Converting Lossless Music To Other Formats

Some quick notes on ways to convert your lossless (eg. FLAC) files into other audio formats.

Using Foobar - FLAC To MP3

Note that Foobar doesn't ship with encoders, so you'll have to go download extras to handle the formats you want to use.

1. Get Foobar
2. Launch Foobar
3. Open/drag FLAC files in
4. Select all, right-click and do a "convert", for output format pick MP3 - might want to set up an entry with chosen bitrate, constant/variable preference
5. Pick a folder to dump the converted files into
6. The first time you do this, you might have to tell Foobar where your lame.exe encoder is (see below)
7. Watch the progress bar, go collect your files when done

Options

Foobar lets you set up a number of converter options, so if the defaults aren't enough, do an edit/add new.

My settings for MP3 are
Encoder type: "custom"
Encoder: lame.exe
Extension: mp3
Parameters: -S --noreplaygain -b 192 - %d
Format: lossy
Highest BPS: 24
Encoder name: "MP3 (LAME), 192kbps CBR"
Bitrate: 192
Settings: CBR

Apple Lossless

Foobar doesn't ship with the apple lossless decoding, I had to grab an extra plugin (try the Foobar website for download).

Getting LAME

LAME is the encoder engine that actually converts to MP3. If you don't have the LAME encoder (lame.exe), get latest from Rarewares. Download the zip (it should contain an exe, a DLL, and a bunch of HTML and CSS) and unpack all the files into somewhere like "C:\Program Files\Lame" (just create a new folder).

Ripping And Rocking With EAC

OK, I go on and on about using a decent ripping package for turning all those CDs into digital files for your music library, streamer, portable player etc, and I'm sure that just about everyone takes one look, gets scared and runs back to the safety of using iTunes to turn CDs into MP3s. So here's the thing: using a decent ripper isn't hard. Or it shouldn't be. So here's my quick guide to setting up and using EAC for ripping CDs.

Quick note: this post was mostly written with EAC version 0.99. I'll update for new features in 1.0beta1, such as the new artwork downloader, when I have time.

Setup

First thing, go get EAC from http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/. Install it (make sure you install the FLAC component too, do a full install and you should be fine), run it, go through the setup wizard - accepting the defaults should be fine, although when it asks you for formats, pick FLAC rather than MP3/WMA. Some of the FLAC encoding level and filename options, we'll set later, but for now defaults will do (it's lossless, you can always re-convert, and post-rip tagging is a doddle). You also need to give your email address in return for access to the tagging database.

Options

Some of the settings you'll want to tweak...

Tools: "Do not open external compressor" - do you want a DOS window showing the FLAC compression happening?

Filename: use naming scheme "%D\%C\%N - %T"

Directories: set directory to whatever space you've set aside for your FLAC files eg. "music\flacTunes".

Ripping

The process of ripping a CD is quite simple. Fire up EAC, bung in a CD, hit ALT-G to query the freedb database and get the tagging info - if you get multiple entries, select one, you can always re-query if it looks wrong. You'll also get prompted for an album cover art search (medium sizes are probably fine) - hover over to preview, select/highlight the best and hit the big "save with EAC" button. Images are saved as "folder.jpg" in the album folder.

If the CD wasn't found, or there are tagging errors, enter/fix the info (double-click on a track title to edit), but you can always fix the tags later. Also note the "first track number" option, very useful for binding two-disc sets together into a single album (you'll also want to hack the "disc two" out of the album title).

Hit SHIFT-F5 to start ripping (if no directory set in options, it'll prompt you for one). This can take a while, EAC is pretty persistent and will try its best to get an accurate rip. When it's all done, you'll get a success/error report.

You can even watch the progress as the files get converted and written - temporary WAV and FLAC files get written along the way.

The Next Step

With your CD now in FLAC, you have options. Save it to your library for streaming. Convert to some other format (eg. MP3).

And then you can start really playing with EAC...

More Options

EAC has tons of options, this post just covers the basics.

For advanced drive configuration, you'll need a good, unscratched CD for EAC to do a test rip with (yes, this software actually tweaks itself for your CD/DVD drive), probably best to pick a nice long 70-minute CD (don't worry, it won't take nearly that long to do the test rip).

