[robben29]

Once the youngest child is through college, Mother and I are planning on hitting the road in a mobile home. But I'd like to take my music with me so I'm in the process of digitalizing my collection (3,500 lps, cassettes, cds, even some old 45s). How best, oh gurus, to store them for access while on the road? I assume that additional drives would be best but which would be most reliable, portable and durable?
Thanks,
Coming to a town near you (one day).

[dougster]

-Hi,
I think you have not got a reply because you didn't mention how you are going to listen to the music. And if you are taking a laptop and iPod with you on the trip.
Maybe a little more info would reel in more answers from members... /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif
If the motor home is setup to use an iPod (via the speakers) it would be nice to have a laptop to change the songs. And of course a backup on a small external HD is always a good idea. Some of the flash thumb drives are very large today and still about the size of your...uh, 'thumb'. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[robben29]

Thanks!
I've got a PowerBook G4 and, though I haven't got an iPod yet, it sounds like that will be the best way to go. Maybe I don't have a good handle yet on how much memory all that music will require to store. Will it all fit on the HD of the laptop and in the iPod? If so, then all I need is an extra drive for backup?

[edmetric]

Quote:

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Maybe I don't have a good handle yet on how much memory all that music will require to store. Will it all fit on the HD of the laptop and in the iPod?

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Not so easy to answer. It depends if you use high bit rate recording. It depends if you use compression or not. It will take a lot of time to get all that on the computer and an external hard drive for backup is wise. Check Wikipedia for specific info. HTH

[robben29]

I am grateful for the help.
I'm hardly an audiofile but I'll begin to research the different format options. Does the type of back-up drive matter? I guess I need to go on another forum for that, eh?
Again, many thanks.

[dougster]

Hi,

Quote:

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Does the type of back-up drive matter? I guess I need to go on another forum for that, eh?

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Most folks use an external hard drive that will connect via firewire and some use USB. You'll get a little faster speed w/ firewire. If you don't get all your answers in a couple days just reply to your own post and type in 'bump', which will bring your post back to the top of the forum for members to take a peek again. You could also swing by the Apple forum:
http://discussions.a....com/index.jspa


Additional info on using external HD for your music [Click Here]
As the author says: Often times people get into problems by dragging their tunes to an external for storage. There is more to it than that. See if this helps.If you are running out of hard disk space to store your music the external HD is the way to go. Some folks buy the HD and install it themselves in an enclosure. Its cheaper that way also. I use a LaCie external to back up all our data which is 160GB firewire. You can peek at OWC:
Other World Computing for external drives. They've been around and backup their goodies well. There are different sizes in storage and in actual size. If you see something that might do the trick just pop in the URL (web site) here for feedback.
Good luck, and post back for any questions. Many members might be busy watching football, fishing, hunting, you get the picture... /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

[mdawson]

robben29 you definitely have quite a task set ahead of you. Your best option is of course to use iTunes to organize your music to go on the road and having an iPod will definitely improve matters. Given the limited capacity of laptop hard drives, your collection will definitely warrant the purchase of a large capacity external hard drive. OWC has a number of excellent options for external drives. You want a 3.5-inch dual interface drive; FireWire 400 would be the primary means of connecting the drive to your PowerBook, but such a drive will also allow you the ability to connect by USB 2.0 when necessary.

Determining Needed Hard Drive Capacity

The required capacity can be roughly determined based on the size of your collection and the desired bit rate. In terms of format, AAC is the default file type for iTunes and it is an open format that is supported by a number of devices. MP3 is the more omnipresent and thus universal compressed music format, but much higher bit rates will be required to get the same level of quality as AAC. The standard bit rate for AAC is 128 Kbps, whereas for MP3 it is 192 Kbps; AAC is based on the MPEG-4 standard and has a better compression algorithm than MP3 (MPEG-1, Layer 3). One thing to note is that above 192 Kbps, there is little perceivable difference between AAC and MP3 files to the ears of most people.

