Easy and compact music system for OH

morganlefay

Please don't anyone shout at me because I know NOTHING about these things. My OH wants to upgrade music-playing gadgets. He has big old turntable, tape and CD decks, amplifier and quite good speakers. He wants to be able to download all our CDs (both classical and otherwise) and add a good radio to the mix, but also to have something that's smaller than all these bits and bobs, and no need for lots of CDs in racks. he has been looking at the Brennan, which seems possible, but can anyone recommend anything that would give him a compact system (no need for it to be portable) which he can use in the sitting room, but also possibly download CDs onto his ipad. If anyone kindly answers I'm afraid I won't understand if you're too technical. He would be happy to keep turntable as hardly ever plays his vinyl, and his speakers and amplifier could stay if necessary but - as you can see - I haven't the foggiest what it's all about !:o Sorry !!!

esuhl

I don't know much about the all-in-one systems, but if your OH has already got a decent amp and speakers, I'd keep them and look for something else you can plug in to play digital content.

If you have a spare PC, you could use that. Or you can get devices that give wi-fi access to your hi-fi. I don't know which ones are "good", but this is the first one I came across (as an example):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/DigiFunk%C2%AE-Wireless-Receiver-Compatible-Streaming-WiFi-Audio-Music/dp/B00IHGMGNI

You could then stream content from your PC without needing to have it plugged in to the hi-fi.

For ripping the CDs, I would highly recommend using Exact Audio Copy (EAC). It's the best ripping software around as it uses sophisticated techniques to ensure an accurate rip. It can usually read CDs that are so badly scratched normal CD players won't play them.

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

For the best sound quality, I'd suggest ripping them in FLAC format. It's lossless, which means that when you play it back, it's exactly the same audio quality as the original CD.

https://xiph.org/flac/

Lossy formats (like MP3, OGG, AAC, etc.) take up less disk space, but the audio is of a lower quality than the original CD. Some people can easily tell the difference, others can't.

Once you've ripped the CDs and have got them on your PC, you should be able to easily copy them to an iPad over the network. You can also transcode them from, say, FLAC into MP3, so you can listen to high-quality music at home, but take lower-quality copies on the iPad so you can fit more songs on it.

I_have_spoken

Sonos CONNECT will plug into your existing amp etc., yes it's pricey but that's because it works very well. That'll stream internet radio, Spotify etc. and will play iTunes from the iPad.

NB, forget about ripping CDs to your iPad. You'll need a PC with CD-ROM and a 1TB hard-disk if you have plans to rip a large number of CD, which is also very fiddly with classical to get the track information right.

esuhl

I_have_spoken wrote: »

NB, forget about ripping CDs to your iPad. You'll need a PC with CD-ROM and a 1TB hard-disk if you have plans to rip a large number of CD, which is also very fiddly with classical to get the track information right.

Well... you could stream the content from a PC to an iPad, rather than copying ripped files across, but you'd need network access. Are you saying you wouldn't bother ripping the CDs at all? Throw them away? Or keep the old CD player?

You can use something like MusicBrainz Picard (as I did) to help with tagging, although it can be fiddly and probably doesn't tag classical tracks very well. Still, you only have to do it once.

https://picard.musicbrainz.org/

And yes, you'd need a large hard drive to store the ripped CDs. But they're not expensive. A quality 1TB hard drive costs less than £40:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-WD10EZEX-Cache-Internal/dp/B0088PUEPK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1455384927&sr=8-1&keywords=western+digital+blue+1tb

As a guide, a full 80-minute CD recording uses an equivalent of 700MB. Converted to FLAC, that could be around 350MB give-or-take. And most CDs aren't 80-minutes long, so if the average CD is 250MB in FLAC format, a 1TB drive would hold around 4000 CDs.

Ripping my CDs to my PC and playing them (or Spotify, or whatever) through my hi-fi really works for me (and didn't cost anything as I had hard disk space to spare). Not everyone would want this kind of set up, but it might be worth a thought...

Mr_Toad

morganlefay wrote: »

Please don't anyone shout at me because I know NOTHING about these things. My OH wants to upgrade music-playing gadgets. He has big old turntable, tape and CD decks, amplifier and quite good speakers. He wants to be able to download all our CDs (both classical and otherwise) and add a good radio to the mix, but also to have something that's smaller than all these bits and bobs, and no need for lots of CDs in racks. he has been looking at the Brennan, which seems possible, but can anyone recommend anything that would give him a compact system (no need for it to be portable) which he can use in the sitting room, but also possibly download CDs onto his ipad. If anyone kindly answers I'm afraid I won't understand if you're too technical. He would be happy to keep turntable as hardly ever plays his vinyl, and his speakers and amplifier could stay if necessary but - as you can see - I haven't the foggiest what it's all about !:o Sorry !!!

There are so many options these days for this kind of thing.

What you have to do is decide exactly what your needs are and research the best way to achieve that.

The Brennan is a great bit of kit but it is now somewhat dated. Think of it as a giant iPod that will convert your CDs to digital format for you on one box without a computer. Technology has moved on and navigating round a large CD collection on the Brennan is a bit slow and dated.

He has an iPad so if you have a computer and a network then iTunes, or similar, would be a good way to go.

I have a NAS (Network Attached Storage) which holds all my music in iTunes, this means the PC does not need to be on to access the music.

All you then need to do is attache something like Sonos to your amp and speakers and point it at iTunes on the NAS drive. Access to all your music plus a lot more.

It can be controlled remotely from the ipad and if you want you can point the iPad at iTunes on the NAS and listen to it that way.

There are many media streamers like Sonos you just have to find the one that suits you.

I access the music on my NAS via a couple of internet connected radios, a Roberts i93 and a Pure Evoke Flow. I do it this way because I can move the radios about with me. I do have a decent HiFi but so far haven't felt the need to stream my music to it but it wouldn't take much.

My girlfriend has a Sonos which I'm quite impressed with. She brought it with her when she came over Xmas and I did connect it to the main HiFi and as well as my music we had access to her Spotify account.

Sonaos also gives access to radio.

As you can see from the replies there are many options..........

Norman_Castle

If cd storage is part of the problem cd wallets may help. They take up a lot less room.

grumbler

morganlefay wrote: »

...also possibly download CDs onto his ipad. ...

Each CD is ~700MB=0.7Gb
Without converting to MP3 (or some other format) 100 CDs will need ~70GB.
Some iPads have just 16GB.

esuhl

grumbler wrote: »

Each CD is ~700MB=0.7Gb
Without converting to MP3 (or some other format) 100 CDs will need ~70GB.
Some iPads have just 16GB.

Most CDs aren't a full 80-minutes, so I'd guesstimate that 100CDs would need closer to 50GB as wave files, or 30GB as FLAC, or 5GB as MP3s (depending on quality).

Or you could stream content to the iPad from another device over wifi or over a 3G or 4G phone network.

knightstyle

Have a lookat Onkyo CS-545UK under £300 and great sound.
or JVC RD-D70 for just over £100
Both are good.