So, Wayne, how big are these files? What are you storing them on?

Hi Charlie, well 30 dBA is not that bad, you can live with that can't you?

On Hi Res music file sizes, they are kinda all over the place, depending of course on how good the resolution is and how much music.
I keep all my files on my Cowon Plenue M2 DAP which has 128 GB internal storage and accepts a 200 GB mini SD card. So I have LOTS of room. And I back them all up to an external hard drive.
Most albums I have at CD redbook resolution FLACs take around 200--350 MB. But I checked a very well recorded Beethoven piano album at 24/96 in FLAC and it was1.27 GB. in contrast, Britten's big long War Requiem in DSD comes in at 3.25 GB.
IF you get the DXD versions or the multichannel versions they are bigger.
Do you have room for these?
I don't have a problem now, and the price of the mini SD cards keeps coming down, with the size (capacity) going up.
Hope this helps,
God Bless,
Wayne

Charlie,

I have all of my music files stored on an external PC 1 TB hard drive. I ripped all of my CDs to FLAC files. The project took a couple of months.

I have an older PC Laptop dedicated to playing music. Now, when I download music, I just add the files to the HD. I use a free program called MusicBee to catalogue and play my music.

Actually, I have my entire music collection stored on three different HDs (for backup and portability).

My total collection now approaches 450 GB.

A lot of work initially, but I am totally satisfied with the results.

Happy Listening,

Art

Btw I think I mentioned this but I have a variety of high-res, including FLAC and DSD files.
They do generally sound terrific.
I have an 8TB hard drive to store my digital music on, and that's a lot of space (but getting full .
So for $250 or so you can store lots of digital.
I play the high res (and normal res) via computer so that's an easy way to solve the problem.
I use computer+ hard drives -> USB -> Audio Alchemy Preamp...

Thanks for the information, guys. I am in the process of ripping all my CDs into flac files. It is probably going to take another six months or so to finish. I should end up with somewhere under a TB.

Right now I'm storing on my tower computer, plus a 1 TB backup drive, plus another 1TB portable drive (Western Digital Passport) that I connect via USB to my Oppo 105. The Oppo is nice because it will read and display the file directories on the portable drive, then pull the files.

I have tried to stream directly from my computer via wireless network to my Oppo, but I have not been able to get the flac files to do gapless play. As you classical music buffs know, there's a lot of music where CD tracks change in the middle of the music. The Oppo will play gapless flac from the Passport drive, but I haven't figured out how to get gapless streaming from my tower computer.

Have any of you ran into this gapless flac problem? If so, how did you solve it?

Charlie

YES, seems all of us have finally given in to ripping our CDs and other shiny discs to computer files.
I resisted a LONG time, I like shiny spinning things.
But too many are now getting corrupted and I am losing them. Thus, the time and effort to get them into files and BACK THEM UP.
Charlie, I feel for you still having so many to rip (from the way it sounds), been there, done that.
But a LOT of my music is on Blu rays and SACDs, some DVD-A that I do not know how to rip.

For the gapless problem, you must have a music file player that can select gapless play, this is a must.
The great news is that there are LOTS of these programs available and they are most often free or cheap. Maybe the better ones are not, but I don't know, I am not playing any files directly from my computer. Guess I could, might even try it, but as long as I actually have the shiny discs, I would rather pop one in and let her spin!!!!

Hi Res files on the other hand, I am finding these addicting to listen to, they sound really sweet!!!!!
God Bless,
Wayne