend who rips all my CDs. He puts them on huge NAS (whatever that stands for), of several terabytes each. He's set me up with one NAS, 3 terabytes. I find it so convenient I probably listen to that more than CDs now. When he is able to come again, he is going to bring everything he has on his several NAS (Apple) boxes so that I can have the lot from my collection (about 10,000 CDs) and his (all of mine, and 1000 or so he has acquired that I don't have).

I have a Devialet connected to a Cambridge (CD) platform. I don't know why they don't call it a CD player. The Devialet cost me about $12,000, helped by Tony Abbott's small business tax rebate, and it might be the best money I ever spent. I link to the Devialet from my PC via iTunes. I'm sorry that I don't really grasp the technology, but am lucky to have a friend who does. I certainly grasp the convenience and the sound quality. Even YouTube sounds great.

[maestrob]

Frankly, you both are way ahead of me in the technology department!

I still get great pleasure in dealing with a physical CD while putting it in my stereo or computer. The sound is guaranteed to be the best available, certainly. If I need to check out something I don't have on CD, I can rely on amazon's HD music subscription to access most of what I want to hear, although they still don't have nearly everything.

At this late stage of the game, with a collection of 5K-6K discs, I just don't have the energy to even begin such a project, or to even master the technology. I may feel differently later on, but for now I'm still quite a dinosaur and quite happy with things the way they are.

Holden, I envy you having the Rubinstein box: by the time I could make room for it, it had quickly sold out. I do have Richter (both the black box Russian issue and all his commercial Western recordings plus odds and ends on other labels), Horowitz and Argerich, as well as Perahia and Brendel and many smaller boxes, so they all satisfy my craving for piano music. How do you find the sound quality in that Brilliant Russian box: I've had it for years, but never got around to opening it? I'm sure there are some interesting rarities there!

Barney, one of the gems in your collection is the Great Pianists series, which was issued before I had built additional shelf space, so sadly I did not acquire it. I only have a few: Paderewski's early acoustical 78's are quite a revelation, for example. If that set would be reissued, I would grab it in a heartbeat!

I just hope I retain my wits long enough to keep track of where everything is, and enjoy them many times over! Collecting is such a great pleasure in our lives, isn't it?

[barney]

Brian, I am in no way ahead of you. I just have a very good friend (who lives in New Zealand and thus can't visit now). There's no way I'd have the energy or determination to copy all my CDs on to the computer - but he does, because that's how he gets to keep all my collection. He updates every time he comes to Melbourne.

I'm not sure that CD is the best sound quality any more, although copying them cannot improve the sound. Some of the downloads are supposedly considerably more detailed (and much bigger files than a typical CD at 700MB) but I haven't tested them out. Like you, I want the physical disc, the liner notes etc.

[Holden Fourth]

Brian, the AR box was a must have when it came out as I've always enjoyed Rubinstein's music making. On top of that it cost me less than $AUS140 making it the absolute bargain of all time.

Now you've got the Richter Black Box which I would dearly love to have but it was out of my price range. Even now I regret not doing something about it.

The sound quality of the Russian Legends set is variable but even the poorer recordings from 1947 are easily listenable. However, it's the quality of the performances that makes this set worthwhile. It includes the best Appassionata ever made (IMO) Gilels/Moscow/1961/live. I already had this recording before I bought the set. Hearing Leonid Kogan for the first time was a revelation.

Barney, NAS stands for 'Network Attached Streamer' which you obviously have. From what I can gather it is a separate device that streams sound out to whatever devices you have attached to your network. I'm not sure where the Devialet comes in, maybe someone else here can help me.

My journey goes on...

[barney]

You're right. I'll ask my friend to describe the system, and post it.

[jserraglio]

I still play vinyl, have retained all my LP opera sets, a good number of Lyrita, EMI Decca, DGG, Philips, etc. singles and a decent selection of jazz, folk, blues and rock. That after tossing or giving away half of the collection last summer.

[barney]

I have about 1000 LPs, put them on Ebay last year, not a single sniff.

[maestrob]

Hi there, Joe!

A fellow dinosaur! I've still got about half of my LP collection, and they're beautiful to look at, including the Solti Ring and a collection of Rock and Jazz from the 1960's, but I haven't replaced my turntable and now rely on CDs exclusively for listening to physical recordings, plus amazon HD, which I recently joined. For many years I relied on high-quality cassettes, but new CDs kept pushing them off the shelves during the last decade or so, so I had to give them away.

