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I've seen a few DJs who get those CD notebooks and put the other stuff in the pocket above the CD and use it vertically, that away they've got the track listing and all, but don't have the nasty jewel cases that take up too much room.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/5887295/515656) | From: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jwz
Fri, 27-May-2005 8:39 PM (UTC)
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See above, "don't want to spend the rest of my life tearing apart jewel cases with the bloody stumps that I used to call my fingers."
That's exactly what i do. I use these boxes from ikea. I just counted and one of them has 70 cd's in it including a couple double cd's that i counted as two. The box you pointed out seems pretty big. Is the cardboard strong enough to hold that many cds? (My massive collection fits in 3 boxes)
man... i'd need 11 of those boxes. :(
Disks eventually get damaged in binders. Your idea is great.
Isn't this a bit like saying "Every day your house doesn't burn down increases the chances of the same"
On the long term, everything gets destroyed. See also: The seven wonders of the world. (Go Egypt!)
-transiit
nope.
spent alot of time ripping all our cds into itunes... then stuffed them into Rubbermaid storage bins and exiled them to the garage. They are much cheaper than the above-linked-to Archival Underbed Garment Boxs.
Same here-- plastic bins are much better at repelling the elements than simple cardboard boxes.
If you're going to relegate them to backup, have you considered storing them offsite?
| From: jwz
Fri, 27-May-2005 11:23 PM (UTC)
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You can't have them, if that's what you mean!
I actually had the "do I really need CDs" revelation forced on me by a move... I have no room to put my shrines to CDs, so all of my CDs are packed in boxes and taped shut... I just used generic uhaul boxes though...
A guy in college had those cardboard storage boxes you linked to for your cds and they seemed to do the trick, even holding up pretty well during moves...
I'm considering doing this; putting all of our CDs (about 1400+ total between me and Pam) on hard disk, and just sharing them in the house, but it begs a few questions...
Backups? That's a lot of time to rip them all... it would suck if the drive(s) crashed...
What compression format/Bitrate?
If you're considering moving your source material to a difficult-to-reach place, I suggest you buy an extra hard disk or two first. At current hard disk prices of about 50 cents per gigabyte nowadays, I think it makes sense to re-rip all your CDs into some non-lossily-compressed format, whether it be WAV or FLAC or whatever, and stashing them on some easily-accessible hard disks which will take up only a tiny bit of physical space. MP3 is not going to be the most-supported compressed music format forever, and so you'll eventually want or need to re-encode all those songs in the future. It may well come down to a choice of either doing the work now, or doing it later when the risk of your CDs rotting or being otherwise inaccessible is greater.
Food for thought, anyways.
FWIW, I'm doing exactly what you're doing. For about 4 years now I've been accessing new CDs just once to rip them to my fileserver, and archiving them away in big cheap generic boxes. Interestingly, my brother-in-law (20 years older than me) spent years doing the exact same thing converting his brand-new LPs to cassettes. Somewhere in his house are boxes and boxes of mint-condition LPs that have been played just once.
I agree with a previous commenter about thinking about how you're storing your live copies though -- not only would it be pertinent to consider what quality you've stored them at (I've been using highest quality VBR MP3) but you probably want to think seriously about protecting the data. I gave up on CDs/DVDs of MP3s ages ago because the writable discs deteriorate so quickly (only last about a year or so) and a tape drive is just way too expensive. I ended up buying 3 x 250G SATA drives and a hardware RAID-5 card and using that as my fileserver.
(And I never used the term "write-only" to describe any part of my house before, but it's part of my vocabulary now. Nice.)
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/52954717/337250) | From: transiit
Fri, 27-May-2005 10:01 PM (UTC)
Re: Data Integrity | (Link)
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I've yet to have a CD-R bitrot on me. Ok, so I'm still working on my 4-year old spindle of Memorex discs, but I can still pull data off the earliest I can find (dug out a few before this post).
I'm thinking that either the CD-R rot stories are grossly exaggerated, or you people keep buying the absolute cheapest blanks you can find.