External Compression Options

Under EAC->Compression Options->External Compression, I have the following set:
Use external program for compression
Use file extension ".flac"
Program "C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\FLAC\FLAC.EXE"
Additional command line options: -8 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "COMMENT=%e" %s -o %d
Bitrate: 768kbps, high quality
Delete wav after compression
Check for external programs return code

Copy Range Feature

When the CD doesn't allocate the tracks exactly as you need, whether it's those pesky hidden tracks or strangely-placed index markers, you can fix things using the "Copy Range" feature to move where the CD tracks start/end or split tracks up.

The first thing to find out where your tracks start and end. If you can get exact CD block positions from a ripping log, great, otherwise at least note the times. Do "Action->Copy Range->Compressed" to start a partial track rip. In the dialogue, use the sliders and "snap track" to get a rough start/end position, fine tune with cursor left/right, or enter the block position directly. Once you've set the start and end positions, hit "OK" and the track rips.

Note that the file is saved outside of the normal album folder (defaults to the root of your music ripping directory) so you'll have to do some file moving afterwards. Name the file with standard "01 - Trackname.flac" scheme, and correct the tags afterwards (track number and name may default to whatever track was selected when you started the partial ripping.

For more in-depth details, see this guide.

Digital Music: Gapless Playback

I use the term "gapless playback" a lot. These days it's kind of essential when talking about music playback. "Advances" in digital music playback have spawned the need for this rather curious term. "Gapless" is basically

"the ability to play one song followed by another song without introducing additional gaps or silence"

Obvious really. It's something that was a standard feature on all music formats and playback devices - vynyl, cassette, CD - until the rise of modern digital music players. Something we took for granted as standard for over 60 years is now an optional extra.

Be warned: this post mightwill turn into a bit of a rant. Gapless playback is something I care about a lot. It's been an absolute deal-breaker with my last four digital music player purchases. It's technically possible, it should just be the minimum acceptable standard.

I'm not going to list all the various gapless solutions and guilty parties on this post, if gapless playback is something that concerns you, do the research.

Disclaimer: gapless isn't an issue all the time, only if you're listening to albums. If you think the album format is dead and music must be listened to as individual songs, shuffled or compiled into playlists, stop reading. Otherwise...

What's the big deal?

If you're thinking "but all my albums have gaps between the songs anyway, what's the big deal", well what about live albums, dance music, prog rock records, etc? Some random examples of bands with studio albums that require gapless playback: The Beatles (Sgt. Pepper, Abbey Road), Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall), Dream Theater (Six Degrees, Systematic Chaos), The Prodigy (The Fat of the Land), Wu-Tang Clan (Forever), Nine Inch Nails (Pretty Hate Machine, The Downward Spiral), Slayer (Reign in Blood), Tool (Lateralus), Linkin Park (Meteora, A Thousand Suns), My Chemical Romance (Danger Days).

OK, the Beatles probably were wrong to start the whole "album format" thing without considering the limitations of future music players, but we're stuck with a larger number of albums that the average portable player can't handle. Oops.

Gapless doesn't mean "no gaps"

Yes it's confusing. "Gapless" doesn't mean "no gaps between songs", just "no added gaps between songs". So, if we take the Beatles as an example, Revolver has long gaps between the songs on the record, but Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road let the songs seamlessly flow into each other. Gapless playback recreates the record exactly as it was.

OK, I'm converted. I want gapless. How do I get it?

1. Use a "gapless" format eg. OGG, FLAC, MP3 (*)
2. Buy a "gapless" player eg. iTunes/iPod

*Not all MP3s are created equal
Oh, and just because your format is gapless, doesn't mean your player will handle it. My Sony phone plays OGG files, but it leaves a massive gap between them. Spotify also apparently has issues playing its OGG files gaplessly. However, there are gapless-capable formats for both lossy and lossless, and music players capable of handling them. Gapless playback is available if you want it.

Why is gapless so hard to do?

Well, on vynyl/tape/CD, gapless is built into the format - it's a continuous stream of music, and "tracks" are nothing more than index markers you can fast-forward to. Where digital music is concerned, each track is a separate file, to be unpacked (if compressed) and re-combined into the album/playlist running order.

So really, why is gapless so hard to do?

It's not that hard. Many formats manage to store the necessary information. However, playback requires a little thought. Only a little.

