Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Lossless CD digital media storage ideas??

I wish I could say that it was easy but it was far from it. If it ever breaks, I'm going to just manually do it twice per CD.

If you are already creating MP3s with EAC then you already have an MP3 encoder installed. I use and recommend LAME but there are a lot of options to understand when you set it up.

Good link on Lame options

After that, you need some free third party software. I originally used Autoflac
However, you have to copy and modify a script to make it to what you want. Quick searching no longer finds for me an example script but it has to be out there.

The latest rage in automating EAC is called
REACT
However, setting it up is all done by modifying it's .ini file. This requires a comfort with .ini files and/or scripting type languages. It doesn't look much easier than AutoFlac was.

I can send you my script for AutoFlac if you PM me. It will get you started and it's fairly obvious how to change compression ratios and such once the hard part is working.

Thanks John...

Have you heard, or looked into the PS Audio DAC?

I think I also use "DVD Audio Extractor". I will have to check my home PC tonight to confirm. I tried a couple but ended up actually paying the 12 bucks or something to 'legally' get all the features of this one, as it seemed best.

It seems to do a relatively good job of selecting the individual tracks/chapters and making separate stereo, wave files out of the Dolby 5.1 info.

My biggest issue, which can be overcome with an EAC script or switching ripping software, is that once you have the wave files created on your hard drive, all my ripping software currently wants to look to my CD/DVD ROM drive on the computer for the source files to rip into FLACs or MP3s.

At the time I couldn't be bothered downloading yet another ripping software package or messing with AutoEAC scripts again so I just wasted a couple of CDs and copied the wave files to them. Then used EAC to rip to flac as per normal.

I know about it but have never heard it. These days for that kind of money a DAC should have a USB port for additional connectivity to a computer or notebook. The similar priced Benchmark USB DAC has won huge praise and for good reason. There are several technical advantages to using a USB port over coaxial or toslink which are bit limited and more prone to jitter.

I'm a bit biased about PS Audio products since they rarely show specs or graphs on their products. I haven't found any on the PS audio DAC. Also I participated in an expose over their Noise Harvester product some time ago and was less than impressed.

Thanks John......

I've decided to go with a server. The one I'm looking at is an HP unit.

Are there other reasonably priced home servers I should be looking at? I'd prefer one that can lie down on its side and I'll just slide it in on the shelf on my EQ rack where one of the mega changers is.

Sounds to me like you're describing a Mac Mini or even Apple TV.

Yeah, but those don't have a whole lot of storage, and I think the ATV isn't going to do what Mike wants.

Storage is highly expandable via FireWire (or even USB).

The HP's work very well and allow for alot of storage even the little one has 4 bays. Others to consider are the smaller Linksys NAS200 which I use, and the Dlink DNS 323.

From my understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but the server option may be a little faster for file access. The NAS doesn't have a processor and the Squeeze box or Sonos would have to interface with a PC on the network to access files on the NAS. The Server does not need a PC but for ripping the disks. Do I have that right????