I finally ripped the majority of my CD collection!!! Truthfully, I can't believe how many CDs Mary and I have bought over the years (it doesn't help to work at a retail company).

Accessing SlimServer states "Your music library contains 400 albums with 5319 songs by 744 artists." Wow!! Plus there are still a few CDs that I'm missing or haven't ripped. Total disk space for the collection is 127GB for FLAC originals. Compare that to the 30GB required for re-encoded @ 256kbps MP3, which fits perfectly on my iPod.

I ripped to lossless FLAC format and have a crontab that periodically runs and re-encoded them to 256kbps VBR MP3 for my iPod. Averaging 5 CDs per day the process took almost 3 months. Every time I walked by my PC I slipped in another disc. To rip the discs I used EAC (Exact Audio Copy) with AccurateRip configured for my drive. Several of my CDs were damaged and a few tracks couldn't be ripped. Luckily I have detailed logs for each CD so I can go back and see if enabling a higher level of error correction help. Or perhaps I can find someone to lend me an undamaged version.

DeSantis pointed my towards the Open Source Slim Devices SlimServer software for managing your music collection via a web interface. SlimServer provides a decent UI, search capabilities, and the ability to stream your music remotely. Though I decided not to buy one, the Squeezebox2 device provides an easy way to play music through your stereo.

Almost all my albums have cover art associated with them, courtesy of

the Album Cover Art Downloader (Windows) which integrates with Amazon.com to smoothly download cover art for your entire collection. My automated encoding scripts also update ID3v2 APIC tags to embed the cover art into convert MP3s. Unfortunately iTunes has a semi-known bug where it incorrectly handles APIC embedded art (in fact iTunes embeds art itself under the incorrect index). I spent about an hour trying to debug this before deciding to just wait until future iTunes releases when this actually works.

Also, after being recommended highly by my good buddy Jon, I ordered hundreds of Sleevecity's 3.5 mil 100% virgin polyethylene CD sleeves to replace all the hard plastic cases. My entire collection of CDs fits into two shoeboxes now. Cost $3.99 / 100 sleeves. As long as you don't mind getting rid of all the plastic cases (I kept any unique cases) this is a compact and cheap way of storing your originals.

I feel much better this time around than the last 2 attempts at ripping my collection. The first time around in late 2000 I ripped to one of the first AudioReQuest Music Servers (an awesome product at the time, I haven't used a more recent version) and unfortunately used way to low quality MP3 @ 192kpbs. The muffled sound was clearly noticable on higher end headphones or when played on my stereo system. I attempted again several years later but didn't complete ripping since I didn't feel like I had a good long term strategy that was flexible. FLAC and all my custom, automated scripts make me feel much better about having a long term solution.

Next up? Figuring out a better way to play music on my stereo than hooking up my iPod or using my old, seldom working HTPC. Perhaps exploring (or re-exploring in some cases) Meedio, MythTV, MCE 2005, Roku, Sonos, or other (preferably cheap) solution.

Posted by ryans at 12:55 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I was touring a house last weekend which had this massive RPTV w/ a really nice picture which ended up being the new Sony Qualia. I didn't know how cool the Qualia was at the time until another friend of mine brought up that he was thinking of buying a new TV and the Qualia was at the top of his list. Had I known how impressive this set was I would have definately checked it out more! Even in the minute or so I got to view the Qualia it was obvious the set needed some serious picture control tweaking before it looked phenomenal.

I've had great luck w/ Sony TVs. My nearly 6 year old Sony 53" 4:3 53XBR300 RPTV has really lasted the test of time ($4000 at the time); it is still excellent. The picture display looks better than most HDTV RPTV sets sold in stores (other than really high end). This is mostly due to the fact that I had it ISF hand tuned a few years back and then also added an external iScan HD scaler (~$1000) last year to replace Sony's original DRC (Digital Reality Creation) internal scalar.

My Sony supports several HDTV resolutions up 1040i; I run all 16:9 video at 540p via the iScan which looks amazing and 4:3 at 480p full screen. The best picture comes from the HDTV channels via my Comcast digital box (also upscaled by the iScan) and the results are stunning.

My luck w/ Sony video products has been great. Fortunately I don't need a new TV or I'd probably be crazy enough to buy the Qualia.

Posted by ryans at 01:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of my winter projects has been planning and installing Lutron RadioRA lighting controls through most of my house. RadioRA is a fully programmable system that uses RF (and over existing wire) communication to automate lighting throughout an existing house. It's more expensive than wired systems, but the cost to cut into all your walls, wire, patch, and repaint makes an RF system more than worth it for existing homes.

