apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

That is such a pretty piece and would look great in any living space, so much nicer then the usual CD towers and what not.

Buying an expensive piece of furniture just to store CD's just doesn't make sense anymore. It costs money and takes up valuable space. If the unit costs more than about $250 it could end up being cheaper (and a whole lot more functional) to rip your CD's to an external hard drive and store the original discs in the back of a closet, especially if you already have a wireless router or a large hard drive.

I have a big CD collection, well over 300 discs, and all of it fits on a single 250 gigabyte external hard drive with room for at least another 200 to spare. If you don't already have enough storage space free in your computer (many new PCs now ship with cavernous 250GB or even 500GB hard drives), a 250GB external drive can be had for around $150, and to hook it up you just plug it into your computer's USB port, the same as you would with a keyboard, camera or iPod. It couldn't be simpler. Smaller drives can be had for well under $100 – I just scored a 160GB drive for a friend for $80. That drive could easily hold 300 discs worth of material.

If you use a laptop as your primary computer and don't want to be chained to an external hard drive, you can buy a gadget that allows you to access an external drive over a wireless network for an additional $80. There are also external hard drives that come with the built-in ability to connect to a wireless network – expect to pay a $50 - $80 premium for that feature.

With hard drive prices continuing to tumble, backup becomes a very inexpensive proposition – just buy a second drive and copy your collection over to it. Then store it somewhere, either in your apartment or at someone else's place (or even in a safe deposit box, if you've got one).

To figure out how much drive space you'll need, count the number of CDs in your collection and divide by 3. That should tell you roughly how many gigabytes of storage space your collection will require. Tack on another 20% as a fudge factor if you plan to buy lots of CDs over the next couple of years.

Next, use a free program like iTunes or MediaMonkey to rip your entire CD collection to a losslessly-compressed audio format like Apple Lossless or FLAC. That way they'll be preserved with every last bit of the fidelity of the original CDs, but take up about half the hard drive space of an uncompressed file, saving you $$$ and making your library easier to manage, move and backup.

If your computer isn't right next to your stereo or easily connected by cables, it can be connected wirelessly. If you go with iTunes as your media program, use an Apple Airport as your wireless base station with an Airport Express module connected to your stereo. The cost is around $250, and of course the setup can be used with other wireless devices, like a laptop or wireless storage. If you already have a wireless network, an Airport Express module will set you back around $130. If you have multiple stereos throughout your home, you can connect an Airport Express to each one.

If you're on a PC and using a program like MediaMonkey to manage your music, setup a Linksys wireless base station and use their Wireless Music Bridge device to stream audio to your stereo. A good Linksys wireless router can be had for under $100, and their Wireless Music Bridge can be had for under $80 on sale.

Now you can bury your CD's in the back of some closet. You won't need them anymore. If you have a laptop computer with wireless abilities, you can use it to control playback of your music from anywhere in the home. There are also inexpensive wireless remotes available for Macs and PCs (under $100) that will allow you to pause or skip tracks even if your computer is in another room. People have even developed interfaces that utilize PDAs or Bluetooth-equipped cell phones to control playback remotely. For example, there's a $25 program called Sailing Clicker that'll allow you to control all sorts of media programs on your PC or Mac using a PDA, cell phone or other device. You can also control many players – like Winamp or iTunes – from any device that sports a web browser (for example, you could control iTunes running on a PC in your bedroom from a WebTV unit in your living room, or from the web browser on your Treo phone).

i am no audiophile, but sound in a wireless transmission from one's computer is just...different. it doesn't feel as rich or warm.

i currently have a cambridge audio stand alone cd player that i hook up to my receiver and the sound is phenomenal. i tried the wireless route and found it wasn't for me. not only was the sound quality different, but it was a royal pain to scroll through long lists of artists/albums/songs to get what i was looking for. (not all that different from using an ipod.)

plus, sometimes it is fun to peruse through cds and rediscover a forgotten album at the back of the collection.

"So we're always on the lookout for good analog media storage solutions."

With all due respect, CDs are digital media, not analog.

What you are trying to say, perhaps, is that you're on the lookout for good */physical/* media storage solutions.

nyer, you're right, and i actually know better. chalk it up to lack of sleep (baby's teething). thanks for the correction. ~lisa

I'm glad to see this piece, and I'll follow the link to the earlier discussion about storing CDs.

Burning my colleciton to hard drive won't help me, as I have many, many operas, where I will always want to consult the libretto and information with the boxed set. This also not material available from iTunes or from online e-tailers. Until that changes, where we can also have the libretto and various translations in a pdf document, the boxed sets are like taking a book off the shelf for me.

I'm glad to see this piece, and I'll follow the link to the earlier discussion about storing CDs.

Burning my colleciton to hard drive won't help me, as I have many, many operas, where I will always want to consult the libretto and information with the boxed set. This is not material available from iTunes or from online e-tailers. Until that changes, where we can also have the libretto and various translations in a pdf document, the boxed sets are like taking a book off the shelf for me.

i am no audiophile, but sound in a wireless transmission from one's computer is just...different. it doesn't feel as rich or warm.

If you rip the files to a lossless format, like Apple Lossless or FLAC, the end result is identical to the original data on the CD. That digital data can then be fed to a device like the AirPort Express or the Linksys Wireless Music Bridge (or more powerful "digital media receivers" like the Slim Devices Squeezebox or the Roku Soundbridge), either wirelessly or wired, with absolutely no loss in fidelity.

If you have a preamp or a receiver with digital inputs, that audio stream can then be fed directly into your receiver for conversion back to analog - the same way you'd connect a DVD player or other device. So the quality of the audio will depend entirely upon the quaity of your receiver's or preamp's digital to analog converters. It's got nothing to do with where the audio's coming from - as far as your receiver knows, the audio's coming straight from a CD player.

Now, if you go with the analog output of a device like the AirPort Express or Squeezebox, some of them have better D/A converters than others. I've been told the AirPort actually sounds pretty good, and the Squeezebox has an excellent coverter - better than those found in most consumer DVD or CD players. The Linksys didn't sound bad to me, but I feed a digital signal from it to my h/k receiver, which has excellent D/A converters. My CDs never sounded this good from the analog outputs of any CD or DVD player I've ever owned.

Good posts, Sunspot!