The first thing you need to do is to calculate your storage requirements/capacity. If you compress the CDs' WAVs to FLAC format, you'll need approx. 300-400 MB per CD. If you have 1,000 CDs, this means you need approx. 300-400 GB of hard disc space. As another poster mentioned, you will need 2 drives like this - Primary and Backup. I would recommend you not skimp and simply buy 2 1 TB (TeraByte = 1,000 GigaBytes). This will provide you with a backup as well as room to grow.
I just bought a Maxtor 1 TB drive for $225. It's well-built, fast, has USB and FireWire connections, and has a 5 year warranty. Get 2 of these.
Then, you need a device that will take the music files stored on the hard discs, decode them, and pipe them out to your hi-fi system. Lots of folks use big, fancy music servers. These are very nice, but some are QUITE expensive.
I'm a bit of a skin-flint, here's my setup: $500 Acer laptop running several different pieces of software for playback: Windows Media Player, WinAmp, and FooBar. They all do about the same thing, they play back music files. They can play back WAVs, FLACs, SHNs, MP3s and several other file formats. I use FLAC because it's free, it's "lossless", and it works quite well. It compresses a WAV to about 60% of its original size with NO loss of audio quality.
Attached to this laptop is a LinkSys Wireless MusicBridge, approx. $90. This device takes the music generated by the software on the laptop and sends it to my hi-fi system. I can "stream" the music to the LinkSys wirelessly, or I can use an Ethernet cable to hard-wire the connection. I use the Ethernet cable, it's more reliable and supports higher speeds.
So, I attach the MusicBridge to my laptop using an Ethernet cable and then I attach the MusicBridge to my hi-fi by using a coax digital cable into one of my Digital Inputs on my pre-processor. This allows me to use the DACs in my pre-processor (very good ones) instead of the ones that the MusicBridge has. They're "okay", but not as good as my pre-pro's.
That's about it. I use my laptop running one of the aforementioned software programs to play back the FLAC files stored on the hard discs and the MusicBridge takes care of getting the signal to my hi-fi. BTW, it sounds pretty darn good [smile].
Total "investment" is about $1,000. That buys you a laptop PC, 2 external hard discs, and the LinkSys Wireless MusicBridge.
Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions...
-RW-
I just bought a Maxtor 1 TB drive for $225. It's well-built, fast, has USB and FireWire connections, and has a 5 year warranty. Get 2 of these.
Then, you need a device that will take the music files stored on the hard discs, decode them, and pipe them out to your hi-fi system. Lots of folks use big, fancy music servers. These are very nice, but some are QUITE expensive.
I'm a bit of a skin-flint, here's my setup: $500 Acer laptop running several different pieces of software for playback: Windows Media Player, WinAmp, and FooBar. They all do about the same thing, they play back music files. They can play back WAVs, FLACs, SHNs, MP3s and several other file formats. I use FLAC because it's free, it's "lossless", and it works quite well. It compresses a WAV to about 60% of its original size with NO loss of audio quality.
Attached to this laptop is a LinkSys Wireless MusicBridge, approx. $90. This device takes the music generated by the software on the laptop and sends it to my hi-fi system. I can "stream" the music to the LinkSys wirelessly, or I can use an Ethernet cable to hard-wire the connection. I use the Ethernet cable, it's more reliable and supports higher speeds.
So, I attach the MusicBridge to my laptop using an Ethernet cable and then I attach the MusicBridge to my hi-fi by using a coax digital cable into one of my Digital Inputs on my pre-processor. This allows me to use the DACs in my pre-processor (very good ones) instead of the ones that the MusicBridge has. They're "okay", but not as good as my pre-pro's.
That's about it. I use my laptop running one of the aforementioned software programs to play back the FLAC files stored on the hard discs and the MusicBridge takes care of getting the signal to my hi-fi. BTW, it sounds pretty darn good [smile].
Total "investment" is about $1,000. That buys you a laptop PC, 2 external hard discs, and the LinkSys Wireless MusicBridge.
Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions...
-RW-