Lossless audio file sizes?

I'm considering ripping my entire CD collection to Apple lossless.

As I have about 1200 CD's to rip, I was wondering if anyone knows how much drive space this will require. 1TB, 2TB, or is that too much? I'll probably get an outboard drive to store the music on. Will this present any problems in ripping or playback?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Steve

 

One album from 100 to 400 MB depending on the duration of the cd in lossless FLAC or ALAC
Consider file size to be 50% percent of the original wav and it should give you an accurate idea

 

I would say 400MB per album is a good conservative estimate. With that in mind, you'd probably want at least a 500GB drive for what you have right now, or maybe 750GB just to be on the absolute safe side (ie if you have a lot of double albums that eat up 60+ minutes per CD).

 

I have 5,000ish songs in my itunes about 90% in Apple Lossless format and my itunes library off the top of my head is like 110 GB's. So let that be a rough estemate.

I'd say you would be around 500 GB's if my math is correct.

 

No, it won't. Don't worry.

Just make sure the drive letter does not change when you unplug and replug it occasionally. Especially if you want to make playlists.

 

I think that 425 GB would be about right.

 

Remember that you want to buy two HDDs - one for everyday use and another as a backup (preferably stored off-site once you finish ripping your collection).

 

And also buy more than you need, because if you are like me, your collection continues to grow. I have about 600 GBs of music on an external 1.5 TB drive. This gives me room to grow as my collection grows.

 

If you are using an Apple computer I'd use AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format).

 

Thanks for all of your comments guys, they are appreciated.

It looks like 1TB external drives are available for about $99.00, so I'll probably go that route. Better safe than sorry.

 

Isn't AIFF uncompressed? I could see the need if perhaps there's a battery life concern with using a compressed format like ALAC, but from a storage aspect the OP would then require a larger hard drive, correct?

 

They only real advantage of AIFF over Apple Lossless is having the files in an uncompressed format that can be converted again later should you decide you want something other than Apple Lossless. But if you have the CDs there's no point in AIFF.

 

What? You can convert from ALAC to anything else whenever you want, you don't need AIFF.

 

ALAC is a lossless format, however - you can transcode from that to another lossless format, or an uncompressed format, with no data loss.

The only advantage I can think of to use AIFF is a possible improvement in battery life given that the device doesn't have to decompress the file on playback. But the con is the increased storage usage. CPU is also a factor but on modern devices, even smartphones, CPU cycles used for a compressed format should be negligible.

 

I was thinking more of future lossless formats as opposed to current formats. And in the future who knows.

 

What is the sense to rip and save your own CD collection to harddisc...??? Please explain...thanks...

 

ALAC is open source now I believe so obsolescence won't be an issue.

Mainly so you can use a centralised media player (stand-alone, PC-based or via other device) and have custom playlists, mixing and matching music whenever you like. Other benefits include having a backup, being able to have your music on the move (on a portable media player) and being able to edit the music.

 

An uncompressed codec is still a codec and requires a driver in your device. ALAC, as mentioned above, is now open source so there's likely no short-term concern about using ALAC as long as there are developers who are willing to code drivers as new firmware is released.

Of course, there's a possibility that ALAC could lose favor with hardware vendors who might decline to support it, even Apple themselves. Doesn't matter if it's open source, just look at FLAC as an example - but that's an unknown right now. I would stick with the short-term and look at the devices I own and what's the most supported lossless / uncompressed codec (assuming that's the requirement here) and then choose the best one. I'm assuming ALAC was being considered because the OP is in an Apple-centric ecosystem btw.

 

That will easily fit a 1TB drive with room to spare. Don't forget the need to backup. I have two backup drives for each of my server drives, many in Apple Lossless, and to me, it's cheap insurance for the amount of time it would take to re-rip thousands of CDs.

Don't forget to make sure that all the tags are correct. And I would strongly recommend that you use an AccurateRip engine (as opposed to the ripper in iTunes or many other players). Only with AccurateRip can you confirm you have a bit-for-bit copy of the CDs.

Note there have been many, many, many discussions on the forum in the past on ripping stratagies, techniques, hardware, and software.

 

It is a great way to enjoy lossless music through multiple systems.

 

That would take up twice the space as ALAC, etc. for no particular reason...?

I use AIFF a lot for production, but for storage/playback it's a strange choice IMO.

 

Storage devices are cheap.

 

I second the suggestion to START WITH a backup plan.
Even if you have the CDs re-ripping and tagging them would be a nightmare.
Consider 2 HDDs, one for main use, the other for backup, possibly stored elsewhere

and don't forget to use EAC or equivalent Mac/Linux alternatives for accurate rip

 

IMO there are two main requirements when turning a CD collection into a library of files:

- lossless format so that files can later be transcoded to different formats if needed
- TAGGING capability of the format; you have no music library if it is not tagged correctly.

Those two things are much more important than the "audiophile" claims of acoustic differences between ALAC, AIFF, FLAC, WAV, etc which, in my opinion, are rather "borderline" in many different ways...
I agree with you that, unless you have 10,000 CDs, storage should not be a concern, but for the two reasons above I would not go AIFF. AIFF and WAV tagging is just not good enough and not supported enough.

 

This reasoning is awful, I hope you're not in charge of anything to do with finances. "There's two options, one of which is nearly twice as efficient in terms of storage space and is more universally supported. Let's go with the less efficient one because storage space is cheap."