Also, another big help as far as clutter? If you’re not going to listen to a CD, get rid of it. I went through my collection, tossing the ones I had no intention on listening to (even though I’ve ripped them all already) and purged almost a quarter of the CD’s. (They’re all up for sale, which should help recoup some money I wouldn’t otherwise have.)

Alas and alack, I haven’t found much of a use for the jewel cases. I unloaded most of them on thrift stores, but I think one of the employees said they throw out the empty cases. Ah well.

For simple, true multi-room audio, it’s hard to beat!

I ripped my 500 CD library to my computer almost 5 years ago and now seldom if ever even look at the actual physical CDs. Most of the tiny booklets that come with CDs are a joke - you can find out far more about most discs online, at Wikipedia or Amazon, than the labels themselves ever got around to telling us. You can even view larger representations of the artwork.

I store my CDs at the back of the closet. One of these days I’ll work up the energy to pluck the disc themselves out of their jewel boxes, along with the booklets and possibly the back cover art, and file the whole mess away in a drawer somewhere.

Physical media is so over.

Oh, and totally go with a lossless format. Hard drive space is cheap. Re-ripping is time consuming, especially if you correct all the crap metadata you’ll get off the net. MediaMonkey allows you to create a synchronized copy of your library in another format. I ripped my library to FLAC, then I used MediaMonkey to create a synchronized copy as 256kpbs mp3 files for use on my iPod in my car. The next version of MediaMonkey is slated to support AAC compression, so at some point I’ll probably create a synced library of 192kpbs AAC files for use on both the car iPod and my iPod Shuffle. Having those original lossless files means never having to be stuck with just one lossy format.

Thanks for that… I have feared that this blog was a little too serious for its own good, but this restores my faith!

Although, you could always go the ReadyNAS route in addition to shelving, and create less clutter by not having to open every CD every time you want to listen to it.

I understand the argument to go digital, certainly - but I’ve gatta say, this answer really didn’t address the problem. There is something to be said for keeping the physical CD - the artwork that comes with the CD, if nothing else. And for those of us who do still collect music physically, putting those CDs in lidded boxes that stack - your only proposed solution - will not give any sort of easy access to the music. The boxes would also make it difficult to arrange CDs alphabetically, for example, because each box has small cubbies that hold (it appears?) 10-15 CDs each, and every box would have to be rearranged when a new CD is added.

Any other solutions, that actually address the question? I’d be curious to know.

I would recommend the Xbox 360 as a *fantastic* streaming solution for folks. It works like a charm with PCs and Macs and it’s a lot more functional and useful than Apple TV (you can download movies directly, play games, etc.)

I have a very similar setup — iTunes, ReadyNAS, Apple TV, Toslink to Cambridge 540, Usher V-602s. Only difference is that I rip everything to 320kbps MP3 instead of Apple Lossless. The aural differences are imperceptible to my ears and MP3 is much more widely supported than ALAC.

I don’t call myself an audiophile, but I’m very discerning and I couldn’t be (much) happier with my system.