1. Buffering 101: you need a very basic knowledge of buffering - you need to be uncompressing a track slightly ahead of playing it. If you were to build a music player that:
   
   1. Played first track (slight delay as the music starts buffering) exactly as it is on the CD
   2. Waited until it finished then thought "oh, there's more?" and went off to fetch the next track
   3. Played second track...
   ...and so on, you'd probably get gaps due to disc access, buffering, etc, creating a time interval of greater than 0.0 seconds between tracks. Remember, those tracks already have whatever gaps (or "no gaps") existed on the CD.
   
   
2. Track Length: The track must know when it begins and ends - astonishingly, MP3s can't be relied on to know how long they are (the original specification only stored "roughly" how long a track was, so you often ended up with the track stored as a number of "frames", the last of which contained the end of the song plus some silence to pad it out), although modern encoders seem to do fine.

To play gaplessly, you need to basically treat your tracks as contributing to a seamless playlist, sort of like re-creating a CD on the fly.

But surely if gapless was a problem they'd have fixed it by now?

MP3s have been around for years now. The original specification didn't address gapless playback, although subsequent revisions (and decent encoders like the latest LAME) now allow for gapless (it's not guaranteed that MP3s you buy will be gapless though). And subsequent formats (specifically AAC) based on MP3 repeated the same problem. When apple got so fed up with the situation they first fixed it (for iTunes/iPods only, of course) with a hack for not-necessarily-gapless MP3s that was rightly announced as a major new iPod feature. In 2007.

Apple's hack was basically to figure out how long the track should be (the info that OGG, FLAC etc files keep and MP3s originally threw away) so it can be played gaplessly. There's space in an MP3 to store this info (again, modern encoders create gapless files), but as gapless is not part of the original MP3 spec, no guarantees your player will manage to playback properly.

Getting gapless on non-gapless players

A couple of unsatisfactory hacks:

• The 'Single Track' hack - OK, you could join all the songs on a CD together into one very long track (apple used to offer a 'join tracks' mode in the old pre-gapless iTunes days) but would you really want to?
• Crossfading - by having your tracks fade-out and fade-in, slightly overlapping, you eliminate gaps. Of course, you also eliminate any sudden powerful track start/end that should be there, any pauses that should be there, etc. Save it for DJ mixes - crossfading is not gapless.

My 20-Year Turntable / Tape Deck / CD Player does Gapless - surely my shiny new MP3 player does too?

Why did gaps ever appear? Why hasn't the gapless problem been completely eradicated? My guess is that people either don't notice or don't care enough to choose a different player, so the extra effort needed to allow gapless playback isn't considered necessary. People buy individual songs or listen to their own playlists. For many, the convenience of the ubiquitous MP3 format far outweighs its many drawbacks (poor sound quality, inefficient compression, no automatic gapless). It took apple six years to get round to fixing this. Sony used to offer gapless (albeit via ATRAC only) but abandoned it along with their hard-drive players. Spotify considered it such a low priority that they took forever to implement it (and their "free" mode is still flaky).

So if you care, do the research and buy gapless. Or just put up with your player/format adding extra gaps between songs.

Note: updated to cover Spotify etc. finally getting gapless.

Ripping CDs For Home Servers And Portable Players

CDs are awesome. They sound great. They have artwork and booklets and occasionally fancy packaging. They can hold up to 100 tracks or 78 minutes. They take up shelf space. They need to be loaded into a machine if you want to play a song off them... er, OK, CDs were awesome, a digital music library of thousands of tracks that can be played as whole albums, single tracks, playlists etc. is more awesome.

Many people have made the switch from CD to a flexible digital library and traded quality for the convenience of inferior formats like MP3. You don't have to. You can have that nice fat bitrate lossless CD quality with all the convenience of a 10000-track CD jukebox. But first you have to rip those CDs...

So you want get that music off CD into digital format. The plan is to only do this once. Ever. So the key question is:

"Do you want it fast or do you want it good?"

If you just want any old quality of rip, use iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. If you have an expensive CD/DVD ROM drive, a shiny new CD and a bit of luck, it'll rip fine. The problem is, something like iTunes will just sprint through a CD regardless, and if it picks up any errors, well you might just hear them when you play it back. CDs aren't perfect and don't have the best built-in error checking, and it takes care or fancy hardware to reproduce them exactly.

If you want this to be the only time you ever rip this CD, ever, consider a slower error-checking rip. CDex is good, DBPowerAmp or acknowleged leader EAC are better. You're looking at 20 minutes a CD, but a good chance of perfect rips. EAC will do a couple of things to get good rips - read and re-read (extremely slowly if necessary) every bit of data on your CD, and then compare that to a crowd-sourced database to determine whether there are any errors on your copy of the CD.

