What do you guys use/How Do You Store Your Digital Music files?

OceansJenny

Jbarker said:

Zod said:

I think I'm OCD. I have a FLAC Directory on my hard drive which I've been building for nearly 10 years. I think it's over 700 albums now. There's the local copy on the PC. I have a media box (called a popcorn hour) hooked up to my tv which has a 6tb internal hard drive, so there's a clone of the directory on there too. I have some old 2tb drives I don't use anymore, so I back it up at home from time to time, and every year or so I have a hard drive at work that I back up my music and pictures on, so I make an updated copy to that. If the house burns down the biggest hits (datawise to me) would be my digital music collection and all my pictures. Having a copy offsite at least hedges against something bad happening to the house and wiping out all those copies.

It took a long time to built my FLAC collection, I don't want to loose it. I also have all the old PJ bootlegs in flac (the '00, '03, '05, '06 etc..) tours burned to bluray. I keep that separate from my overall music folder. I've still got quite a big mp3 directory too, but the only thing that still uses it is my car stereo. Everything else is FLAC.

Address please... going to send you a lot of blank discs and a blank hardrive.

Ditto that! That's a sick collection.

Jbarker

Rather than start a new thread or search the forum tomes, I'll ask here since it's related.

I have a substantial inventory of music on an earlier computer (PC) that died.
After substantial $$, the files have been recovered to an portable Hard Drive.
Will I be able to plug that new hard drive into my current computer (MAC) and be able to upload those files (MP3s, FLACs, Torrents, etc)
to iTunes in order to add to iPhones & iPods ?

HesCalledDyer

Jbarker said:

Rather than start a new thread or search the forum tomes, I'll ask here since it's related.

I have a substantial inventory of music on an earlier computer (PC) that died.
After substantial $$, the files have been recovered to an portable Hard Drive.
Will I be able to plug that new hard drive into my current computer (MAC) and be able to upload those files (MP3s, FLACs, Torrents, etc)
to iTunes in order to add to iPhones & iPods ?

Your mp3s will be fine and dandy to upload. However, iTunes does not support flac so you'll need to convert those using a 3rd party app. I'm at work right now and forget the name of the one I use, but a quick search for "flac to mp3 mac" will give you some options. Looks like Bigasoft's free converter has good ratings.
As for torrents, you'll be able to upload the .torrent file itself to you Mac HD, but iTunes will not act as a torrent client. Again, you'll need a a 3rd party torrent client to download the media files and then you can upload the media to iTunes. Transmission is a really good, lightweight client for Mac.

KV4053

HesCalledDyer said:

Jbarker said:

Rather than start a new thread or search the forum tomes, I'll ask here since it's related.

I have a substantial inventory of music on an earlier computer (PC) that died.
After substantial $$, the files have been recovered to an portable Hard Drive.
Will I be able to plug that new hard drive into my current computer (MAC) and be able to upload those files (MP3s, FLACs, Torrents, etc)
to iTunes in order to add to iPhones & iPods ?

Your mp3s will be fine and dandy to upload. However, iTunes does not support flac so you'll need to convert those using a 3rd party app. I'm at work right now and forget the name of the one I use, but a quick search for "flac to mp3 mac" will give you some options. Looks like Bigasoft's free converter has good ratings.
As for torrents, you'll be able to upload the .torrent file itself to you Mac HD, but iTunes will not act as a torrent client. Again, you'll need a a 3rd party torrent client to download the media files and then you can upload the media to iTunes. Transmission is a really good, lightweight client for Mac.

https://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

It's the best, Jerry! The best!

RS151862

Do not convert your FLAC's to mp3's, convert them to ALAC. That is the apple equivalent, and will maintain the same lossless quality.

KV4053

RS151862 said:

Do not convert your FLAC's to mp3's, convert them to ALAC. That is the apple equivalent, and will maintain the same lossless quality.

I second that emotion

HesCalledDyer

KV4053 said:

RS151862 said:

Do not convert your FLAC's to mp3's, convert them to ALAC. That is the apple equivalent, and will maintain the same lossless quality.

I second that emotion

I third it. I never use mp3. ALAC if I can, 320k AAC otherwise.

Smellyman

RS151862 said:

Do not convert your FLAC's to mp3's, convert them to ALAC. That is the apple equivalent, and will maintain the same lossless quality.

And save the headaches, avoid Apple

Jbarker

I thought ALAC isn't playable on an iPhone (my music source at work, Bluetoothed to a Bose)? ...or is it just not downloadable?
Can't remember but I'm pretty sure I had trouble when I purchased an ALAC bootleg way back.

HesCalledDyer said:

KV4053 said:

RS151862 said:

Do not convert your FLAC's to mp3's, convert them to ALAC. That is the apple equivalent, and will maintain the same lossless quality.

I second that emotion

I third it. I never use mp3. ALAC if I can, 320k AAC otherwise.

320k AAC ----> is that what ALACHD is?

That's for the help all.

PJ_Soul

I use Spotify at work on my PC, which is great, but the fact that the music library in Spotify isn't actually mine, I also keep my own music library separate from Spotify, just with the music that I really want to own myself. I just keep that in a file on OneDrive, which communicates with Windows Media Player. When I'm mobile I still just use a Sony mp3 player because mp3 players are tiny, so they fit in my pocket. I just load that using the windows media player connected to my OneDrive library.

KV4053

Jbarker said:

I thought ALAC isn't playable on an iPhone (my music source at work, Bluetoothed to a Bose)? ...or is it just not downloadable?
Can't remember but I'm pretty sure I had trouble when I purchased an ALAC bootleg way back.

HesCalledDyer said:

KV4053 said:

RS151862 said:

Do not convert your FLAC's to mp3's, convert them to ALAC. That is the apple equivalent, and will maintain the same lossless quality.

I second that emotion

I third it. I never use mp3. ALAC if I can, 320k AAC otherwise.

320k AAC ----> is that what ALACHD is?

That's for the help all.

320k AAC is NOT ALAC nor is it ALAC HD

320k AAC is basically the Apple version of mp3

ALAC should be playable on an iPhone since ALAC is Apple's version of FLAC (I don't use Apple products so I can't confirm)

Zod

Smellyman said:

RS151862 said:

Do not convert your FLAC's to mp3's, convert them to ALAC. That is the apple equivalent, and will maintain the same lossless quality.

And save the headaches, avoid Apple

+1. I personally don't lean towards devices that need their own format. Everything else in the world can use mp3 and flac, but apple needs to be different.. lol.

HesCalledDyer

ALAC might not be playable on an iPhone or iPod because of the file sizes. There is an option in iTunes however to downconvert when syncing to an iThing. The files on your computer will remain ALAC but the files synced to your phone will be AAC format (or whatever format you choose to downconvert as).

demetrios

Zod said:

Smellyman said:

RS151862 said:

Do not convert your FLAC's to mp3's, convert them to ALAC. That is the apple equivalent, and will maintain the same lossless quality.

And save the headaches, avoid Apple

+1. I personally don't lean towards devices that need their own format. Everything else in the world can use mp3 and flac, but apple needs to be different.. lol.

Totally avoid anything that's Apple. I don't use any of their inferior iShit products.

Plus why convert your Flacs to Alacs? You would only do this if you are only using lossless audio on an Apple product. You don't have to worry about converting your Flacs to Alacs on a Windows operating system.

If you wanna convert your Flacs to MP3 for personal use on a mobile device, use dBpoweramp Music Converter & convert your .Wav files with V0 Mp3.