flac dev - Sep 2004 - CD Baby using FLAC to archive 40,000 CDs

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003, Derek at CD Baby wrote:
> > But I'd be interested to know what sort of hardware you're
using
> Just el-cheapo FreeBSD beige boxes with Lite-On CD-Rom drives.
> They've got the fastest audio ripping I've ever found (24x or so).
Actually, I was more interested in how you set up the disk array. The
biggest one I'd set up was a while back, when 60 GB drives were at the
best price point, and I created a 420 GB array of 8 60 GB drives on an
Escalade 7850 controller (in a 4U rackmount case). Now, with 250 GB
drives available, and a 12-port version of that controller, I'd suppose
it easy enough to create a 2.5 TB array if you could find an appropriate
case and power supply, but you seem to have gone quite a bit further
than that. Or are you splitting your storage across separate machines?
> But definitely doing them as individual songs. Not as a whole CD.
> We need the separate songs for working with services like iTunes +
> Rhapsody.
Um...there's no reason you can't extract individual songs from a flac
file based on the TOC in it, if someone would just write a little
utility to do so. (I may end up doing it one day if nobody else does.)
And then you won't lose the stuff in the pregap on live CDs, and it also
makes the storage and naming easier to deal with.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson  <cjs@cynic.net>   +81 90 7737 2974   http://www.netbsd.org
    Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light.  --XTC

> And then you won't lose the stuff in the pregap on live CDs, and it
also
> makes the storage and naming easier to deal with.
Can you explain this to me? You don't actually lose the audio data, right, 
just the structure of the CD (which can probably be captured with cue 
files anyway)? I've ripped CDs with pregap audio before, and I'm pretty 
sure it's not getting lost, but rather prepended to the rip of the 
subsequent track.

Just wanna make sure...

,steven.

> > Just thought you'd like to know CD Baby has switched to FLAC for
> > archiving the 40,000 CDs we have in stock.
> > Luckily HD space is down below $1/gig so we got a 6-terabyte RAID-5
> > box set up for about $7000.
> 
> Well, even if you do have a lot of Morton Feldman (currently my record
> for best compression ratio--about 0.25 or so), I don't think you're
> going to get 40,000 CDs onto only 6 terrabytes.
No but that's all I bought for now to get started.
So that when it's full we buy another batch of hardware at an even cheaper
price.
Hard drive prices always dropping, y'know!


 
> But I'd be interested to know what sort of hardware you're using
Just el-cheapo FreeBSD beige boxes with Lite-On CD-Rom drives.
They've got the fastest audio ripping I've ever found (24x or so).


> extremely interested in knowing how you're ripping the CDs
cdda2wav to internal hard drives.  Then coverting overnight with no people
around.
Wrote a PHP script where the person can enter our unique SKU for that CD,
it shows it on the screen to confirm it's the correct SKU, then they click
GO.

But definitely doing them as individual songs.  Not as a whole CD.
We need the separate songs for working with services like iTunes + Rhapsody.




--
Derek Sivers, CD Baby, Hostbaby
http://www.cdbaby.com  <-- best new independent music
http://www.hostbaby.com <-- web hosting for musicians

> Actually, I was more interested in how you set up the disk array.
I think we just set up 3ware IDE raid cards with 200-gig drives,
all on 1 PC for now (3/4 slots) and seems to work OK.

No case would fit them so it's just sprawled out on a desk away from 
everything else with 4 power supplies powering the drives.

When it's time to buy more disks then I'll have to set up a separate
PC with more RAID cards and figure out when that day comes how to
make them all accessible through a single IP.  Maybe NFS.  Not sure.


> > But definitely doing them as individual songs. Not as a whole CD.
> > We need the separate songs for working with services like iTunes +
> > Rhapsody.
> 
> Um...there's no reason you can't extract individual songs from a
flac
> file based on the TOC in it, if someone would just write a little
> utility to do so. (I may end up doing it one day if nobody else does.)
> And then you won't lose the stuff in the pregap on live CDs, and it
also
> makes the storage and naming easier to deal with.
Interesting!
I'll look into it.  Thansk for the tip.





--
Derek Sivers, CD Baby, Hostbaby
http://www.cdbaby.com  <-- best new independent music
http://www.hostbaby.com <-- web hosting for musicians