Is it a good idea to build a collection of digital files?

So you have no time to click a button on your phone but you have time to physically go to a store, or browse one on the internet, build a shopping cart, order, and then wait for it to arrive? I don't know dude, that sounds kinda backwards to me, lol. No offense intended.

 

Is your house built out of stone? Do you not have any running water in your home with pipes that could burst? Are you heating your home without oil or gas or electric? There is always an element of risk here, rare though it may be. I've seen a few bad things happen to people's homes over the years that were completely unexpected.

I am also more of an album guy, day-to-day (songs only go into digital mixtapes but they have a different purpose for me). And to your point, I have albums that would be very difficult to replace so those were ripped to digital files long ago. And then backed up twice over. That way, if I find myself in the unlikely situation where I wake up to my home on fire, I don't do something stupid like trying to save my vinyl and end up losing my life.

 

I second the suggestion made earlier that Bandcamp could provide the answer, as it offers physical and digital bundles of many of its titles. By buying the vinyl option (which is likely to have a much more robust resale price than a CD) and playing the digital download that comes with it, you get the best of both worlds. You should also search the genres of music you like in Bandcamp – there are thousands of digital-only albums on there offered free of charge by new and up-and-coming bands. Some of them are truly excellent.

 

I’ve thought of just exclusively buying CDs and ripping them, but often I like the hi-res versions of albums as my favorite mastering, which obviously can’t exist on a CD.

 

Ignoring for the moment the semantic aspect of the word insurance, @timind is making an important point: if you're going to backup your music files, you need to keep more than one copy.

I have three external drives that I use for backups, all of which are physically disconnected from my home network except during the act of copying files to them. (I also have a network-attached storage drive with copies of my files, but that is not an insurance copy, as those could be corrupted or wiped out if one of the PCs on my home network suffered a malware breach.) About once a month, I update one of the backup drives, then rotate the drives such that the latest version is securely stored off-site. Even if my entire home burned to the ground, my digital music collection and other encrypted files I store on the drives would be safe (I could never lose more than a month of the most recent files).

 

Redundancy is king!

 

If all your backups are on the same network, they could ALL get wiped out by a malware breach of a PC or other device on the network. (This is what most ransomware can do, and one of the reasons it devastates a lot of systems.) For proper safekeeping, you should keep at least one of the backups physically and logically disconnected from the local network.

 

+ offsite backups.

 

Agree with your statement. I have two hard drives as back-ups as well as the original media which I consider a back-up. The part I take issue with is the home-burning-down part. I've said it before on these discussions and will say it again, if my home burns down, my stereo and music files will be very low priorities for me.

 

Although I agree that if my home burns down my music files will be low priority (at least in the short term).
However:
- When I think about how much time, energy, and money I have put into my music collection over my lifetime, its priority will increase over the long term.
- The "other encrypted files" that I mentioned in my earlier post include important financial records, family photos, and the like. These will be high priority even in the short term, and are the primary reason for keeping an off-site backup. Since I maintain that off-site backup anyway, it's trivial incremental effort to keep my music collection on it as well. (That incremental effort was literally adding a single line to a backup script.)

 

I suppose the question to ask yourself is, “How important is it to me that the music keeps playing?” If you can live with system outages, losing access to your favorite music as licensing agreements change or expire, broadband connection or latency problems and the constant renewal of your subscription then you’re probably ok with streaming services. Otherwise a properly managed file and backed up file library is what you want.

 

Here is my 2,000 album library on a bus-powered 2TB portable HD. In fact, I have three of them, all identical. These drives cost about $100 each. Two working copies for my two systems, and a third backup in my fire-resistant safe. About 20% of the files are hi-res downloads, the rest CD rips, in AIFF format. Is there an easier way?

 

I hear you. I have albums I bought while in high school; I'm 66 now. If the physical media is gone, I'll simply stream music once the shock of losing my house subsides.

 

What, without a $10 adapter?

 

Good solution. A safe deposit box is another option for keeping a backup. Buy two identical backup drives and rotate them every month or so.

 

@bizarrolarry, I would suggest trying out some lossless purchases to see how you like it. I had a streaming account off and on for years but primarily prefer either physical media or lossless files and still do.

Before you load up on lossless files, make sure you are buying the versions you want. Loots of sub-par and brickwalled mastered versions out there still.

 

If I had a new Macbook, I would use the USB -C port to output digital audio files/streams from the MacBook to an external DAC.
https://www.amazon.com/Reiyin-Conve...eywords=usb+to+toslink&qid=1603647988&sr=8-10
Just one option.

 

Agreed. I actually have that covered but not realtime/automatic.

 

Nope. Doesn’t work. Tried it. Also the digital audio controls present in older macs under midi settings are not there when a DAC is attached on newer macs. I’d like to hear from someone who has actually done it.

 

Please enlighten me. Thanks.

 

It sounds like you're unaware of the fact that physical media containing hi-res music can also be ripped to files quite easily. Out of DVD, DVD-A, SACD, and Blu-ray Audio, SACD is the least accessible due to the fact that only a small set of hardware options exist that support ripping from SACD discs (i.e., a PS3 with older firmware version or certain specific disc player models from a small set of manufacturers that all use a certain chipset). Of course, they all require appropriate software to perform the function; most are freeware. More specifics can be provided if you are interested.

Of course, many hi-res titles on disc are no longer available new, but you can find them on the used market (though not generally cheaply like CDs). These may still be a better option in some cases than a hi-res download if one is concerned of the provenance of such files.

Doug

 

Yes. I have. I still like the CDs sleeve notes so mainly buy and Rip.

 

And so is redundancy!

 

...perhaps because more people have ripped theirs...?

 

Wow, that's forked.
It's not that I disbelieved you, just that I find it hard to fathom Apple Macbooks are incapable of outputting digital audio to external DAC.