So you have a CD/DVD-ROM drive and a stack of CDs just waiting to be ripped. If you have a laptop (or when you realise some CDs just won't work well on your current drive) you might also want to look at getting an external CD drive or getting that old tower out of storage instead of just relying on that one drive. For major bulk ripping sessions, start with a pile of CDs, set several drives going and burn through your collection.

So basically, you fire up your ripping software, feed it a CD, get it to pick up the tagging information, then start ripping and come back when its done. The best format for filenaming is a "Music\Artist\Album" folder structure, tracks named and numbered "01 - Track Name" for sorting.

If your library software needs a playlist for each album (most don't), make sure you spit out a ".m3u" file at this point.

Some rippers, such as EAC (think DBPowerAmp too) can grab the artwork as part of the tagging process, saving you some work later.

Digital Music: Building A Library From CDs

OK, these days, most people don't buy CDs. Hell, most people can't even spell "CDs" (there's no apostrophe, kids). But CDs are still almost always the only way to get high-quality lossless music.

So this guide assumes you want to build a flexible digital music library from existing and continued CD purchases. Of course, you'll want all that music to be correctly "tagged" so you can find things later.

These notes deal with ripping high-quality lossless - I'm also going to assume that you'll want not only the lossless version to listen to in the house, but the option of a compressed copy on your MP3 player. Any library is going to contain stuff from a few different sources, so improvise for any non-CD formats - if you're starting with MP3 (eg. iTunes store purchases), skip right to the last section. Likewise, skip the CD ripping part for anything you can get in a lossless format. And if you want to go straight from CD to MP3, remember that choice is final and can only be reversed by re-ripping the CD.

I've noted the tools I use, but the process is the important thing here (and some of these stages are optional). Other posts may expand on setting up the various bits of software listed (look for the links), failing that you're going to have to do a bit of searching. Sorry.

If this all seems a bit much, don't panic. Once the tools are installed and setup, it's a fairly simple process to stuff a CD in, press a couple of buttons, then leave the computer to do all the work. It's worth noting that even the most basic "use iTunes to rip CDs to MP3" solution does the ripping (to lossless), tagging, and "creating MP3 version" stages. But those intermediate lossless files are destroyed.

A Day In The Life Of A CD

1. The Ripping
   
   First thing to do is get that music off CD into a digital format. I cover this process in this post. Depending on what you use, you may end up fixing tags and adding artwork at this point.
   
   My Solution: EAC for ripping (I have a couple of drives I can use in case of problem CDs), freedb tagging info, and on those rare occasions where I can't get track info, I fire up iTunes and copy-and-paste the track names (but still rip with EAC). Oh, and EAC can grab artwork too.
   
   
   
2. The Tagging (Optional)
   
   If your disc wasn't found in the database, or whoever put it there spelt a track title wrong and you've only noticed now, or you want to merge two-disc sets into one long album (CDex does this with its wonderful track offset option, EAC has a similar "first track number" option), you'll need to edit the tags with something like Foobar.
   
   My Solution: Foobar2000 (but I don't like the way it won't mirror tagging info changes in filenames, need to find something better).
   
   
   
3. The Cover Art (Optional)
   
   If you didn't get artwork while you were ripping, grab some artwork using something like Album Art Downloader. I'd recommend getting your artwork at at least 500x500 if you can. Safe bet is to save the artwork as "Folder.jpg" in the same folder as the album tracks. Check with your library software for exact size limits and filename requirements. Getting the artwork is something you can do later or grab several covers at once. Watch for auto-tagging programs, they don't always get the best (or even correct) artwork.
   
   My Solution: Album Art Downloader, just search for artist/title, pick the best match and drag from search results into album folder to save. Files saved as "Folder.jpg", up to 600x600.
   
   
   
4. Feeding The Library
   
   OK, now you have a digital version of the CD and the front cover.
   
   Move/copy the ripped music plus artwork to its new home on your music server (you could probably even automate this bit), press whatever buttons you need to re-scan and add it to your library, assuming your music server doesn't do this automatically (Sonos allows you to schedule this). If you're ripping lossless, you'll fill up a hard drive quickly, so do any housekeeping you need to and clean up those temp files.
   
