No More CD Player for Me!

[ibglowin]

Over the Summer I ripped all 300 or so CD's my wife and I owned into an old Apple Powerbook G3 using iTunes. I finally got around to getting the (black hole) 300 disk Sony CD player pulled out and the Powerbook moved in. I am using a SVHS cable and a good quality audio cable to connect the laptop to the TV and Stereo receiver. The sound is excellent, I imported all CD's at a high bit rate (190 AAC). I have an Airport card in the laptop still so I can get to the Net and pull album artwork or download music still. If I really want to play a real CD I can always use the 5 disc DVD player on the other side. All digital audio into the Reciever from that end.

Now I can find things once again. Can't wait for Christmas as I can play all Holiday music at the touch of a button and see the Album artwork, song title, etc. on the TV as well at the same time if I want to. This is COOL! :D

[music_beans]

190Kbps AAC? Why not rip them in MP3, the industry standard?

[ibglowin]

Because AAC sounds better than MP3.

[Steve Mehs]

That’s a cool idea, I thought about doing away with my CD player in my setup too, although most of the time I use my DVD player for playing CDs rather then my 5 disc changer as my changer only has analog connections. I was looking at the Motorola SimpleFi Wireless MP3 receiver, but that still leaves no album artwork or on screen track info, which I can live without, but would be nice to have.

[ibglowin]

That’s a cool idea, I thought about doing away with my CD player in my setup too, although most of the time I use my DVD player for playing CDs rather then my 5 disc changer as my changer only has analog connections. I was looking at the Motorola SimpleFi Wireless MP3 receiver, but that still leaves no album artwork or on screen track info, which I can live without, but would be nice to have.

Thanks,

I thought about Airport Express/AirTunes which is a pretty cool product as well but again, no artwork or track info. I had my CD jukebox for some time and could not seem to find the time to enter the titles by hand. It seems like the only time you have to do stuff like that is after Xmas once a year when your off work with nothing to do and its cold out. I like the fact that you just pop in a CD and it connects to the Net and pulls in all the CD/track info so that all you have to do is rip and then grab the artwork off Amazon. I may have to add an external Firewire drive soon as my 60GB drive is filling up fast!

[cdru]

Because AAC sounds better than MP3.Is AAC lossy or lossless? I've got quite a collection of CD's I'd like to rip so that my wife stops leaving CDs piled around the player. I've considered MP3, AAC, or even FLAC. Since FLAC is lossless, I could always just reencode them later if something comes around better.

[ibglowin]

iTunes does have an Apple lossless encoder option as well. Files are not much smaller than a WAV or AIFF file so they take up loads of HD space. I did quite a few test at different encoding rates and compared AAC to MP3 and decided on AAC at 192Kbps because I liked what I heard. If I add an external Firewire I may re-rip the collection using the Apple lossless encoder.