PC to Jukebox. Possible? Do-Worthy?

Factual Questions
1

Thinking about getting a new computer. Not worried about THAT so much as what to do with what I already have.
I wanna see about converting it into a juke box.

So:
How much memory does a 50 minute music CD use up, on average?
Are there different storage formats for CD music? If so, which is best from a quality preservation standpoint?
Assuming no need for all the Windows bells & whistles (Solitaire, Internet, MS Office, etc), What is the smallest OS I can get that can support CD Read/Write/Playback, Audio input (as from a record player), and a programming language advanced enough to categorize files and allow files to be selected individually or from one of a number of categories–I have an old version of Pascal that may be up to the storage & selection. I understand I am probably (har har) going to need to get another hard drive to supplement my current 4 gig (snort).

Oh yeah, needs to be able to use a regular stereo audio out so I can run it through the house stereo.

I know this sounds a bit convoluted, but my kids are music media wrecking machines. I don’t like them messing with my CDs, but I can’t stomach thinking what they would do to my vinyl should they ever discover it. If I can get the music onto an electronic format I can store my originals and still have the music available in a relatively bulletproof (and fun, convenient, hip…) way.

2

50 minutes of music in .mp3 or .ogg format will take up about 60 megs, depending on the bit rate you are using.

You’d probably want an app to ripp songs from cd’s to your hardrive Check out Cdex for that.

If you’re transfering vynil, try an app like Gold wave.

You’ll need a cd burner if you plan on making your own mixes for parties, or the car.

Hardrive space is pretty cheap right now. About a dollar a gig (actually a bit less). so invest on enough to hold your entire collection.

A decent sound card will improve the quality of the sound you hear and the quality of your ripps.

3

You can get 1min/mb codding at 128kbps in MP3, but I recommend you to encode at least at 196kbps and if you are going to use large speakers you better encode at least at 256kbps (mathematics says 30sec/mb). Even if humans are only able to hear a range of frecuencies we are able to fell a wider range, this is better if you are using a woffer or a tweeter. There is also the ATRAC compression used in the begining in minidiscs, but now is avaible for walkman cd players, I’m not sure if Sony had released software to play it in the PC. ATRAC has a better quality/size relation.

About the OS, Windows 98 can be reduced to 120mb, but Microsoft is not supporting it anymore, so I recomend you to use Linux. Red Hat or SuSe are good versions that support all you need (as far as I know) but look in Linux forums first.

You can connect the most cheap sound card to a regular stereo system using the auxiliar imput, of course if you want better quality you’ll need a better sound card. If you have an USB port there are some adaptors that will give you good quality even an optical output, and also inputs to record your vinnyls with good quality.

Look at this page: www.minidisc.org or www.minidisco.com even if they are not closely related to your “problem” you’ll find a lot of usefull things there.

4
      • Honestly, the PC and OS don’t matter–even a 120 Mhz 586 running Win95 can play MP3 files just fine. I would heavily suggest a couple things however:
  • Win95 goes a bit back, Win98 supports a lot more software. And as long as the music player works fine and the computer is not used for internet access, you don’t need to worry about getting regular security updates. Put the jukebox software on that you want, make sure it runs, and then back up the registry right away. That way if your kids come along and install any other software on the PC, you can delete the added software and re-install the original registry (-avoiding the problem of orphaned registry keys and values).
  • Using one hard drive as the OS drive, and buying another just for music files. You will spend a lot of time converting those CD’s to MP3, and you will be pissed-pissed-pissed if the OS suffers a glitch and screws all those music files you spent hours putting on that hard drive. Don’t logically-partition one drive, it’s not the same thing. Buy a separate hard drive!
  • I would recommend ripping at 192 Kb contant-bit-rate MP3’s just because constant-bit-rate MP3 is a nearly-universally supported music format. Almost any media player program can play a CBR MP3 file, which means that you can use most any player software you want–and player software you don’t like will annoy you forever. There are other formats now that sound better and/or get better compression, but they are not universally supported by player software. I have about 120 CD’s ripped at 192 Kb, and that only totals about 6.5 gigs. The last time I bought new HD’s they were $80 for 80 gigs.
  • Also, get quiet hard-drives! I got Seagate Barracudas last time, rated very well. Search onine for reviews, and don’t buy a cheaper HD brand just because it’s on sale, they are much more likely to be noisy.
    ~
5

There aren’t really any “budget” hard drive manufacturers, so pretty much any drive you can buy will be reliable. In any given Sunday newspaper, I usually see at an ad for least one electronic store selling a large (over 100GB) drive for less than 1/GB after rebate (these days you can get them for .50/GB or even less sometimes).

There’s no need for a 7200 RPM drive for this application; 5400 RPM drives are quieter and run cooler; however, pretty much all new drives being sold retail these days are 7200 RPM.

I have no idea what RainKing was talking about with large vs. small speakers (speaker size is most definitely not an indication of quality), but you will probably hear compression artifacts at 128kbps. 192 is probably a good compromise between quality and size. Supposedly WMA gives a better quality:size ratio, but I haven’t done any comparisons. Also, not sure if you can find a WMA player for Linux, assuming you decide to go that way.

I’d recommend putting a little extra money into your sound card, since the sound quality of the cheap cards pretty much sucks. Alternatively (or in addition), if you have a home network, you can pick up an external media player (like the Hauppauge MediaMVP; Gateway has one too but I couldn’t find it on their site) which allows you to play your MP3s over the network, you can can keep your PC in your office and just install the MP3 player in your living room.