Contingency Plans
After reading this depressing little number, starring a guy who lost the entire contents of his hard disk I just backed up all of my important stuff. My most important stuff most importantly (almost) includes the acres and acres of music which has been ripped and encoded from the CDs in my cupboard. In fact, the consideration of the re-encoding process that I would face in the event of catastrophic data loss which really prompted me to get my arse in gear.
It takes about 10 minutes to rip and encode each CD.
I have… around 480 MP3 directories, that is, CDs.
So, it would take me 4800 minutes, or 80 long and boring continuous hours to re-encode everything. Allowing a generous 10 hours a day, that’s over a week of sitting in front of my computer popping discs in and out of the drive. That’s most certainly not something I want to do.
It is, however, extremely nice to know that I do have the re-encoding option, should my computer spontaneously combust. or something. One of the great benefits of buying music on CD - instead of completely caving into the convenience of online distribution - is that you have on-hand a ridiculously high quality backup, both in quality of sound and quality of backup medium. I should go into this in more detail, but not tonight. I need to study some more before passing out. Eugh.
September 12th, 2007 at 8:11 am
I finally bought an MP3 player, but I find it difficult to really get into my classical music through it. The recorded level of pop/rock music is higher, so there is a drastic volume change when it switches from classical to pop songs. Also, the sound isn’t as good. I suppose I could make it better, but only be investing more money into an MP3 and headphones. So no backup problems for me - I am still dedicated to CDs.
September 12th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Hi Andy,
The difference in recorded volume between pop/rock and classical really does shockingly jump out at you when listening with headphones (and especially on an MP3 player, where it will abruptly switch without you having to go through the ritual of swapping a CD), I’ve almost blasted my ears right off a few times.
All of the earphones bundled with the players are absolutely terrible. If you pick up a halfway decent new pair (like the ~$25 Sony EZ type ones) things already start to sound way, way better…