At this point, I've replaced all the LPs I really cared about with their CD counterparts, and find them far more convenient to deal with and far less fragile and subject to wear than LPs. The drawback to CDs is that the liner notes are in such tiny print that my eyes tire easily nowadays. Mostly, I find CD sound to be superior to LPs, with no pops and ticks and inner-groove distortion, but that's just me.

[jserraglio]

I have about 1000 LPs, put them on Ebay last year, not a single sniff.

Still some eager rock, folk and blues vinyl enthusiasts out there. I had multiple folks wanting the many hundreds I gave away. I refused any payment: "Just enjoy them".

I was even able to move many, many boxes of classical out the door. "If you can lift them, you'll own them". The remnant I threw away, filling many bins all told.

[slofstra]

I have about 1000 LPs, put them on Ebay last year, not a single sniff.

Did you advertise as one lot, or individually? What you should do, is sell a few individual records that are sure to be collector's items ... at a high price. Throw out or donate the rest.

[slofstra]

Brian, the AR box was a must have when it came out as I've always enjoyed Rubinstein's music making. On top of that it cost me less than $AUS140 making it the absolute bargain of all time.

Now you've got the Richter Black Box which I would dearly love to have but it was out of my price range. Even now I regret not doing something about it.

The sound quality of the Russian Legends set is variable but even the poorer recordings from 1947 are easily listenable. However, it's the quality of the performances that makes this set worthwhile. It includes the best Appassionata ever made (IMO) Gilels/Moscow/1961/live. I already had this recording before I bought the set. Hearing Leonid Kogan for the first time was a revelation.

Barney, NAS stands for 'Network Attached Streamer' which you obviously have. From what I can gather it is a separate device that streams sound out to whatever devices you have attached to your network. I'm not sure where the Devialet comes in, maybe someone else here can help me.

My journey goes on...

I'll just answer your post with respect to a couple of points.

1) Don't wait to back up what you're doing. Do it now! And make sure you have a hard drive with everything you've done off premise.
2) NAS - Network Attached Storage, actually. It's a hard drive with a minimal embedded computer. Why that instead of a remote hard drive? Well, on a single computer it makes little sense to use a NAS over a remote hard drive. But you can *attach* a NAS to a *network* and every computer on the network can access it simultaneously. It's like a cheap server. Most modern NAS's also do things for you like write everything on two drives. If one fails, you replace it, and the NAS restores all your data from the other drive. (I'm old enough to remember when only places like banks could afford this kind of technology. Now it's common as nails.)

In regards to ripping my classical collection, I have a selection of my pop collection in itunes using Apple lossless, and a selection of classical. But I'm sticking to discs for most of my classical listening. I briefly flirted with HD classical streaming but there were too many bugs in the technology. I have spent a lifetime working on the bleeding edge of tech, and so I don't want to fiddle with stuff in my down time. I just want it to work.

While I'm rambling, I just purchased a 65 inch LG OLED television which I stream from my Apple TV box and also, a Windows computer. My Berlin Philharmonic streaming subscription looks and sounds unbelievable. Well worth the expenditure. One caveat, it was the third new TV I bought from Best Buy in one month. The other two were a Samsung and Sony. The Samsung had scratches all over the screen. The Sony display was broken on arrival - didn't see it until I plugged it in. Not trusting Best Buy's handling of the delivery process, I took the Sony back myself, and took the LG home myself and set it up. It worked beautifully. Three weeks in, it developed a pixel wide red line, top to bottom. I couldn't believe it, the third broken TV in a month. But I had bought the 4 year extended warranty after the problems with the first two. LG sent a tech right to my house, and replaced the display. The entire TV is modular, and this took about half an hour to do. I'm sitting here typing on it right at this moment. Fonts on the big screen have never looked better.

[Holden Fourth]

OK, I've struck a problem.

When I first plugged in my LaCie HDD it gave me a choice of all Windows, All Mac or a combination. Without really thinking it through I chose all Mac. Now I want to put the AR collection onto an NTFS formatted USB by simpling copying across using a 3.1 USB. FAT32 will only allow me download 4Gb at a time. I know it can be done but I'm not sure how. Any ideas?