I found the cheapest deal for new components from Davis Wholesale Electric, and bought a few additional from eBay. The first three took me about 2 hours to install and I had to strip down an old 50+ foot telephone cable to do continuity testing between multi-location switches. The rest should go start to go faster now that I have the system down. Haven't installed or programmed the master controls, though I did test the system w/ the flashing mode which is extremely annoying when all the lights in part of your house start flashing one after another.

Posted by ryans at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mary was out of town this weekend and I ended up working on tons of projects. One of them being finally re-converged my old Sony RPTV after almost a year of needing to (I lived on Sony's Flash Focus button which did an ok job). While I was at it I also disassembled and cleaned each CRT lens, following info found on KeohiTV.

What an amazing difference. I've only completed converging 1080i mode and need to revisit 480p (since that's the mode that's used when I watch 4:3).

Another significant improvement recently was purchasing the iScan HD scalar. While quite expensive (almost $1k), it killed many birds with one stone:

• Bypasses the internal upscaler in the Sony, which is decent but nothing compared to the iScan, especially for TV content
• Upscales DVDs to 1080i (or 540p), noticably better quality than standard DVD 480p, the Sony was bypassed for this anyway
• All devices use single HDTV input, auto-switch, and always output the highest quality, upsampled signal
• Built in lip-sync audio correction to deal w/ video processing delays
• Extended any need to purchase a replacement TV by at least a year or two (I'm supposed to be downsizing anyway ;)

Comcast is coming on Tuesday to install HDTV alonst with their new HDTV PVR box based on Microsoft media technology. Has dual HDTV tuners which should be great for dealing w/ those times I always had conflicts w/ TiVo. Another bonus is no more monthly fees to TiVo. This will be the first device to bypass the iScan (for at least the HDTV feeds), I might not have bought the iScan at the time had I known Comcast was coming out w/ a reasonable solution (just was released in Seattle only this weekend). Regardless it still improves DVD movies, race videos, video games, etc.

Posted by ryans at 01:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Managing the massive amounts of various media files (photos, videos, music, documents) is painful once you get beyond a small collection. I've been managing photos in hierarchical directories on my Windows PC for the last few years and it's worked well except that it takes time to move files around, bring up thumbnails, search photos, upload them to my web based gallery, etc.

I switched to using Gallery web based system a year or so ago and it's worked well except that it's cumbersome to upload massive numbers of photos, the interface is clunky and often logs you out during transfers, and periodically munges a file so that it can no longer be opened (in fact it modifies each file uploaded which I'd prefer to leave in it's native format).

Further many desktop albums are much more advanced at this time (Adobe Album, etc.) and allow various views into your collection (both online and archived).

For now I plan on moving to a Windows based system and figure out some way to snapshot out the photos I want available online via Gallery using scripts.

Posted by ryans at 05:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My previous attempts at CD archiving have always failed. I just haven't come up w/ a suitable solution to archiving everything once. Recently I ran across the Tong Family Blog, a Seattle-ite who details how they are using FLAC and MP3 to archive CDs.

Posted by ryans at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sounds like converting DV tapes over to digital video doesn't make much sense for archival yet. First at 3.6MB/sec of recording DV disk space is chewed up quick.

Recommendations:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/dv_archiving_2002_11_26.htm

• Hard drives aren't suited for archival due to drive lifetimes and high failure rates.
• Archiving to DVD is reasonable since it has a 100 year lifetime.
• DV tapes have a 10-15 year lifetime, assuming not much actual usage of the tape.

See forums:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/forumdisplay.php?forumid=5

Posted by ryans at 08:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Have been looking at how to digitally archive all my CDs in a lossless way so that I can have scripts to re-encode to appropriate bitrates as I get new audio devices.

Looks like the current best solution is EAC -> WAV and then use a WAV -> FLAC encoder. Setup Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-M1502 fully in EAC with REX profile + offset. Iomega wasn't listed in their drive guide so I skipped setup of this device.

Guide to High Quality Audio Replication

Still need to investigate if gapping is going to occur between tracks which are mixed together (Oakenfold, etc).

Posted by ryans at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Found MP3Gain, a nifty Linux and Windows tool to normalize volume levels across a collection of MP3 files. MP3Gain does not just do peak normalization, as many normalizers do. Instead, it does some statistical analysis to determine how loud the file actually sounds to the human ear. Also, the changes MP3Gain makes are completely lossless. There is no quality lost in the change because the program adjusts the mp3 file directly, without decoding and re-encoding.

http://www.geocities.com/mp3gain/

Posted by ryans at 01:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)