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iPod Largest iTunes library
- Thread starter Habitus
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I have 1.7TB of music, mostly in Apple Lossless. I've been collecting CDs since they started making them, and this is about 5000 of them. I'm very happy that I started ripping in lossless early on, even though hard drive space was very expensive back then. I've probably spent over 10K on drives for my music library since I started ripping in 1998. As there were no HDs big enough to keep the full library until quite recently, RAID was the only way to go. Now I store my files on a single internal 3TB drive for $150! This drive size will last me for the rest of my life if I stick with 16/44.1. It's amazing how things have changed! There is absolutely NO reason anymore to use AAC or MP3, at least not from a cost perspective.
I also have 3 additional full backup drives, of which one is always kept off-site. I have no intentions of ever ripping all those CDs again!
Having this much music is great, but in reality I listen to new stuff about 90% of the time. All new music goes into a "Rate" playlist, and a song stays there until it has been rated. After doing this for many, many years, I now have an awesome playlist of 5 star songs that is like a radio station made especially for me. It was totally worth it.
For my main listening, iTunes sends the music to the digital out of an airport express that is hooked up to a Benchmark DAC1, which the goes to a Krell amp and B&W speakers. I am very happy with my setup. It sounds great and is very convenient. The cover art is displayed on a plasma TV and I control ratings etc. with a wireless keyboard. iTunes gets a lot of crap from many people, but I love it. Especially that you can send the music to many different rooms simultaneously. It makes for a great whole house system.
I also have 3 additional full backup drives, of which one is always kept off-site. I have no intentions of ever ripping all those CDs again!
Having this much music is great, but in reality I listen to new stuff about 90% of the time. All new music goes into a "Rate" playlist, and a song stays there until it has been rated. After doing this for many, many years, I now have an awesome playlist of 5 star songs that is like a radio station made especially for me. It was totally worth it.
For my main listening, iTunes sends the music to the digital out of an airport express that is hooked up to a Benchmark DAC1, which the goes to a Krell amp and B&W speakers. I am very happy with my setup. It sounds great and is very convenient. The cover art is displayed on a plasma TV and I control ratings etc. with a wireless keyboard. iTunes gets a lot of crap from many people, but I love it. Especially that you can send the music to many different rooms simultaneously. It makes for a great whole house system.
That sounds like my dream setup, very interesting. I can only imagine seeing the progression of storage tht you mentioned, because even in using computers for about eight years of my life (besides kids games as a child), I've also seen such a huge explosion in the bang for your buck in this regard.
Unfortunately for me, the vast majority of my iTunes library is in 320kbs mp3 format, so I feel switching over to lossless, as wonderful as it sounds, would be a bit of a task to say the least.
All right, who has the largest iTunes library?
I currently have 372GB...
Habitus
My itunes libraray is about 160GB and filled with music and movies....
Since upgrading some HBO shows to HD such as the Sopranos and Six Feet Under, my TV show library has grown:
All shows bought in iTunes, HD if available.
2729 TV shows, 68.5 days, 1,765.85 GB
Movies:
140, 10.1 days, 205.03 GB
Music hasn't grown much over the last year. I don't buy allot of music.
12,900 songs, 44.6 days, 93.63 GB
All shows bought in iTunes, HD if available.
2729 TV shows, 68.5 days, 1,765.85 GB
Movies:
140, 10.1 days, 205.03 GB
Music hasn't grown much over the last year. I don't buy allot of music.
12,900 songs, 44.6 days, 93.63 GB
My setup
2011 MBP 17 standard config w/8 GB RAM, 2011 Mac mini 1.7 w/8 GB RAM, new MBA 13/i5/256 (wife's). Two gen 1 iPads.
483 GB music all Apple losses
iTunes library is on a 1TB Lacie via fire wire 800 daisy chained via FW 800 to a second Lacie 1TB.
Broadcast iTunes via optical toslink airport express to:
Audio GD NFB-8 DAC ACSS-CAST>
Audio GD Phoenix balanced headphone amp/preamp>
Audeze LCD 2 planar magnetic headphones balanced
Also airport express to a home theater and the kids room.
2011 MBP 17 standard config w/8 GB RAM, 2011 Mac mini 1.7 w/8 GB RAM, new MBA 13/i5/256 (wife's). Two gen 1 iPads.
483 GB music all Apple losses
iTunes library is on a 1TB Lacie via fire wire 800 daisy chained via FW 800 to a second Lacie 1TB.
Broadcast iTunes via optical toslink airport express to:
Audio GD NFB-8 DAC ACSS-CAST>
Audio GD Phoenix balanced headphone amp/preamp>
Audeze LCD 2 planar magnetic headphones balanced
Also airport express to a home theater and the kids room.
People have been doing PCM rips with modified Oppo players for about two years. And now with the PS3 method you can get ISO/DSD before undergoing any PCM conversion, and the foobar plugin to decode DSD is rapidly evolving. This is a new and exciting development.
Hence no easy way to rip them
Quite honestly, DVD-A is a pain as it is for anything other than 1:1 backup.
Tagalicious. But its not working well on Lion so you might want to wait for them to release an update which they told me they were waiting on apple to approve
Hence no easy way to rip them
Actually I'm doing the ps3 method and it's not that hard, just tedious and time consuming. And as with DVD-a all the tools are for windows.
True, though some DVD-As have 2.0 PCM in VIDEO_TS VOBs, no windows software required for that.
You mentioned DSD decoding in foobar, why not encode as FLAC or ALAC?
Especially with the immaturity of the DSD plugin, the weakest link is the DSD->PCM decoding. The closest to the source we can get is the DFF files, everything further down becomes subjectively lossy based on the DSD decoder. I will probably make FLACs for everyday use but I'll keep the DFF files as source material, at least until the DSD decoder becomes sufficiently good and stable.
I used to have about 160GB of music, TV shows and films. Now i have whittled it down to just 40GB of Music and 20GB of Audiobooks. I have just kept the albums i couldn't live without. The rest can be streamed from Spotify. I removed all the films i had ripped as i hardly ever find a film that worth watching more than once nowadays anyway. The ones i do want to watch i can just rent from iTunes. With services like BBC iPlayer, ITV player and 4OD on Youtube i dont need to store any TV shows either.
Doesn't anyone think it kinda moot the library file size being as everyone uses different file formats? When someone says their library is 1+tb of music alone it's always lossless. Files are huge. How bout measuring a music library based on mp3? I have just over 400gb of mp3 all tagged from top to bottom.
And by the same token we could compare 320kb/s and 128kb/s libraries.
Oh I see, thanks for the explanation.
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How about we compare playing time? I have 25.9 days of music, 20.4 days of movies, and 7.2 days of tv shows.
Movies: 10 days, 16 hours, 25 minutes, 45 seconds 146 movies
Music: 44 days, 17 hours, 44 minutes, 54 seconds 12934 songs
TV shows: 68 days, 19 hours, 11 minutes, 7 seconds 2739 TV shows
Been collecting for close to 8 years. Still have another 50-60gb I haven't added to my library...