My 25-year old gear is beginning to fail, and I need some basic advice.
Silly me, I was going to get a new CD player until I realized that maybe the world had changed and I didn't need one. At this point, I have a new integrated amplifier with a DAC, plus I have a PC, an Apple Airport Express router and a Sonos system (several years ago --before we got Macs -- we used iTunes to load some music onto the PC, which we use for multiple iPods and iPhones and, when lazy, to play music using the Sonos system instead of through the old CD player).
I'm told that what I need to do next is burn my CDs in a lossless format and get some more storage capacity.
For burning the CDs, what format do I want to use? Is Apple Lossless as good as AIFF? Or is there something better than either of those? (Those two are easy options on iTunes, and as you can probably tell I might struggle with a harder-to-use option).
For storage, it was suggested I get a network server to hook up to my router. Is that right, or can I use some other storage technology? Whichever of these technologies I use, are they commodities or are there preferred products? If there are prefferd products, can I get some recommendations? And if I plan to burn about 500 CDs, how much storage space do I need?
Should I keep my compressed files on the PC, or transfer them over to the new storage device? Will Sonos be able to pull from two different places (the PC and the storage device), and if so can you tell me how I would get it to do that?
Maybe there are some more questions like these that I need to ask, but that's the extent of my understanding so far. Any advice will be most appreciated. Sorry to be so clueless, and thanks for your help in introducing me to this great new world.