-transiit
While my collection is much, much smaller, I have found success with using model 1852 Sterilite shoeboxes, either from the evil Mal-wart, or the less-evil Target. They are stackable, and 3 of them duct-tape together for easy transport. I'm happy with them, but I don't know how many of them I can stack before they crush...
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/44052276/815686) | From: phoenixredux
Fri, 27-May-2005 9:56 PM (UTC)
...a bunch of ugly boxes, and Jesus people bought 'em | (Link)
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For the record, I would go with plastic boxes if you're planning to store them in a basement, garage or attic. Plastic is a superior material for repelling mice, insects, dust, moisture, and debris. Roaches love cardboard. Need I say more?
Thanks for the link. I'm in the process of organizing a new apartment. That looks like a very useful site. We seem to have a very high crap:space ratio.
| From: transiit
Fri, 27-May-2005 10:06 PM (UTC)
Re: ...a bunch of ugly boxes, and Jesus people bought 'em | (Link)
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I'd be surprised to see documented evidence of a mouse opening a jewel case, much less one that's rather densely packed with a bunch of it's familial ilk.
The easiest way to keep vermin from your space is to bring your environmental standards so low that even insects can't survive.
-transiit
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/70524252/169583) | From: twiin
Fri, 27-May-2005 10:04 PM (UTC)
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Ikea sells nice and cheap CD Bookcases. Like normal bookcases, but sized to fit racks and racks of CDs. Easy mass-storage.
By the same note, o-cousin-of-the-double-i, Sir Zawinski already has a plethora of homebrew cd racks. The intent here was to stash said clutter to a space where he doesn't have to think about it, much less allocate space to the organizational prowess of the Ikea mothership.
Now go watch the Fight Club scene about the IKEA catalog, and be sure to savor the irony that you're watching a licensed format of a major-studio release that's trying to teach you (amongst other things) about the dangers of blind consumerism.
-transiit
I put all my CDs in storage after I'd ripped them. Then I destroyed the hard drive that had all my music on it in the process of trying to back it up. It took me months to get around to retrieving the CDs so I can start ripping them again.
| From: jwz
Sat, 28-May-2005 12:12 AM (UTC)
disk redundancy | (Link)
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My MP3s live on a drive where no partition is larger than 12GB. All partitions are mounted read-only except the one that is not yet full. There's a second drive in the same machine that's an exact clone of the first (via rsync, not RAID.) Once a month or so, I manually rsync from A to B.
Not using RAID saves me from "rm" fuckups, since it'll only operate on one copy.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/996772/447266) | From: ydna
Sat, 28-May-2005 12:15 AM (UTC)
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I came to the same conclusion a year ago. All the CDs and jewel cases are in $6 stackable plastic totes from Costco. The downside is the CDs would be stacked in layers and you can't see what's in there. Those cardboard underbed garment boxes tend to puke when filled up with CD cases and you try to pick one up. And $40 for a cardboard box? Wow.
The totes are 12 gallon capacity, about 23" x 15" x 10"H, model CU2212CBL, Costco item 80977, UPC 020027057184. They have sloped sides, nest when not in use, very sturdy walls and lid, stack six high with huge heavy things in them without trouble. Blah blah blah. I'm using hundreds of them.
Talking about ikea, check out MP3-Cube. It's in german but looking at the pictures you get the idea. They are based on HOL.
I feel your pain. I've got almost 1900 CDs, and I've finally decided that I'm either going to need to build custom shelving for them ('cause nobody makes CD racks for that many CDs) or put them away.
At a previous house, i was using some homemade shelves for my cds. They were made out of simple, stained/varnished 1x6 lumber. the verticals had dados cut in them every 6(?) inches or so, and the horizontals fit into those dados. two drywall screws then secured those through the verticals. It was then secured to the wall to keep it from toppling over.
It held about 600 cds comfortably. 3-4' wide, 7-8' tall
I had to give it up when i moved, and everything (for the past 2-3 years) is in rubbermaid containers, whcih suck for looking for things, or remembering what you have. :(
Cardboard boxes built to hold textiles may not be sturdy enough for transporting heavier CDs, but for storage those look like an excellent option. The broad lid offers a useful space to paste a list of what's inside. Nearly all of my records I bought used and dented anyway so I guess I don't care if they're lightstruck. (I guess.)
