backing up audio cd's to dvd-r

[mrchri5]

hello. I recently discovered several of my music cd's that I can see straight through in spots. they are about 10 years old and have been stored in a book. the jewel cases are long gone.

they are still readable. I was thinking I could save some shelf space by putting them on a dvd-r. I know mp3's are tiny but I would like the original cd sound if I ever change formats again.

What would be the best way to do this? for a backup disc that might not be touched for another 1-10 years. I'm assuming I would have to save the whole image for it to work with the cddb. should I save to iso or nrg?
also would rar and using a program like quick par be a good idea?

Also would those dvd cake boxes be better than a book for long term storage? these seem wonderful for rarely used discs. my important things i have been keeping in the slim jewel cases. I like them better than a dvd box because they are smaller and can see the label through the cover . to much work to label spines.

[unmei]

I wouldn't use RAR or ZIP or the like, you probably won't save much space and still have to extract before you can do anything with the data .
ISO is fine for that you can immediatly burn a 1:1 copy without much work, but it is rather large. I'd prefer ISO over NRG as it is long term storage and you never know if Nero is still around when you want to use your backup.

Another possibility would be to look into one of the many lossless audio compression formats. I guess they should allow a 1:1 CD backup and will compress better than a general purpose archiever (RAR,ZIP etc).

[zilog jones]

Yeah, maybe you should look into the lossless compression codecs - I don't know much about the audio ones, but a lot of people seem to use FLAC, and it's on SourceForge so it's free!

Personally, I think nothing beats good ol' jewel cases for storage... then again i have little room for anything!

Someone linked some pdf from some college in the US about proper handling of CDs/DVDs but i can't remember where... or even if it was this fourm...

[Doobie]

Originally posted by mrchri5
[B]hello. I recently discovered several of my music cd's that I can see straight through in spots. they are about 10 years old and have been stored in a book. the jewel cases are long gone.

If they play OK then the error-handling job of the CD format is working well. This may not translate into OK CD rips. I'm not an expert, I don't use audio CDs, so I don't know. Try a rip and see how it sounds. If it sounds worse than when you play the CD, then you'll have to play the CD and use the line-in of your audio card to capture and digitially record the music.

Go ahead and use the MP3 format. MP3 will be around forever. The MP3 patents will expire in less than a decade and it'll be more popular than ever. As popular as MP3 is today, and as cost-free as it will be to include in the future, in 100 years, every computer and audio device will play MP3, even if just for backwards compatibility with grandpa's music collection. In fact, it's unlikey that any current format will have better staying power than MP3.

Just use LAME. I think anything more than the "--alt-preset standard" is a waste of bits. (self-styled audiophiles need not reply)