How do I digitize My Music Collection?

[Caroline]

I know I’m probably a bit late to the game but I need to digitize a lot of my music collection while the apparatus for playing it all on still works. I have a bag full of leads which should cover all eventualities.

So how and where do you keep it and how do you play it once you have it 'saved' somewhere else?

I have vinyl and cassettes to sort. I also have mini discs to but they will be okay for now. My hifi system is old school and will end up buying a more up to date DAB/CD unit and maybe a turntable for the few LPs I won’t part with.

All your advice gratefully received!

[Julian Mince]

I ripped all my CDs to mp3 format (you can choose a different format such as flac which gives better quality but takes up more space). However if you're wanting to rip cassettes and vinyl, it's tougher. You can buy turntables which have a PC output - I'm sure you can do the same with tapes.

If it were me, I'd put the idea on hold and see if the music you want is on Spotify. It's a lot less hassle!

[Caroline]

Thanks for that Julian!

I was thinking about a different turntable as I'm not 100% sure that mine will work as I don't have it connected up at the moment. I'd need a new one if I got a new DAB tuner etc.

Do you have your ripped CDs stored on an external drive? I guess I'm still a bit stuck in analogue mode and I suppose I'm wanting to be able to play the results through the speakers in the living room which are connected to current hi fi.

I'm a bit wary of just using Spotify as they are often not the original tracks (I discovered when looking for a really ancient track!).

I have Total Recorder, similar to Audacity, on laptop which will save to MP3 at a very high rate and a load of other formats too. I've used that to 'record' radio programmes in the past, although not a lot recently. I guess I need to play around with the couple of portable cassette players found when we cleared out my Dad's house. I can then use Total Recorder to capture sound and save. As you say a lot of work!

[Julian Mince]

All my ripped CDs are stored on Dropbox. They could easily sit on my PC hard drive though and then use Windows Media Player or Real VNC or any of the plethora of other players out there. Your PC should have an output from the sound card so you'd connect that to the Aux In sockets on the back of your amp.

[Caroline]

Yes I can do that, I have a selector box as there aren't enough input/output sockets for the separates that I have.

I'm guessing CDs are easier to do as with cassettes/vinyl you are going to have to do each track separately otherwise you can't move on apart from guessing the track length mmmm. A bit of thought and searching the Total Recorder tutorials I think. First I need to sort cassettes that we no longer want!

[Red Baron]

OH has just been redoing all of our CD's onto Flac. His 'big' computer still has a CD drive so that makes it easier.

He has them stored on a hard drive, in fact, he has them stored on more then one hard drive - not because of the quantity just in case one of the hard drives malfunctions.

He hasn't done our vinyl - and any cassettes were just copies anyway.

[mis]

I ripped most of my CDs using Windows Media Player and have them on my laptop and a couple of external drives as well. I bought one of those record players that plugs in to a computer so I could convert vinyl. I really must do some more when I have time. It's been on top of a cupboard in the spare room for a few years!