Audiophile

by Jason

As a warning, this is about to get a little weird... You may change your opinion of me.

As some may know, I'm a type-A audiophile. My latest venture has been the complete reorganization (and re-ripping) of our music library. It is not a huge collection, probably about 400 or so albums.

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I have been made aware that I do not entirely qualify for full audiophile status. While I am annoyed by the loss of sound quality in lossy codecs, I am content to use my Bose headphones without an amplifier, rather than these puppies, or even these. And even though I'm a nut about having proper organization of my music collection, that has much more to do with my type-A personallity than being an audiophile. Perhaps I merely am going a little crazy, or maybe I just have some more growing to do.
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Now, you would think that this would be easy and just a matter of doing some alphabetizing and copying to the computer. Perhaps it should be, but I have made it increasingly complex. Allow me to elaborate...

• My iPod - This requires the use of certain audio file formats that I don't agree with for a variety of reasons. These reasons cause much of the complication, and are described a little more below.
• iTunes Music Store - I have 874 (153 of which have been obtained for free) songs from iTMS to date. This requires the use of iTunes. If Apple decides to increase the price of songs, they will certainly loose this customer (and that will be a new posting). This also means that I don't want to be tied to iTunes for my music.
• Highest Audio Quality - This is the reason I do not agree with the iPod supported formats, but makes the whole thing quite complicated. The bottom line is that regardless of the solution, I want the closest-to-the-original sound. This will vary based on the source.
• Flexible - I have a tendency to change my mind quickly. The solution must adapt if I change my mind regarding the audio format, music player, etc. I've already ripped my CD collection 4 times. With the addition of Erica's music into our collection, this is a two week process. I don't want to do it any more.
  

I have spent nights worrying about this stuff. Just ask Erica. It is a sickness. People make fun of me at work. Never fear, however, for I have reached a solution: FLAC. So, here's how the new system works:

• FLAC - All CD's are ripped to FLAC. CD's by nature are lossy audio compressions. FLAC is the best way I have found to preserve what's left. Use Easy CD-DA Extractor for this (easilly the best ripper out there).
  
• iTMS - All purchases from the iTunes Music Store are scrubbed and burned to CD as an audio track. iTunes even makes it easy to print nice covers for the CD's.
  
• Transcode - Since the iPod and iTunes don't recognize FLAC (and this level of quality is not necessary or efficient for portable players), all FLAC audio is transcoded to AAC, the format most recognized by the iPod. This is done using a combination of dbPowerAmp Music Convertor and a custom shell script I have written to handle synchronizing the source FLAC files with whatever output format I choose. This part is pretty sweet.
• Synchronize - Nightly, after the files are transcoded, my laptop synchronizes itself with the server to get the latest in music. This is fully automated, and come morning, I automagically have all the latest and greatest to take with me to work.
• iTunes - This is the part that still stinks. Now that I have the music in the right format, I have to import everything into my iPod. For whatever reason, iTunes has decided not to provide useful features (namely that of Watch Folders) and so I must do this manually. I have tried to get some feedback to them, and while others agree, they don't seem likely to budge. I have tried using ml_ipod to perform this step with Winamp, but I have not had much success. I'll keep at it, though.
• Bose - This is what makes all the effort worth it. The Quiet Comfort 2 headphones are unreal. Not to mention the customer service I have received from them in the past. Listening to music 6-8 hours a day requires high quality & comfortable headphones. These are the best of both.
  

I told you it was complicated. And weird. But, now I can rest at night knowing that my music will be organized, easilly accessible, and high quality anytime I want it.

Categories: Music Geek