[maestrob]

Hello, Henry!

What an amazing hassle with your TVs! Of course, in my NYC apartment, I've got no room for such a large screen, but I have had a similar problem with deliveries of large items. What alarms me most is the number of defective TVs, not so much the scratches, which may be attributed to careless delivery personnel. Yikes!

Also, why the rush into ripping CDs onto hard drives? Sure, I understand doing it for convenience, but turntables are still easily found to play LPs: in fact, they're in fashion now amongst the younger generation. My prediction is that CD/DVD players will be around fora long, long time, given the number of indestructible discs that have been produced with more to come, and the propensity of collectors to acquire them. I can sympathize with the urge to insure against physical destruction by fire or flood, but I live on the fifth floor of a solidly built condo in Manhattan, and I don't expect the seas to rise to that level until long after I'm gone!

[slofstra]

OK, I've struck a problem.

When I first plugged in my LaCie HDD it gave me a choice of all Windows, All Mac or a combination. Without really thinking it through I chose all Mac. Now I want to put the AR collection onto an NTFS formatted USB by simpling copying across using a 3.1 USB. FAT32 will only allow me download 4Gb at a time. I know it can be done but I'm not sure how. Any ideas?

If I understand, the USB thumb drive you have is FAT32?
Hopefully, the thumb drive is empty, and then you only have to reformat it using exFAT or NTFS. If you reformat it as exFAT, you should be able to copy from NTFS to exFAT. exFAT has an upper limit of billions of gigabytes, literally.

Depending on what computer and OS you are using, the following may help:
https://www.groovypost.com/howto/format ... x-windows/

[slofstra]

Hello, Henry!

What an amazing hassle with your TVs! Of course, in my NYC apartment, I've got no room for such a large screen, but I have had a similar problem with deliveries of large items. What alarms me most is the number of defective TVs, not so much the scratches, which may be attributed to careless delivery personnel. Yikes!

Also, why the rush into ripping CDs onto hard drives? Sure, I understand doing it for convenience, but turntables are still easily found to play LPs: in fact, they're in fashion now amongst the younger generation. My prediction is that CD/DVD players will be around fora long, long time, given the number of indestructible discs that have been produced with more to come, and the propensity of collectors to acquire them. I can sympathize with the urge to insure against physical destruction by fire or flood, but I live on the fifth floor of a solidly built condo in Manhattan, and I don't expect the seas to rise to that level until long after I'm gone!

There are lots of good reasons to rip, but I'm not a fan of ripping everything! Too much work. But then I still run a business also.
It is nice to have a selection that I can move to different places and devices, make playlists that run as background music for hours without attendance, and provide point and click selection from a wide variety of music. But now that I have a reasonable assortment of music I can listen to in that way, I have no plans to add to it. My foreground listening is still primarily from disc.
Another element in favour of disc is the availability of SACD and Bluray audio on disc.

[barney]

I don't want to fiddle with stuff in my down time. I just want it to work.

Amen, you've hit the nail on the head. I am not technically minded like you, though I have learned to work out what I need to know. But basically I just want stuff to work as promised, without too much engagement in the nuts and bolts by me. I'll forgive a lot - eg price - for that reliability.

[barney]

There are lots of good reasons to rip, but I'm not a fan of ripping everything! Too much work. But then I still run a business also.
It is nice to have a selection that I can move to different places and devices, make playlists that run as background music for hours without attendance, and provide point and click selection from a wide variety of music. But now that I have a reasonable assortment of music I can listen to in that way, I have no plans to add to it. My foreground listening is still primarily from disc.
Another element in favour of disc is the availability of SACD and Bluray audio on disc.

I may have said this already, but I realised that my very large collection of reference books (which occupy metres of shelving) were on the way to redundant when I preferred to Google something rather than rise from my chair and walk two metres to the shelves. That was early 2000s.

Something similar is happening with the NAS. I agree that it's far too much work to rip 10,000 CDs, but I have a friend who wants access to my collection who does it for himself and shares it with me. He's been doing this for years. I will never get rid of the CDs or blurays while I have breath, but let's face it: it's easier to sit at the computer and click a link than get up, go to the music room, find the CD, bring it back etc. O tempora, o mores! I know this says a lot about me that is not good but I never claimed to be anything other than a fallible human.