In what way would you feel bad about throwing away the cases & case inserts? That you would never again get to gaze upon the back sleeve art?
I'm at nearly the same point as you. I'm going to use DJ notebooks, keeping any booklets/front sleeve inserts which are trivial to get out of the jewel cases, and sacrificing any sleeve art that would require disassembling the jewel cases to get to.
I did roughly the same thing a few years ago, put all the disks in binders and the jewel cases in boxes. Granted, I only had a few hundred and so I used old boxes from the garage, which was fine becuase that's where the boxes went right back to. While cleaning up this spring, I found the boxes of jewel cases and realized that not only had I not once sought those boxes out, either to appreciate the artwork or look up a track listing. In fact, I realized that I didn't even know what had become of the binders of CDs. Turns out my wife had appropriated the CDs. Looking at the dusty boxs chock full of empty jewel cases I decided I'd never need them and put them out on the curb.
Predictably the box was gone in the morning. Our local garbage scavengers had absconded with them. I got a little tickle thinking about someone believing they'd scored a few boxes of CDs and then later finding out they'd hauled away my garbage.
Of course, you may have more sentimental attachment to jewel cases than I do.
I use binders that are kept well off the floor (which matters because the binders are in the basement) and keep the backing papers in small cardboard boxes, sorted (err, mostly sorted). Digipaks and other interesting packaged CDs stay the way they are.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/66384134/641416) | From: ckn
Sat, 28-May-2005 10:42 AM (UTC)
cds | (Link)
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CD case/art storage has been a problem I've faced for several years, with all of the moving around I do. I have tried small boxes like the one you are considering, however due to circumstance you may not face when that particular box gets wet things get ruined.
The other situation that we both may share is the size of those containers, they're not so very large and we both have tons of CDs. For this, after much deliberation and research I settled on some 30-gallon tupperware box I got at walmart for $10. It holds atleast 400 cd-cases and stacks nicely in a storage area.
thankfully we dont have to keep the packaging discs come in too!
There's these, which claim to handle the back-inserts and such as well. Probably wasted money though if you don't intend to actually access them. I'm sticking with random cardboard boxes for now. And on the backup subject: I've just started doing the "convert everything to MP3" exercise. For backups I rsync it to another machine in a different location. Even over a moderate speed connection it works fine. You could put a backup drive over at the Lounge. Nice thing with rsync is you can do the initial copy locally and then just push updates over the wire.
From: johnreen
Sat, 28-May-2005 2:00 PM (UTC)
Stupid fanboy comment... | (Link)
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So, I may have missed this, but how are you storing your digitized music these days?
That is: are you doing straight MP3? Ogg? FLAC/WAV with automatic conversion to MP3/OGG/WMA for whatever "on-the-go" player you need (yes, I've heard of people doing this).
I ask because this post got me thinking about encoding all of my CDs, and... well... I was curious what route you took, and why you took it.
(Yes, there's probably a post where you go into detail on this somewhere.)
| From: jwz
Sat, 28-May-2005 2:46 PM (UTC)
Re: Stupid fanboy comment... | (Link)
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I hate your icon, please change it.
I encode everything at 128k MP3. I can't hear the difference (and I like it that way).
And it means I can fit the whole collection on one drive, so I don't have to fuck around with a machine with more than 4 devices in it (system, mp3, mirror, cd). My music collection grows more slowly than the rate at which disk capacity increases, so I expect it to always fit on one drive.
I don't give a shit about Ogg because the whole wide world uses MP3.
Grip + lame -q 2 -b 128 -m j. I don't use VBR because it wasn't well supported a few years ago, and I never found a reason to care.
I'd say screw it and A)Make wall art out of the CD's B)Make furniture out of the CD cases.
-RearKick
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/52586670/1508713) | From: krick
Sun, 29-May-2005 9:01 PM (UTC)
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| From: jwz
Sun, 29-May-2005 9:28 PM (UTC)
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Ooh, that is nice! Too bad I already bought a bunch of those plastic things... | |
