Multiplying CDs: what to do with them?
 

As if I didn't have enough store-bought CDs, I find myself inundatedwith CD-Rs. Between system backups and other data CDs and home-burned audio CDs of various stripes, I'm having trouble figuring out the best way to store & keep track of them. The little plastic envelopes are OK in some cases, as are slim jewel boxes. Any creative suggestions beyond what's available in stores?

Nothing to offer except agreement; I can't keep track. The plastic sleeves are a godsend. I don't respect jewel boxes at all.

I have a great solution: switch to mp3-cds.

I've already done this myself. I condenced a 200-cd cd collection into just 20 cds.

Portable cd players and boomboxes that play mp3-cds are very reasonable in price and play normal cds as well. It's also very easy to hook your computer audio output into your stereo.

The only problem with this is that it's incredibly time-consuming to start out with. Ripping 200 cds took me an extremely long time. I did it as a summer project, though, and i'm glad I did. I can now carry around in a nice, small cd-binder an incredibly humongous amount of music.

yeah but what do you do to keep track of those 20 cds?

myself, whenever i buy a new cd the first thing i do is rip it and put it away. i make a copy of it on cdr, forget to label it and put it in my car. when i have another cd to play, i take the first disc out of the stereo and put it on the passenger seat. then, when i want to listen to it again, i fumble through the stack of unlabeled cds on the floor in front of the passenger seat, trying each cd one at a time until i get tired of the process. then i accept my fate, burn another copy and the cycle starts all over.

~james

The thing stopping me from doing this is the price of MP3 players for the car. Last I looked it was still like $300 for a player. Portable players that will take MP3 CDRs are under $100 now, so what's the deal?

OTOH I must have had about 7 different solutions for CDs in the car and they all fail the most important factor: they all skipped. Portable CD players have skip protection and car players don't. I don't understand this at all.

I buy a CD, put it in the PowerMac, click the "Import" button, drag the tracks to my iPod, and then enjoy. 2,000 songs (10GB) in my pocket. :)

I read in an advertisement that a 20 gig iPod is coming soon. :)

If "coming soon" means that I could have bought one 3 weeks ago but decided to put the money toward the new gaming system, then yes, 20 gig iPods are coming soon.

There is no deal; car stereo CD players that will play CD-Rs and CD-RWs with <a href="http://www.mp3shopping.com/english/CDC-MP3.htm">mp3s</a> on them can be bought for around $150. Check places like Best Buy, or even Target. Reputable brand names as well, if that is a must. The increased cost of in-dash stereos vs. MP3 discmen is that the engineering effort and care going into the former is somewhat higher, as more sophisticated sound systems tend to be attached to them. The latter are - if you opt for a cheap solution - uniformly flimsy and badly-engineered. If you have to produce sound that will be put through speakers, with amps, etc. and construction that can't fall apart after being shaken and vibrated a lot for years and years inside a car, you need to be careful.
This is unusual. In-dash car CD players that are factory built-in are usually rock solid; I can only speak from experience in regard to those in Hondas and BMWs (from 1997 onward), but none of those that I've seen have shown any sign of skipping whatsoever. YM obviously V.

X.

What about a DVD-RW burner? It won't eliminate the problem, but it will reduce it by about 4x -- aren't they right about 2GB per DVD now?

Myself, I plan to rip all my audio CDs to mp3 (should be about 50GB) and store 'em on a big hard drive in the sky (server) for home-wide access. Then, I'll use a DVD-RW to back 'em up and just store the original CDs in a box in the attic.

"Coming Soon" is a Canadian phrase that means you can buy it right now in the States for less. ;)

Easy. When I burn an mp3-cd, I label it and put it in a cd-binder.

The cdrs I buy have a capacity of 700 meg; so I can fit about 10-12 cds onto one cdr. As long as you label it, there's no problem at all. Even if you grab the wrong cd, out of 12 different albums, you're almost guaranteed to find something you like. I find that I never need more than 1 cd in my car.

I think when they first started making these they had problems. I've since then upgraded to a much nicer and newer one, and it never skips at all. So I have a feeling the newer ones don't have these kinds of problems.

Mp3-cd players actually have <i>more</i> skip protection that regular cds, since it take less time to load the song into memory. My portable player stops spinning the cd about 20 seconds into a song, but the music keeps playing. It doesn't usually spin up again for another 3 minutes, and then only for another 20 seconds.

BTW, here's one for only $150.

Those are still kind of expensive for my taste, although they're definitely getting there. Once DVD burners get cheap enough, i'm definitely switching.

Minidisc is your friend.
 

If you're going portable, ditch the CD players, and the MP3 players. I've had my Minidisc portable for about 9months now, and couldn't picture myself without it. It's small, media's cheap, plenty of space ( 3hrs on LP2, 5 on LP4 ). What more could you ask for? It is almost impossible to skip, I can play about 30+ hours on ONE AA battery, and I have a older model. The newer ones get more efficient with every new generation. If you buy a new NetMD model, you get to drag and drop songs onto the Minidisc, very sweet.

Check it out: http://www.minidisc.org

Don't you have to burn them at 1x?

Not if you pick up a NetMD model. And luckily, just about every new one you encounter is NetMD compatible.

Hmmm maybe this is the answer... I've never done this in a systematic way. I've reserved MP3'ing for stuff I got off the net, rather than ripping of my current collection for portability. So, I'm gonna try it. I have a couple challenges, first time to rip, etc. that you've all mentioned. My first project now features 9 or 10 CDs plus excerpts from some others, and it's worked well. The ripping process is somewhat challenging to the resources of my poor old computer, but we're getting by.

My second challenge is playing them on the road: I have a Rio MP3 CD player, and it works fine w/ a cassette adapter in my old car. The new minivan, however (you may remember a thread about this issue with a mini FM transmitter) has a CD player, which while, on the face of it is an upgrade, means that I can't plug in any external source like an MP3 player. I have invested in a small set of speakers from Radio Shack that seems tailor made for this purpose (come with a carrying case, no cables to tangle up), which I'm going to try out on the road shortly. Tests at home suggest that quality of the speakers is good, but not as good as the built-in system in the minivan. Still... I have always been of the school of thought that super-fabulous audio fidelity is wasted in an environment with as much noise as a car driving down the road. So we'll see.

I think I've found out what Nic does for a living. I also think his real name is Johnny Appleseed.

Truth is ... I've got nothing to do with Apple. My first computer was a Mac II. I don't have any Apple toys now, but I do luv 'em. And I really like their new products and marketing.

lol.