Question from Luddite - getting rid of CDs but which product to buy?

[MamOfTwo]

So, I know this is a question people were probably asking a decade ago but I am a bit behind the times ...

We still have a towering pile of CDs in our home - what do I need to buy so we can 'go digital' and then how do I put them on the device? I want a device that allows us to listen to music in our home (not bothered about listening to music while on the move).

Also once I have put all our music on there, how do I put new music on there - do I buy them from a site like iTunes or something else??

So, do I buy an iPod? What sort? Do I need a dock? Or do I buy an MP3 player? Or something that has recently been invented that I haven't heard about?!

Please help out a Luddite - thank you!

Re new music much cheaper to use spotify, holding physical CD's so last century! You can try spotify for free for 10 hours a month to see if you like it.

I love the clutter free look of no CD's in house.

Rather than waste your existing music collection, you either need to upload your cd's via cd/optical drive to some forms of hard disk storage device. Probably the easiest way to do this is via iTunes or Google play or amazon player to put them in a digital library. Do you have an account already set up?

Importing the data will take a bit of time mind if you have 100's in your collection and will also take up quite a bit of storage space on your computer, so it may be best to then transfer them to an external hard disk drive to avoid slowing the performance of your computer. After uploading your old cd's you can then download music purchases directly to your library via iTunes purchases for example.

Streaming music is the way forward however as indicated above. I am a convert and now combine listening to my music library with streaming sites on my sonos system so I get the best of both worlds!

First question is whether you have a (Windows) laptop or desktop available?

Not that long ago a firm sold a product which was intended for just this type of situation, a replacement for dozens {OK, low hundreds!} of CDs, and boxed a very quiet PC. Just found it reviewed online *> Xiva Music M8

Didn't know the Brennan had been discontinued. Shame as it looked to be a good unit (I remember reading about it a while back when someone asked about music systems, and Sonos came up in discussion, along with Brennan).

Thanks for replies - off to have a read-through now!

Another vote for the Brennan thing. It is probably the easiest way to get your current CDs into digital format.

Another option if your CD collection isn't too esoteric would be to get a subscription to a streaming service such as Spotify or google play music. This would allow you to listen to pretty much any album in the world ever, and you wouldn't need to rio your current CD collection.

I'm also interested in this - is there such a thing as someone that will come round to your house and upload all the CDs? And vinyl? That would be nice.

WB - there certainly have been a few services which charged a few hundred to do that sort of thing (for the early Apple iPod buyers, where money was plentiful and they didn't have the time to do it themselves).

It's not uncommon for 'ripping' tracks to take a few minutes - an eighth the time (or less) of the actual playing time. It's a bit boring to do, but you can do a few albums in an hour and carry on the next day for a large collection.

As for someone coming to your house - think CRB checks, insurance, and so on, and you may not like the fee they charge... Then again, some younger relative might be willing for a financial incentive... They can, after all, be listening / watching their own favourites via some other device while converting your tracks to digital format.

When I did away with CDs - about 8 years ago - I just loaded my favourites onto iTunes via the CD drive on my computer. Very easy and quicker than actually playing each CD. I then just bought new music as downloads off ITunes store (other services available!).

If I was doing it now I wouldn't bother. I'd just go to Spotify...

we have a Synology media server like this: NAS with a bucket load of storage space!

It stores all our music in an uncompressed format plus downloaded movies, all our photos etc. We then stream it on our internal network via tablet or phone using an app (I use DS Audio but there are loads around). We backup the cloud weekly and also to an external hard drive periodically.

It's probably overkill, but DP and I have/had over 10,000 CD's and so many DVDs (now all boxed up in the loft!). This stores everything and I love it

Waspie Do toy mind my asking what size
storage you have? I need something like this for DH, who likes having the original cds (thus supporting the bands he likes) but is fed up of them being got at by the toddler. He has hundreds of them!

hi SignoraStronza, we started with 2 x 4Tb but we have added to it over the last 5 years. I'm not sure what it has now (DP is the real geek of the household) but it's a Raid 5 array so it's pretty easy to add new memory.

SignoraS - bear in mind that Waspie and family have quite an up-market unit, and I've seen a number of others on Amazon, going from 2 TB to 6 TB and costing from about £130 to £230

Buffalo LS220 4TB (2 x 2TB WD Red Hard Drive) LinkStation 220

I saw a LinkStation 210 2TB at £125 (but the website is registered to a 'Virtual Office Services' address in central London, and the Limited Company seems to have only been registered a year ago, while the website seems to have existed for several years). Rather than perhaps promote a firm which might be ripping people off, I'd prefer to suggest checking Ebay:

*> LINK