Audacity 1.3.14 is around

[davidsrsb]

The latest version 1.3.14 beta of Audacity came out a couple of weeks ago.

If you don't know this program, it is an essential for processing rips and best of all is opensource, free and multi-platform

[philkoz]

Thanks for this tip, David.

It looks like this version fixes a problem I had been having with 1.3.13. In that earlier version, editing the text of label tracks of multilple-hour files was a nightmare. The lag between typing in the entry and having Audacity accept it was excruciating. I finally learned to type the entry in Notepad and paste it in which was preferable because I could at least see and edit my text before pasting it in.

Unfortunately, this came too late for my project of vinyl ripping; it would have saved me hours and hours.

[David.D]

Good timing from my point of view, just about to go down the route of 'archiving' my collection using a Behringer ADC/DAC with a Quad 44 pre amp for additional control of clipping.
I'm still looking at what type and capacity of hard drive to use.
Dave

[davidsrsb]

Two of them and not in the same box is what matters. Look at the value of the music and your time ripping it. You really do not want to risk a disk failure losing it. Complications like Raid still leave too many single points of failure and are not worth the hassle in my opinion.

[philkoz]

I bought this http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-P ... 799&sr=1-1 and it has been entirely satisfactory. I bought it before the floods in Thailand so the price was substantially less than what it is now, however.

As to capacity, this 1 TB was more than adequate for all my Audacity project files and exported MP3 files for about 550 hours of original music. The MP3 files by themselves fit on a 32-Gb flash drive http://www.amazon.com/Lexar-Echo-backup ... 200&sr=8-7.

So, you need to figure out how much capacity you require based on the source content.

[davidsrsb]

I use flac compression for archiving as it is lossless. There is nothing much wrong with mp3 at 256 to 320 kbps, but it would not be a good idea to transcode to some other lossy format, so you are stuck with mp3 forever.

[philkoz]

I consider my Audacity project files to be my archive files. I figure that from these as sources, I can export to whatever format is then optimal for the intended playback uses.

[David.D]

Thanks guys. I havn't decided on final drive(s) yet but an independent power supply might be my preference.

[davidsrsb]

I consider my Audacity project files to be my archive files. I figure that from these as sources, I can export to whatever format is then optimal for the intended playback uses.

True, but heavy on disk space as you are using 32 bits per sample

[philkoz]

I consider my Audacity project files to be my archive files. I figure that from these as sources, I can export to whatever format is then optimal for the intended playback uses.

True, but heavy on disk space as you are using 32 bits per sample

Yeah, but external HDs have come down so much, it doesn't really bother me. I figure about $0.10 to $0.12 per hour of recorded material is managable.

[choppa]

Saving files on hard drives are a thing of the pass. I have had so much stuff lost due to these things breaking down. Clouds / media servers are the way to go. You can grab your stuff where ever and whenever you need it.
I went to a party in the weekend. I just logged on to my friends PC and started streaming my archive. You can download your stuff direct to your phone and play on the go. Some of these servers work out at much better value than buying un reliable hardware.

[ripblade]

You don't want to use it for recording however as it still only grabs the 1st 16 bits on a windows machine.

If anybody knows an easy workaround for this I'm all ears.

[Colin Dunn]

The problem with clouds is ... the cloud provider may go out of business and take your data with them. Witness the recent shutdown of MegaUpload as an example.

I'd recommend having multiple copies on hard drives and on optical media. Use a cloud for convenience and another layer of backup.

[DaveinEL]

So is Audacity 2.0 RC.
I have been trying it in Win 7 64-bit.
So far, so good.