   My Solution: copy to a "Shared Music/FlacTunes" folder on my NAS, use "Update Music Index" option to get Sonos to recognise new stuff, keep the last few weeks of rips backed up on my laptop until properly backed up.
   
   
   
5. The MP3/Portable Version (Optional)
   
   If you're going the lossless route, you probably also want a portable copy, so convert those FLACs to MP3 etc. This is a big topic. I use iTunesEncoder and my own custom scripts to get to 160kpbs AAC, but there's so many options. And if you screw it up or want to change format or bitrate in a couple of years, well you do have those master lossless files, and your PC will be happy to repeat the conversion. And for the artwork, well iTunes will find artwork sometimes, otherwise, just use the JPEG you grabbed earlier.
   
   My Solution: 160kpbs AAC managed by iTunes. I use FLAC and iTunesEncoder on the command line to do the conversion (uses iTunes' internal AAC encoder) and my own custom scripts/software to find, convert and import anything I copy into a temp "flacDrop" folder (FLAC to WAV to AAC).
   
   My Alternative Solution: 192kpbs MP3 converted by Foobar. Open Foobar, drag in the FLAC folders/files to be converted, select all and hit "convert", saving in an "itunes import" folder. Then open iTunes and use the "file->add folder to library" to import. More on Foobar here.
   
   
   
6. The Shelf
   
   Now your CDs can gather dust on the shelf, to be visited only when you want to laugh at the band's 80s haircuts in the photos in the booklet. Unless you forget to do...
   
   
   
7. The Backup
   
   Remember to take backups. Seriously, remember the backups! Or just live in the belief that your hard drive will never fail (millions of people do, some of them are even lucky). A USB hard drive is cheap. Re-ripping CDs is tedious, re-buying downloads is expensive. You choose.
   
   
   

Digital Music: Format Wars

Which format should you save your tunes in? If your automatic answer is "MP3", it's worth reviewing your options.

There are two basic choices:

1. Lossless ie. CD quality eg. FLAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV
2. Lossy eg. MP3, AAC, OGG, ATRAC, WMA

Lossy compression is based on the idea that actually, you could throw away the stuff that people tend not to hear, and get a decent approximation of the original for a fraction of the file size.

The ideal is lossless, it's better quality and future-proofed. The really awesome bit is that if you go the lossless route, you can get the lossy version, in multiple different formats (including some not yet invented) for free. Note that not all lossless formats are compressed - FLAC and apple lossless compress, but WAVs don't.

One other thing - most formats allow tracks to be "tagged" (ie. all the track title, number, artist, album, year, singer's dog's name info stored in every file). WAV seems to be the only major exception - all you can rely on with WAV is what you can squeeze into the filename.

Pros and Cons or Lossy vs Lossless

Lossless (eg. FLAC)

Pros:

• High quality - it's CD quality, because it's a perfect copy with nothing thrown away
• Future-proofed - you can easily convert to whatever lossy or lossless format best suits the music player you're going to buy in two years' time

Cons:

• Not universally supported (but hey, you can just convert)
• Takes up space (but disc space is cheap, and you can easily spit out a portable version for your MP3 player)

Lossy (eg. MP3)

Pros:

• OK quality (it's a compromise for space)
• Convenience - you can buy music in MP3 format RIGHT NOW! CDs require a postman or a walk to the store
• Small size - they fit on your MP3 player

Cons:

• Sound quality is sacrificed - OK for headphones or small speakers, but not on a decent system
• Transcoding to a different format is basically out - if your chosen format/bitrate doesn't work for you or your player, you gotta re-buy or re-rip

Other Stuff

Sound Quality Considerations

Ever thought "MP3 is good enough", "there's no difference between MP3 and CD" or even "MP3 sounds better"?

First off, are you comparing like for like? Lets assume you're comparing a CD and an MP3 ripped from the same CD. And to be super-scientific, you disguise which is which. Part of the design of MP3 is to throw away part of the sound, the parts that don't seem very significant. Every time I've done these tests, heavy (or actually not-so-heavy) bass tends to give away the MP3.

The problem is, sometimes "good enough" isn't good enough. On small speakers (eg. laptop, iPod dock) or headphones, sure, MP3s will do, you probably won't notice a difference. On large hifi speakers, you almost certainly will. Your ears. Your future buying decisions. Your choice.

What Bitrate?

Bitrate indicates the available data bandwidth (typically in "kilobits per second"), and therefore the quality. If the music has been compressed into a lossy format, bitrate is a good indicator of quality (higher the better). For lossless music, any bitrate value is only an indication of file size, there's no actual music compression going on.