If you opt to go with MP3 as your file format then you can expect to need a drive with at least the following capacity:

192 Kbps 8 Kb/KB 1024^2 KB/GB 60 s/min 4 min/song 10 songs/album 3500 albums = 192.26 GB
[/list]Hard drive manufacturers opt to not refer to hard drive capacities based on the binary system used by operating systems to compute memory/storage capacity, so the value above translates to 206.44 GB in the base10 number system. Therefore, at the bare minimum you would need a 250 GB drive given that the computed capacity above is based on an average song length of 4 minutes and an average album consisting of 10 tracks. The same collection encoded in AAC at the standard bit rate of 128 Kbps would require 128.81 GB (138.31 GB) or a 160 GB hard drive. Given the possible variances, I would recommend a hard drive of at least 320 GB for storing your music, but in the long run, you will probably need a 500 GB drive or better for reasons that I will touch upon later.

Given the capacities cited, you can understand why I suggest an external 3.5-inch hard drive. Laptop drives (2.5-inch) max out at about 250 GB and are more expensive than 3.5-inch drives; for the price of a 250 GB laptop drive you can acquire a 750 GB desktop drive.

Planning the Organization of Your Music

Once you decide on the format in which you wish to import songs into iTunes, as well as the bit ratefor instance, my collection is ripped as 160 Kbps AACyou need to plan out how you intend to organize your music. iTunes allows you to organize its main music library (all the music you imported) into playlists and folders (user-defined groupings). If you look at my music Website you can see how I organized my iTunes library into a folder/playlist tree under PLAYLISTS in the navigation menu on the left. I created the Website with a layout similar to that of iTunes to simplify navigation.
In my case I organized my music by genre/style, but how you opt to organize your music in iTunes is a matter of personal preference. What I would suggest is that you first plan out a rough organizational structure for you music then rip no more than 100 or so CDs into iTunes. Once you have ripped those first few CDs, you will have enough music in your library to begin implementing and modifying your playlist structure. Once you finalize the structure you can also decide on how you wish to catalog your music in iTunes by making up a consistent tagging system for your music. Consistency in tagging your songs makes using playlists, smart playlists in particular, easier and insures that their resulting contents are what you would expect.
One you have your playlist structure in place and a system for tagging songs, you can focus on adding the rest of your music. If properly planned at the outset, expanding your playlist structure later in the game will require minimum effort. That is, proper planning should result in a good base of playlists from which you can build more complicated playlists with little to no need to add additional base playlists.
Importing Your Music
As far as getting you music on the computer is concerned, ripping the CDs will be the easiest and quickest import process. The music on your CDs are already digital and accessible via your PowerBooks optical drive. Most (popular) music is already cataloged in the Gracenote database that iTunes accesses online to get track data, but before importing the music from each CD, you should verify and correct the tags for each track. Quality control is obviously not a priority for Gracenotemany of the entries are from iTunes users that apparently cannot spell or place information in the correct fields, as the database has a number of egregious errors. When you are sure that the tracks for a given CDs have the correct information you should then import the music.
Getting music off of your vinyl and cassettes will take a bit more effort. How much effort depends on how good you wish the final result to be as music from those formats should be processed to remove the noise inherent to those formats. You will need additional software to import music from vinyl and tape, and perhaps, additional hardware. First, if your PowerBook predates the DVI version (2002) you will need to get a USB-based audio input device such as Griffin Technologys iMic to get the audio onto the computer; all later models of the PowerBook G4 have an analog input. In either case, you will need an RCA-to-stereo 1/8-inch phone plug adapter, as most consumer-level audio equipment interconnect via RCA phono cables and computers have 1/8-inch phone jacks.