[slofstra]

I just chanced on this. This is what we used to worry about. Today, musical artists can't make anything on CDs or streaming. The streaming services are especially miserly in paying royalties. Even successful musical artists refer to it as 'pizza money'.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04z4sv8

[maestrob]

I just chanced on this. This is what we used to worry about. Today, musical artists can't make anything on CDs or streaming. The streaming services are especially miserly in paying royalties. Even successful musical artists refer to it as 'pizza money'.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04z4sv8

LOL! Say, I used to do that! Then, recently I threw away all those homemade cassettes I copied from library CDs, having replaced the titles I really wanted with real discs. What a colossal waste of effort!

As for making money on recordings, those days are long gone, although recordings continue to enlarge your reputation as a performer. With the demise of all the major labels, artists are paid peanuts for the big boxes of their life's work which are the result of bankruptcy re-negotiations of royalty payments. I imagine that's why Perahia left Sony for DGG, but that's only speculation on my part. Nice benefit for us consumers, but a bitter pill for great artists to swallow.

[barney]

I asked my friend to describe how he set up my system after he ripped the CDs. Here is his description. I think it will mean something to Slofstra, and perhaps to Holden Fourth.

The system is based on a Devialet, a French machine that combines DAC, pre-amp and amps (about 100 watts per channel) and uses D-class amps so it's very compact and does not emit much heat. The main playback method is CD using a Cambridge transport with an SPDI-F connection to the Devialet. The speakers are KEF LS-50s. All cabling is by Synergistic Research. The KEFs are supported by an REL subwoofer connected to the speaker outlets of the Devialet.

The digital library is organised through iTunes on a Windows 10 computer with the 4000 or so discs ripped to AIFF and stored on a Synology NAS. The NAS is connected to an Apple Airport Extreme which connects wirelessly to the Devialet.

[Holden Fourth]

Based on your description I've now gotr a clear idea of what you've got and how it connects

I go back to work tomorrow so my digital transfers will slow down. One plus is that I've just finished the 'B's. Now while that might not sound like much progress when I consider how much Bach and Beethoven I've got plus the Brahms it's quite significant. Chopin is next and thatwill be another major chunk.

[barney]

Based on your description I've now gotr a clear idea of what you've got and how it connects

I go back to work tomorrow so my digital transfers will slow down. One plus is that I've just finished the 'B's. Now while that might not sound like much progress when I consider how much Bach and Beethoven I've got plus the Brahms it's quite significant. Chopin is next and thatwill be another major chunk.

It was expensive,but it sounds superb. The cabling alone was well into four figures. I bought it all during Tony Abbott's tax incentive for small business, which apparently I qualified for as a professional reviewer. I was very grateful.

Finishing B is an achievement. H will be big (if you are like me), plus M and R and S. Q and X shouldn't take you long.

[mikealdren]

I've put all my CDs onto computer and it has some major advantages and one disadvantage.
For the techies, I built a low noise computer feeding a high quality DAC and the sound is superb, better than my (fairly high quality) CD player. I use my TV screen as the computer display.
The advantages are:
I have a jukebox that can quickly access any track by composer, composition, movement, performer etc.
I have 3,500 CDs stored in the attic rather than my living room.
The jukebox can be accessed from out living room or by computers in my wife's and my offices.
The disadvantage is that the booklets are not so easily accessed!
A few tips:
Use an open source, lossless format, I use FLAC. You can then be fairly sure that you have future proofed your data. Proprietary formats such as Apple or Microsoft are fine until you change your system. For sizing, my 3,500 CDs use just under 1Tb of storage.
Pay a lot of attention to tagging. Tags are small amounts of data attached to the track that you have 'ripped'. The standard tagging that you will find online is Artist/Album/Track. This is clearly useless for our music, you will find, for instance, that the artist may be Beethoven or Brendel or Haitink for the same track. Next think about your naming conventions, is it Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.5 in E flat major Op.73 "Emperor" (my standard) of Concerto for Piano... or one of many other options. I also standardise names as 'Surname, Forename(s)'. I use a package called Musichi, it is pretty good for editing, you can use a wide variety of tags and it has a built in classical database for composers, performers and works. I can search by many different tags, even by key or opus number!
This, of course is a lot of work, as others have said, back everything up. I have copies on two different computers as well as a NAS drive. Overkill? Well if your NAS drive unit fails, you still have the data on the disks but you can't access it! Also, make sure your data is ok before copying to a new drive.