All format/bitrate decisions are going to be a trade-off between what sounds good to you and the file size. Personally, I need full lossless quality in the house, 160kbps AAC is fine for headphones when working/commuting. But then I choose to have the luxury of being able to switch my portable copy to a different format/bitrate at the drop of a batch script.

It's worth noting that different formats have different compression algorithms and possibly different performance. Do some tests at various bitrates to see what works for you. My settings preferences for a portable copy are basically: 132kbps ATRAC = 160kbps AAC = 160kbps OGG = 192kbps MP3.

Just for comparison with lossy formats, lossless files run at a bitrate of about 1400kbps for the raw WAV, but in terms of filesize, this can be compressed down to almost half that before you need to apply lossy compression.

Constant vs Variable Bitrate

Pretty straightforward for lossy compression. Constant bitrate just uses a uniform bitrate throughout, you can predict how big your files are going to be, every second of music gets the same attention whether it's silence or mayhem. Variable bitrate compression tries to achieve an average bitrate, but allocates more or less of the "bit budget" depending on how busy things get (so you can't predict exactly how big a four-minute music file will be, but that big silent gap before the hidden track will cost nothing to store). Look for the "CBR" or "VBR" settings when selecting your encoding preferences.

Doesn't apply to lossless formats - while some formats offer more efficient storage than others, there's no compression of the actual music.

Gapless Playback

One extra complication is "gapless playback", or the ability to play successive tracks without the player introducing extra pauses between songs. Scarily, there is a term for this. Many formats (MP3/AAC) and players (eg. Sony) are unable to manage this due to a mixture of format flaws and lazy coding. If you ever experienced advanced audio technologies like CD and cassette tape, trying to listen to an album on an average MP3 player requires a major downgrading of expectations. I rant about this at length on this post.

Digital Music Collections: An Introduction

I love music (mostly of the insane fast aggressive kind). I need music everywhere: in the house, in the office, on my commute. I love the packaging, the artwork, the liner notes, the whole "physical product" side of things, I even love the OCD-but-necessary alphabetical storage. However, I'm very lazy, and I hate the actual process of having to go to the shelf, grab a disc, put it in the player, then put it away (or more likely not) when done. For day-to-day use, CDs are a pain.

I'm not really into sacrificing sound quality. I grew up with vynyl, tape and CD (initially played on cheap systems, upgrading to proper separates was both desirable and an achievement), and I'm not willing to compromise and make do with MP3. And neither should you. For we are now in the age of the digital music streamer. Wonderful devices that can basically "turn your house into an iPod", but without the quality drop that usually happens when people replace their stereos with an iPod dock.

I Used To Be A Physical Format Junkie But I'm OK Now, Honest

I'd been buying music on disc for years, and just listening to the CDs. Not such a big problem - I'm a whole-albums kinda guy - but it still involved finding and loading a little plastic disc. With successive MP3 player purchases, each with a different "best" format (Rio Karma and Ogg, Sony and ATRAC, iPod and MP3/AAC), re-ripping became unfeasable, and I learned that having a lossless master you could go back to was a really smart move. It also sets you up for playing back those digital files instead of CDs.

I've seen way too many people go for the short-term option of ripping their CDs to MP3 using iTunes. If you're going to go to all the hassle of feeding little plastic discs to your computer, why settle for low-quality rips in a format/bitrate that works for you today, when with a little planning, you could get higher quality, totally future-proofed digital copies of your music? It took me ages to realise the value of having the collection saved to disk in an instantly-streamable, future-proofed library played back via a system I was years away from buying when I started ripping CDs.

Building And Managing Your Digital Music Collection

So I'm going to dump a whole set of posts outlining how I set up an awesome Sonos-based multi-room CD-quality music system in my house, and managed to also have a large chunk of that music travelling around on my iPod. If it all looks like too much work, don't be scared. Most of this is about downloading a few applications (should be free versions of everything), setting them up, setting aside a couple of working directories on your PC, then following a simple process for each album/purchase (I'll assume that you consider music to be something worth paying for).

My setup is based on a couple of Sonos zones for home streaming (top quality lossless), and an iPod touch for the portable version, but the same strategies work whatever kit you end up with (and if you do it right, you can future-proof yourself against the hardware you're going to buy in a few years' time).