As you are using a laptop, it is easy to get your computer to your audio equipment so your hardware requirements should not be much beyond having to get the adapter cable and perhaps an iMic. On the other hand, you will need to purchase music capture software. My preference is BIAS Peak Pro and BIAS Soundsoap Pro. Peak is an audio recorder/editor and Soundsoap is a noise filtration plug-in. BIAS products are expensive and, as you indicated that you are not an audiophile, overkill for your needs. Fortunately, BIAS also offers consumer-level versions of Peak and Soundsoap. A quick Google search should help you find bundle deals for about $200 or so. While I am an audiophile, I am by no means and audio professional, yet I found BIAS products easy to use. I would imagine the consumer-level versions to be just as easy, if not easier, to learn.

With Peak you can record your audio coming in through the audio input of your PowerBook and save the uncompressed AIFF files to your hard drive. Peak also permits you to process your audio. Given that the best way to record your records and, especially, cassettes onto your computer is to just allow one side to play through, the ability to create individual tracks from a single large recording will be a must for you. Peak also has several other useful editing features. The Soundsoap plug-in will allow you to remove audible noise such as tape hiss (from cassettes) or surface noise (from vinyl). Soundsoap can also be used as a standalone program in case you opt to use something other than BIAS Peak.

Another audio editor that many on these boards swear by is Amadeus II. I am not familiar with Amadeus, but based on the Website it supports VST plug-ins, so you may be able to run Soundsoap from within Amadeus instead of as a standalone product. Also, unlike Peak, which primarily targets audio pros, Amadeus can export audio as either compressed MP3 or AAC (MP4) files. Realistically though, no matter your choice, I would recommend exporting the music files as AIFF and allowing iTunes to create the compressed version of your format choice. The reason I suggest that is because after you go through all of the effort to get your analog music onto your computer, you are probably going to want to keep uncompressed versions of the processed music on hand just in case of the worst.
Once you create AIFF files in the audio editor of your choice you can import the tracks into iTunes. Once in iTunes you can update the ID3 tagsas these songs are not coming from commercial CDs, you will need to enter all of the track info manuallyand convert the songs to the compressed format of your choice. iTunes will compress audio based on the import settings in the advanced preferences.
The storage of your uncompressed, processed music files is why I suggested looking into a hard drive with substantially more capacity than your iTunes library will require. Uncompressed audio requires more space than compressed audio by several orders of magnitude. How much more hard drive space you will need beyond the capacity that your iTunes library will use depends on what percentage of your physical media is analog audio.
In the worst case, do know that you can get a 750 GB external FireWire 400/USB 2.0 drive for about $300 at OWC or better yet two 500 GB external FireWire 400 drives for about $40 more. With the latter option you can use one drive for storing you iTunes library and the second for your uncompressed digitized analog music. In the long run, do note that the price of hard drives is constantly dropping; a little over a year ago the price of a single bare 500 GB drive would have cost you more than the price of the two full-package 500 GB FireWire external drives linked. The introduction of 1TB drives just before this past summer and the expectation of 1.5 TB drives in the near future means you can expect the price of 500 and 750 GB hard drives to drop significantly in price over the next 6 to 12 months if not sooner.
In all, you have some work cut out for you, but given the size of your music collection, you are perhaps just as passionate about your music as I and should therefore enjoy the process of organizing and importing your collection onto your computer.
iPod vs. PowerBook
While your PowerBook G4 is portable, it is not the best source device for your music while on the road. Once you are camped at a location, playing music from your laptop will be fine, but while on-the-go an iPod will be easier to manage. With the iPod now coming in capacities up to 160 GB, you are not for want of storage capacity. While being in an RV gives you the convenience of a home on the road, an iPod (Classic) can be controlled by touch while driving and many vehicles include iPod connectivity as a standard feature; though quite honestly I am not sure of how much this translates into the RV market.
Another plus of the iPod is battery life. An iPod, when left to just play music, will last much longer before needing a recharge than any given laptop. The current crop of hard drive-based iPods can run continuously for upward of two days or more under the right conditions.

[robben29]

this is everything I could hope for. THANKS!
By the way, Mother and I won't be able to hit the road until the youngest is off to college (or even thereafter) so I've got a good five years to record. I may need it all but I now have a great idea of how to work it.
Again, many thanks.