Reclaim your shelf space – and your cash!
Over the past 55 years or so, I’ve been what I’d describe as an ‘average’ music fan, going to gigs and – of course – collecting music. At first this was on vinyl and cassette tapes. Then CDs came along and we all felt obliged to ‘upgrade’ (read: replace) our collections at a not-inconsiderable expense. Now collectors are buying back their own vinyl as its popularity surges again. Mad!
Not to mention videos! Our good-old VHS tapes were replaced with DVDs, which in turn had their arses kicked by Blu-Ray and the endless and expensive upgrade cycle went on, and on, and…
But not for this boi! By 2020 I had amassed around 500 LPs and CDs plus 300 videos on VHS and DVD. I started to convert my modest, but fairly impressive music and video collection to digital around ten years ago.
I replaced most of my vinyl albums with MP3 downloads, bought from one of those dodgy Russian websites before they were closed down. I honestly thought, as they were taking money from me that they must be legit. Whatever! I managed to duplicate virtually all of my vinyl collection for the princely sum of… 40 quid!
I ripped the remainder of my music from CD to MP3. This wasn’t an easy task. It has to be done right if you’re going to create a digital library, which was my intent. First, you need to decide what quality files you want to end up with, which in turn will dictate final sound quality and how much hard disc space you will need (plus how long the actual encoding/ripping process will take). I decided to burn all of my CDs to MP3 files at 192 Kbps, which seemed like a good compromise between sound quality and disc space. I used the built-in ripping facility in Windows Media Player and it produced good results.
IMPORTANT: You should also ensure that the MP3s are tagged in a consistent format, suitable for cataloguing in your chosen library method. Getting this right during the ripping process will save you a whole world of pain at a later stage!
I did try rips at higher bitrates but this old duffer’s ears couldn’t tell any difference. Your mileage may vary. The whole process of ripping my entire collection of 250-ish discs took me around three week’s work in my spare time.
Replacing my video collection was a bit trickier. I no longer possessed a VHS player, so I searched around for some cheap replacement DVDs where possible, the rest were from some other somewhat ‘dubious’ methods. I ripped my remaining DVDs to MP4s with the free Handbrake software using recommended settings. Again, take care of your naming convention during the process.
After the digitisation process I had 423 video movies and 625 music albums on a 4Tb hard disc, backed-up on a daily basis and triple backed up weekly.
By 2022, during Covid lockdown, with the digitisation work all done, I had shelves full of physical media that I no longer had use for. The VHS tapes and to some extent, the DVDs, were valueless so I ended up dropping all those off at the local charity shop (I think they’re all still in there!). My music collection, however, was a different story. I took some time researching the pressing of each disc and its theoretical value. The Discogs site was was a great resource for this.
I had some noteworthy discs in my vinyl collection, namely: a signed ‘White Album’ by Diamond Head, a copy of Led Zeppelin‘s Physical Graffiti with the single fold insert and a May Blitz album with the spelling error on the label. There were also some signed copies by Diamond Head (as mentioned), Raven, Ozzy (and his Dwarf) and Warrior. Where posters and inserts were issued, these were all present and in mint condition. There was (to my knowledge) one scratch in the entire collection, which was on the last track of ‘If I were Britannia’ by Budgie. Other than that, 99.9% of it was in near mint nick.
Similarly, the CDs contained a few gems: Autopsy – Severed Survival (1989) had the original banned artwork. At the time, this was currently going for anything up to £250ish. Mercyful Fate – Don’t Break the Oath (1985) was the first pressing in the original slim-line style of CD case and with the band name mis-spelled on the disc, also going for upwards of 200 quid. There were also several 1st edition pressings in there, two from Metallica amongst them, plus another 50-ish with a resale value (IMO) of at least £15.
But book prices aren’t always what you can get, so I decided, for ease and convenience, to sell the whole lot together and sent out several emails to record traders for tender. The best offer came back from Back to Mono, based in Lincoln. They gave me a very fair offer (which I even managed to negotiate up), and on a very sad March evening a very nice chap came and collected my entire collection in several (very heavy) boxes and that was that!
I now had a load of redundant HiFi equipment that was never going to get used. I’d got rid of my record deck and VHS player some ten years previous but still had a classic stack of gear including power amp, tuner, cassette and CD decks, equaliser, Blu-Ray player, DVD recorder, DVR and speaker distribution rack. This was all quality gear but had served its purpose over the years so I advertised the lot on Facebook Market, and the entire kit was gone the same day!
I replaced the whole lot with a new Denon AVR and a Cambridge Sonata NP30 streamer – so down from 12 units down to two! My server solution of choice was Plex – for ease of set-up, simplicity of use and versatility. I will discuss the Plex server in another post.
So there it was. A complete media and hardware de-clutter. Was I sad to see it all go? A little maybe, especially the vinyl, which is probably the most nostalgic music medium of all. I must say I don’t miss the pops and clicks from an LP, or winding tapes back with a pencil! Changing sides every 20 minutes… or changing a cassette every 45 minutes, or a CD every 50 or so… But I was also excited about setting up a home (and away) streaming solution where all my media was in my pocket and only a tap away – oh, and I was also quids-in and free of all that constant upgrade malarkey!
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