Hi Forum, some move arounds in the house in last 6 months and some consolidation of CD’s, but how best to store and still be able to use.
Currently decanting from one cupboard into a sideboard and trying some genre separation into Male, Female, Groups and then Classical and Jazz to reduce the physical search area.
However this will still end up with multiple stacks in front of each other obscuring the rows behind.
Realise the laws of physics apply but anyone come across anything inventive that helps when stored in this manner?
I have got the very same problem. My Cd’s are three deep in the cupboard. I have another with my old vinyl. I am slowly ripping everything to a little external disc, and then use my streamer for playback. I will keep the physical media, as CD’s have been remarkably stable. I still have my early one’s from 1985, and they still play.
I have tried to order my CD’s, but order lasts for a very short while.
The good thing about using a streamer with an external HD, is that the streamer App automatically creates a database on my iPad, so I can actually find an album pretty quickly.
Yup, now putting some of the bands into final destination working back alphabetically and trying to leave some space as I get to the stuff not got to yet.
I don’t buy huge amounts of CD’s now so at least the ongoing challenge is reduced.
I’ve also got two dedicated CD drawer racks, currently split between male and female artists, going to leave them alone for now.
It’s a helva workout with all this early morning stretching. Never done yoga but getting an appreciation of it.
Ok for now have decided life is too short and it’s two hours of my life that I won’t get back.
But there is a greater degree of separation to the groups/male/female and jazz and classical than before.
But if anyone does know of anything that works particularly well to structure and contain them then I am open to ideas.
I’ve considered some of the soft style boxes that could be used to hold them in the sideboard but main concern is once you can’t see the spines you might never randomly pluck one out to listen to it.
Failing that I’ll stick to my tried and trusted semi chaos and pick stuff randomly or swear profusely when looking for something I know I have.
I’d try and find some boxes that fit into the furniture front to back (so you’re not putting boxes in front of each other). Then you can pull a box out to browse easy enough. You’ll lose a bit of space I guess. Looks like the sideboard shelves are about 7 CDs wide? So 7 boxes per shelf as long as the boxes are snug. Lots of options out there for CD storage boxes, the cardboard ones probably the lowest profile and cheapest to try?
If you could stack one box on top of another you’d get more in the unit, but make it a bit harder to remove the lower box for browsing.
That’s how I do our food storage in our awkward kitchen cupboards, I use baskets of things I can pull out and sort through rather than having to try and search a full shelf.
Cupboard easy, but multiple depth not so much- even removing one from behind when you know exactly where it is will require removal of a handful from in front for access. And not at all conducive to browsing unless you keep an ordered database of some sort. I think theres’s a reason why dedicatedstorage units only store single depth. The only suggestion I can offer is trying to find some drawers of suitable depth in which they can be single depth spine up. (That said, ripped and on a server the size of only a few CDs, played by streaming from the server, would solve storage, give very easy searching and browsing, obviate losing through misplacing after play, not have read errors if dirty or CDP mechanism wearing, and also streaming would open the door to buying higher resolutions…)
Cheers much appreciated, been looking at something like this and your rationale is in line with what I think the most practical.
Definitely needs to be approached in the best mindset and with an option to do it in a few phases, it got mind numbingly boring at one stage, hence me bailing out.
Cheers IB, got the streaming side covered, a recent purchase of the Denon dcd1700NE has just demonstrated how good CDs can sound, and they didn’t / don’t sound too shabby on my CDX2.2 either.
One of my psychological challenges with streaming is the fact you can be there staring at the screen thinking what to search for, in some ways reminds me of work. (I’ve always worked in Tech).
Whereas casually scanning either vinyl of CD’s doesn’t seem to occupy same part of the brain.
I like most of you have ripped my CDs onto the Innuos hard drive and play music from there.
I enjoy collecting CDs and don’t want to let them go. So the solution for storing 2600+ CDs (been collecting since 1985) was to procure a number of IKEA storage boxes. Each box can take c. 200 CDs. CDs are stored on their side so I can identify if required. I also store the CDs in the same order as they appear under Artist on the Innuos Sense app.
I’m fortunate in that we have a garage beneath the house so the CD boxes and all the empty HiFi separate boxes are stored there.
If you look on ebay, you’ll probably be able to find some of the old stackable, pull out CD storage trays in plastic boxes with the CD’s stacked vertically inside them.
Or make up some roll-out shelves (on drawer rollers) and stack the CD’s vertically in some of the many CD storage options out, lots of variations on the clear acrylic theme for instance.
How about making up (or buying) some wall shelving? That’s what I did 30 odd years ago when CD numbers were getting to be an issue. Backboard, four external pieces of wood/mdf with a little more than CD depth as their width, and the some internal pieces of shelving. That way you can measure and colour it to fit the room as you want it.
Or, if you have room, some of the old IKEA Benno type CD towers.
I use little trays that are easy to move about and don’t let the CDs spill. It means I can use the full depth of the cupboard. They are in order so I know where they are and when I want a CD I pull out its little tray and leave it aside until I am done.
Maybe it depends on the library/playing interface: I use Audirvana and, as well as simply searching for a specific album or artist by name I can select to view (all alphabetical) by either artist or album name (also track or playlist if desired), and can filter first by things like genre. On screen can be a list, or image of album front with artist & album name, which can be multiple images from numerous ones the size of a potage stamp (on an iPad screen) and various larger/fewer options up to one almost filling the screen. Typically if just browsing I choose either artist or album, and have the view set so maybe 20 on screen, and scan my eye over and scroll up or down till somethingtakes my fancy - which I find is quicker and easier than looking along row after row of CD spines, let alone having to get down on hands and knees for bottom shelves etc. The number I choose on screen depends on how tired my eyes are!
