Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Furniture or mega-changer?

spiff, when you have time, you should come over and check out my MP3 to audio system setup. I currently use the Linksys Wireless Media adapter, but I'm thinking about switching to the Apple Airport Express.

Afterwards we can go play some tennis.

I've seen your wireless set up Curtis. It's very cool. Roger's actually hooking up the Tivo (oh, yeah...we got tivo last week) to a wireless system from our computers upstairs. As much as I hate the idea of it, perhaps ripping all my cd's and storing them upstairs on a firewire drive, and using the wireless network to listen downstairs isn't such a horrible idea. (I may have typed that, but my mind is saying "yes it is.")

How much drive space are we talking for 400+ cd's? What are all the drawbacks to this idea? You all really need to sell me on it before I go that route. Right now the sony 400 disc changer idea sounds pretty good.

I've got probably around 200 CDs that are taking up 20 GB of space, ripped as 160-192 bit AACs. This is probably not CD quality, but (here's the shocking phrase on an audio board) I can't tell the difference.

Curtis...why are you considering changing from the Linksys to the Apple? What is it about the Linksys you don't like?

More questions regarding going the "ripyercdsandforgetaboutem" idea.

If I go that route, I'll need to buy some more storage space for my computer. I'd wanted to add some space anyway, so I was looking at some firewire drives.

I like this one. It's 250gb, looks nice, and can be had for about $225. The other drive that I've looked at is this one. It's only 120gb, but twice as fast. It can be had for $180. How important is that extra speed? More important than the extra space? Getting the speed and the space is more than I want to spend.

The extra speed will do you no good whatsoever with music storage. For that, you want BIG. If you're going to be using it as your primary drive, you'll want the speed (which you're not, since it's firewire). However, if that's part of the same Big Drive line as I think it is, that's a pair of disks in one enclosure, without a fan. Because of the way they're configured, if one of the disks goes bad, you lose everything. NOT a good idea. Stay away from anything in the Big Disk lineup, unless you really want to rerip all your CDs on a moment's notice.

--edit--
oops, looks like their website isn't properly set up... The second one isn't a Big Disk, but my statements about Big Disks still stand. In any case, go for the capacity, not the speed.

When your ripping or actually playing a MP3, the drive speed doesn't matter in the least. Ripping speed is more controlled by what your using (Software) to rip and the CD player being used.

One more thing, that 250gb Lacie is the way to go! They make nice stuff!

OK...so the 250gb Lacie Porche drive is the better option. Looks better, stores twice as much.

Firewire card...are Firewire 800 cards backwards compatible with Firewire 400 drives? If so, is there any point in spending the extra $30-40 for the 800 card over the 400 card? (Thinking future proofing)

The Firewire 800 cards should be backwards compatible (I think; my only experience is with built in, e.g. Macs), but you'll need special cables, which will probably be expensive and hard to find. The 800 uses a 9 pin connector, and the 400 uses 6 or 4 pin connetors (the extra 2 pins carry power).