# How do you Halloween audiophiles store your music?



## Pumpkinhead625 (Oct 12, 2009)

My music is on my laptop. Some of mine are downloaded MP3s, and some I burn onto the computer directly from CDs (but I usually hang onto the CDs, just in case). It took a looooong time to accrue my collection, and I'm not sure if I could even find some of the tracks again, so I back my library on a portable hard drive from time to time.


----------



## georgekillian (Jul 7, 2009)

I keep it on my computer with a backup hard-drive. I still have a stash of CDs of stuff you can't download easily (if at all). I store files mostly as MP3 except for my Itunes stuff (I think it's still AAC format but I might be wrong). I have a large selection of FLAC files as well. I'm told it's a wonderful format (people get WAY worked up about it being the best format of all time...); however, my ears lack the sophistication to notice a lot of difference between that format and a high-quality MP3 rip.


----------



## dempup (Sep 22, 2008)

On an external hd, and backed on on blu-ray disc's. And a lot of mixed formats. Mostly mp3 for the bought ones, and AAC for my own recordings


----------



## Spookmaster (Sep 27, 2008)

Terror -

I had stuff on thumb drives, until I lent one to my son's g/f - who lent it to her aunt, who let her dog chomp it...having learned my lesson, I put everything on a 260 GB external HD. I still have several CDs and DVDs as backup, but everything is on the HD, making it easier to retrieve when I'm looking for something. Most of my stuff is in MP3 format, but also have some WAVs, .aa, etc.


----------



## Halloweiner (Oct 2, 2003)

I keep all of my music on external hard drives as I have lost too many files keeping it on my Internal only.


----------



## blueczarina (Aug 18, 2011)

i have CDs and what not, but i also have everything in a digital format. i pretty much operate my itunes off of an external hard drive. i don't keep the music on my computer anymore i just hook that up before opening itunes and have it set to read its itunes library off of that. that saved me a lot of grief when my last computer died.


----------



## Rich B (Sep 23, 2005)

I've converted all my CD's to digital, but let me go one step further and share my storage and organization outline. I store all my MP3's by genre... for my Halloween collection I use the following genres: sound effects, atmospheric mixes (i.e. the martha stewart CD), scary songs (i.e. nox arcana and midnight syndicate), fun songs (monster mash), movie scores and there's one other I can't recall at the moment. Keeping things organized like this makes it easier to find songs when you're looking for them. I also keep everything on my computer and then backed up onto 2 external drives, one is kept in a fireproof safe (overkill? maybe but external drives are cheap and I'd hate to lose all my music)


----------



## Kardec251985 (Jul 25, 2012)

I store all of my music as MP3s on my computer but keep my CDs if I originally ripped songs from CD to my computer. However, now that I'm finding more obscure Halloween-ish music online (i.e. Salty Holmes' "The Ghost Song") I'm going to have to make more of an effort to backup my computer to my external hard drive. I have a Halloween "fun songs" mix with a lot of rockabilly and a Halloween scary sounds/movie tunes mix, but I've left all other Halloween music in their original forms via the CD/album they came on.


----------



## TheMonsterMasher (Jul 28, 2012)

I use Itunes for all of my music. I don't really keep a collection though of Halloween tracks/sound effects. I used to buy the CD's from stores but now you can just purchase them online and if I find them worth keeping, I throw them on my Ipod touch or just keep them in my laptop. I've always been more into the sound effects of Halloween more than the actual songs though, haha.


----------



## Dinosaur1972 (Mar 28, 2007)

I have everything on an external drive and I back up to DVD once a year right after Halloween. Everything I have is digital, been downloading stuff for probably 10 years now. I have too much stuff to lose. I also organize them by genre so it is easier to find stuff... ghost stories, kids, dark ambient, sound effects, etc.


----------



## stormygirl84 (Sep 4, 2009)

I've got about a bazillion CDs that I've burned over the years (each one essentially the same, except that I'd add a few songs each year, and change up the track listings). I think the last year that I actually burned CDs (probably '09 or '10), I ended up with four volumes (!!!), split categorically; two CDs for pop songs, like "Thriller," and two CDs for instrumentals, like movie scores. I still have them in my truck, year-round. 

Beyond that, everything is stored on my iPod in my Halloween playlist.


----------



## Dinosaur1972 (Mar 28, 2007)

I've got about 48 GB of stuff in my Halloween folder ... 11.4 GB in my "Mixes from Blogs" folder, which has all of Vinnie Rattolle's mixes, Dan Augustine's, Reverend Frost, Dartman, SAP, etc. And thanks to the variety of mixes, I probably have several copies of some songs. And you know what ... it's just about time to listen to Halloween music at work again!


----------



## Raven's Hollow Cemetery (Jul 3, 2011)

Oh my, this thread needs a bump.  I archive in FLAC after ripping from CD. I keep the CD's for a backup, but I also have a scheduled backup regularly w/ Norton Ghost to an external, and further, to my MyBox cloud account. I lost a lot of music from a SCSI HDD that suddenly failed about 10 yrs. ago, and that won't happen again. 


For playback in the haunt though, nearly everything is ripped to high bit-rate mp3 files which are compatible with all of my portable players. Aside from that which will be playing direct from a computer ofc, no sense in wasting time ripping from one format to another there. 

@ GeorgeKillian- I may suggest getting a set of speakers with better high & low frequency response. That is where even 320 kb/s mp3 file compression artifacts & muted response shows up in the sound most glaringly. The artifacts are very prevalent in those ranges, albeit much more audible to the human ear in the high freq's, than in the infrasonic range. Not that it matters much for haunt sound, but for music it does imo.


----------



## TJN66 (Oct 7, 2011)

Where do you all go to find your music? I have been using the cheapie ones you can buy I am looking to get serious this year with my sounds for the graveyard.
Thanks so much!


----------



## the_grim (Sep 16, 2012)

Terror Tom said:


> How do you Halloween audiophiles store your music? Do you keep it on a backup hardrive, USB sticks, CDs? Or all of the above? I want to start collecting some of the awesome music you guys and gals talk about on here. I know you always want to have an archive copy of stuff like this. What format do you store it in? MP3 or is there something else better?


As far as media goes, I have a 3TB Synology DS112 with a 3TB external hard drive connected to it for backup. Every night the Synology mirrors it's data to the external drive for redundancy. It's nice and fast and reliable. Total cost was about $490.

For the format, I would use FLAC Lossless if you're not concerned with disk space. If you want to save space, use MP3. For the bitrate, 128 is fair quality, 192 is good, and 320 is excellent. There is no discernible difference between 320 bitrate MP3 and Lossless so I choose it to save space. To be perfectly honest though, my 128 bitrate MP3's sound great.

I hope this helps.


----------