[maestrob]

Holy cow, Mike! That's a massive effort! Congratulations!

Unfortunately, with my sleep disorder, I barely have time to live my life, however limited, and I still enjoy being able to check the disc covers and booklets for information, at least the many that are not available online. I also don't know if I'd have the energy to do what you've done for my 6,000 discs that are housed in cabinets around my apartment.

Still, it's a pleasure knowing that you've done all this!

[mikealdren]

Yes it was a lot of work but I started quite a few years ago when I had fewer disks!

Another benefit is that I rediscovered many disks I had forgotten.

[Holden Fourth]

Yes it was a lot of work but I started quite a few years ago when I had fewer disks!

Another benefit is that I rediscovered many disks I had forgotten.

Something I'm discovering now.

[maestrob]

Yes it was a lot of work but I started quite a few years ago when I had fewer disks!

Another benefit is that I rediscovered many disks I had forgotten.

Something I'm discovering now.

Yes, that's so true! I now make it a practice to work in a random stack of older discs into my playlist, and continue to rediscover many fine performances I haven't heard in years. After all, there was a reason why I bought them in the first place!

[slofstra]

I asked my friend to describe how he set up my system after he ripped the CDs. Here is his description. I think it will mean something to Slofstra, and perhaps to Holden Fourth.

The system is based on a Devialet, a French machine that combines DAC, pre-amp and amps (about 100 watts per channel) and uses D-class amps so it's very compact and does not emit much heat. The main playback method is CD using a Cambridge transport with an SPDI-F connection to the Devialet. The speakers are KEF LS-50s. All cabling is by Synergistic Research. The KEFs are supported by an REL subwoofer connected to the speaker outlets of the Devialet.

The digital library is organised through iTunes on a Windows 10 computer with the 4000 or so discs ripped to AIFF and stored on a Synology NAS. The NAS is connected to an Apple Airport Extreme which connects wirelessly to the Devialet.

I just purchased a Synology NAS for my business. Very good product. It replaced a Western Digital NAS for which you could not buy additional or replacement drives. It worked beautifully but I could not find drives for the empty slots remaining in it, and if I blew a drive there were no replacements to be had. Thank you, Western Digital. My requirement to my tech was to make sure the NAS manufacturer did not manufacture drives and used a standard drive interface. Thus, the Synology.
It's interesting that you use iTunes to rip and store the music. I think there isn't a better way to go, and the storage is open enough that you can pull out specific albums and tracks using the standard Windows folder system.
Lately, I've become interested in bandcamp and have just purchased another drive to download various indie artists (non-classical) into a separate folder. These are then merged by itunes into the general itunes database.

[slofstra]

Based on your description I've now gotr a clear idea of what you've got and how it connects

I go back to work tomorrow so my digital transfers will slow down. One plus is that I've just finished the 'B's. Now while that might not sound like much progress when I consider how much Bach and Beethoven I've got plus the Brahms it's quite significant. Chopin is next and thatwill be another major chunk.

After 'B' everything else is a piece of cake, except possibly 'S'.

[slofstra]

I've put all my CDs onto computer and it has some major advantages and one disadvantage.
For the techies, I built a low noise computer feeding a high quality DAC and the sound is superb, better than my (fairly high quality) CD player. I use my TV screen as the computer display.
The advantages are:
I have a jukebox that can quickly access any track by composer, composition, movement, performer etc.
I have 3,500 CDs stored in the attic rather than my living room.
The jukebox can be accessed from out living room or by computers in my wife's and my offices.
The disadvantage is that the booklets are not so easily accessed!
A few tips:
Use an open source, lossless format, I use FLAC. You can then be fairly sure that you have future proofed your data. Proprietary formats such as Apple or Microsoft are fine until you change your system. For sizing, my 3,500 CDs use just under 1Tb of storage.
Pay a lot of attention to tagging. Tags are small amounts of data attached to the track that you have 'ripped'. The standard tagging that you will find online is Artist/Album/Track. This is clearly useless for our music, you will find, for instance, that the artist may be Beethoven or Brendel or Haitink for the same track. Next think about your naming conventions, is it Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.5 in E flat major Op.73 "Emperor" (my standard) of Concerto for Piano... or one of many other options. I also standardise names as 'Surname, Forename(s)'. I use a package called Musichi, it is pretty good for editing, you can use a wide variety of tags and it has a built in classical database for composers, performers and works. I can search by many different tags, even by key or opus number!
This, of course is a lot of work, as others have said, back everything up. I have copies on two different computers as well as a NAS drive. Overkill? Well if your NAS drive unit fails, you still have the data on the disks but you can't access it! Also, make sure your data is ok before copying to a new drive.

