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Theoretically yes it should - since those companies have invested $$$ in their own back-up and security features. Ideal solution is your own private home server with cloud back-up. Anything else smacks of paranoia.
Yes, theoretically. But cloud storage isn't storage you can control, which is why it shouldn't be considered fully reliable or fully equivalent to local storage. Therefore your solution should be considered less wise rather than less paranoid.
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Posted: |
Jan 1, 2020 - 6:04 PM
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By: |
Dr Smith
(Member)
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I respect everyone's preferences and choices as to how to store, organize, preserve, and listen to their purchased music. I am fairly obsessive about possessing the physical media, (which I also justify as an investment), because I like to be able to select a CD from my shelf.
My hearing is still 100% as far as I know, but I really don't care much about the technical quality of the music I listen to. As long as it doesn't crackle and pop, I am more interested in the instrumentalist's expertise, and the musical ideas of the composer than the ultimate sonic experience. That said, I appreciate those who make sonic perfection their end game.
I rip everything I buy to CD on iTunes ASAP, but I have few illusions as to what might happen in the far future.I have multiple hard drives to store my collection.
I do not notice the difference between FLAC and MP3, but I am sure there is one. More power to those who care about such things.
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You don't "control" it, no, but Dropbox - for example - isn't going to wreck their business' reputation by suddenly losing everything that a customer has stored on their servers. They will have multiple back-ups. Clould storage is perfectly fine as a back-up of your home server which, in turn, is a back-up of your physical CD.
I'll just leave this here. It covers backup strategy better than I did.
https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheComputerBackupRuleOfThree.aspx
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I threw out an entire garbage bag of CDs in favor of the digital backup copies in flac, when I moved in 2017. And every few random months since then I go looking for a CD that I forgot I got rid of and instantly regret it. So be very careful going to all digital files.
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I am more or less all files (after all, the CD is already "all digital") as far as playing back music is concerned, but of course I still have and keep my actual CDs.
With all the different backup strategies mentioned here -- and yes, backups are obviously very important -- it should be noted that if nothing else, transferring your CD collection to FLAC gives you at least one backup of your CD collection, as you could always re-construct the actual CD from the files.
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I threw out an entire garbage bag of CDs in favor of the digital backup copies in flac, when I moved in 2017. And every few random months since then I go looking for a CD that I forgot I got rid of and instantly regret it. So be very careful going to all digital files.
The only CDs I ever got rid of were from before I learned to make digital files, so they're really gone.  This was in 1992, and what with the Eugenics Wars about to start, I thought two compilation CDs of opera music were the least of my worries. I sold them to a used store for a dollar, or something stupid like that, and then just hunkered down and waited for the worst.
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I threw out an entire garbage bag of CDs.
Ouch...anything good?
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I'll just leave this here. It covers backup strategy better than I did.
https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheComputerBackupRuleOfThree.aspx
These are precious tips. Thank you!
Very precious.
Time for me to stop being lazy about it and backup all things appropriately. To be more specific. I have only one location for 90% of my photos, files, etc. - an external hard drive. The other older, unplugged external hard drive has not been used for backup purposes in over a year. And I am currently not backing up email in any fashion whatsoever.
I'm just asking for an immeasurable loss of some kind, if I continue to operate this way.
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I threw out an entire garbage bag of CDs.
Ouch...anything good?
Nothing noteworthy in the way of scores. But there are a number of classical, jazz and new age albums I'd like to get back.
Realizing I got rid of all my Miles Davis CDs was a definite slap on the forehead moment.
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Nothing noteworthy in the way of scores. But there are a number of classical, jazz and new age albums I'd like to get back.
Realizing I got rid of all my Miles Davis CDs was a definite slap on the forehead moment.
And this is because you'd like to go back to the booklets, read the notes and so forth? I get that: even having scanned all the CD graphics I care about, I still like to handle the hard copy once in a great while. The original product is less convenient, but it's a real thing.
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For server software I can recommend Asset UPnP (part of Illustrate -see: https://www.dbpoweramp.com/asset-upnp-dlna.htm) which works well with QNAP. It's not perfect but it handles large collections and has flexible (i.e. adaptable) menu options - incl. genres. One aspect I like is that it can read up to 4 tags within the same field so that, for example, the following song:
Overture/Fugue for Tinhorns - tr.1 from Guys and Dolls [Reprise Musical Repertory Theatre] (1964)
Composer: Loesser,Frank
performed by (track artists) Sinatra,Frank; Martin,Dean; Crosby,Bing; Stoloff,Morris
Genre: Stage/Musical
can be located by any of these tags: album artist (here, it is the composer); album (name); year, composer; genre; or: any of the four performing (track) artists (Stoloff could also be located by searching conductor).
I wish it could handle more than four but I suppose there has to be a limit.
Note that it is my choice to set the album artist as the composer, reverse names and provide the genre name
Mitch
Hey, thanks again, that looks now very interesting, as I probably will get a new QNAP NAS (or a Synology) system within the next few months. Four tags per field are in any case much better than just one field per tag. Four genres per field would already be a great benefit. And more artists per tag would of course also greatly benefit my music collection, which is mostly classical.
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In backing up my CD collection, I'm using Exact Audio Copy and ripping them to FLAC, however - FLAC, while still sounding great, does compress the file whereas WAV doesn't.
The obvious benefit of FLAC is a smaller file size but I still feel the need to back up in WAV for the absolute highest quality I can get from the CDs.
Does anyone know if there is a discernible difference in audio quality between FLAC vs. WAV backups?
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Does anyone know if there is a discernible difference in audio quality between FLAC vs. WAV backups?
The one who could prove a quality difference between lossless formats also needs to present a real Unicorn, cause such myths are just that. :-)
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Does anyone know if there is a discernible difference in audio quality between FLAC vs. WAV backups?
There is none. Not "virtually none", or "hardly any", but literally none.
FLAC and ALAC are called lossless formats precisely because there is NO loss of any bits or data. They are also way more practical than WAV, because FLAC and ALAC contain metadata.
They do not compress the sound, they compress the data. Think of it like a ZIP format: you pack the data into a zip format. When playing back a FLAC/ALAC, the file gets "unpacked" and voila, it's the exact same data that was packed. Nothing missing.
So as far as audio quality is concerned, it makes no difference if you listen to WAV or FLAC or ALAC, the advantage of WAV is that you do audio editing easier, and the advantage of FLAC/ALAC is that playback is more comfortable because FLAC/ALAC file can contain additional information (like cover art, artist, etc.).
You can transfer any time from WAV to ALAC to FLAC and back to WAV and you will end up with the exact same bytes and bits. There is not only no discernible difference in audio quality, there is positively no difference at all.
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