Regarding your comment on the NAS drive, you should be able to pull the drive itself and either install it in a computer or another NAS. That is, if the drive and NAS cage use a standard interface. And the way to be sure of that is to ensure the NAS comes from a vendor that doesn't make drives. The lovely Western Digital NAS I had for years was captive to Western Digital drives. And yes, had the NAS failed I would have been dead in the water with it. (Mind you, it's not our main storage in any case.)

[barney]

I asked my friend to describe how he set up my system after he ripped the CDs. Here is his description. I think it will mean something to Slofstra, and perhaps to Holden Fourth.

The system is based on a Devialet, a French machine that combines DAC, pre-amp and amps (about 100 watts per channel) and uses D-class amps so it's very compact and does not emit much heat. The main playback method is CD using a Cambridge transport with an SPDI-F connection to the Devialet. The speakers are KEF LS-50s. All cabling is by Synergistic Research. The KEFs are supported by an REL subwoofer connected to the speaker outlets of the Devialet.

The digital library is organised through iTunes on a Windows 10 computer with the 4000 or so discs ripped to AIFF and stored on a Synology NAS. The NAS is connected to an Apple Airport Extreme which connects wirelessly to the Devialet.

I just purchased a Synology NAS for my business. Very good product. It replaced a Western Digital NAS for which you could not buy additional or replacement drives. It worked beautifully but I could not find drives for the empty slots remaining in it, and if I blew a drive there were no replacements to be had. Thank you, Western Digital. My requirement to my tech was to make sure the NAS manufacturer did not manufacture drives and used a standard drive interface. Thus, the Synology.
It's interesting that you use iTunes to rip and store the music. I think there isn't a better way to go, and the storage is open enough that you can pull out specific albums and tracks using the standard Windows folder system.
Lately, I've become interested in bandcamp and have just purchased another drive to download various indie artists (non-classical) into a separate folder. These are then merged by itunes into the general itunes database.

Those are interesting remarks, which I will forward to my technically minded friend. Thanks.

[Holden Fourth]

Another 20 discs and I'll have completed the 'K's. I agree about the 'S's with all the Schubert and Schumann I own.

When I come to instrumentalists the 'Richter' section alone will be a mammoth task. I also own almost all of what Fiorentino recorded.

I'll finish up with the smaller box sets, mostly devoted to pianists, but this will be some time away. I've had a couple of "I didn't realise I had that" moments.

[Holden Fourth]

I have finally ripped all the CDs (apart from the dodgy ones) in the 'composers' section of my CD collection. Now I move on to pianists/violinists/conductors/chamber ensembles/etc. I reckon I've already ripped about 40% or maybe more of my collection so I am well ahead of the play.

Using FLAC Level 5 what I've ripped so far amounts to about 180 Gigs.

The one major mistake I made was to not do any research before formatting the LaCie HDD. I opted for the Apple standard which is MacOS Extended also known as HFX+. In hindsight, as I use both my Mac at home and Windows at work, I should have gone for exFAT as the format which works with both. However, I can fix this when I make a complete backup using new HDD. I'll format that one to exFAT.

[slofstra]

I have finally ripped all the CDs (apart from the dodgy ones) in the 'composers' section of my CD collection. Now I move on to pianists/violinists/conductors/chamber ensembles/etc. I reckon I've already ripped about 40% or maybe more of my collection so I am well ahead of the play.

Using FLAC Level 5 what I've ripped so far amounts to about 180 Gigs.

The one major mistake I made was to not do any research before formatting the LaCie HDD. I opted for the Apple standard which is MacOS Extended also known as HFX+. In hindsight, as I use both my Mac at home and Windows at work, I should have gone for exFAT as the format which works with both. However, I can fix this when I make a complete backup using new HDD. I'll format that one to exFAT.

Impressive. Going to FLAC gives you a very portable, high definition collection that will provide lasting enjoyment for years to come.