How/Where do you store your CD's?

[Grumpy John]

My CD collection tops out at over 620 CD's and storing them has become a real PITA. At the moment most of them are in a carry box (see pic) and the cases are packed away in 4 cardboard boxes in a closet. This is far from an ideal situation for me, and I was wondering if any other forumites have large CD collections how they go about storing them. BTW the DVD collection is starting to get up around the 100 mark also.

[Ashore]

Convert them to mp3's and copy onto blank cd's , takes up far less space :2tsup:

[Master Splinter]

Convert them to mp3's and copy onto blank cd's , takes up far less space :2tsup:


Rip the MP3's to your hard drive - takes even less space! 196kbps for low-fi or in-car use, 256kbps for a more hi-fi approach.

Ditto with DVD's - re-encode with H264 and you can squash a movie into under a gig, so a cheapie ($100 at computer fair) half terrabyte drive will hold your collection with ease! Cheaper than buying/building shelves to hold 'em all.

[Chris Parks]

I can't see the advantage of MP3 conversion as it kills the replay quality. It depends on what you want and how much you want to spend, I have a Sony player that holds 400 CD's and is programmable. These can be daisy chained together if you want.

Amazon.com: Sony CDPCX455 400 Disc MegaStorage CD Changer: Electronics


I bought mine in Oz but the Sony Australia site is down at the moment and I can't link to it.

[Lignum]

Its one of the sad things with the demise of LP`s. It used to be so good going to someone’s house and seeing heaps of milk crates of vinyl and spending a half hour flicking through them. Nowadays you feel like your invading their privacy if you make a bee line to the CD`s for a sticky.:(

[cellist]

My CD collection tops out at over 620 CD's and storing them has become a real PITA. At the moment most of them are in a carry box (see pic) and the cases are packed away in 4 cardboard boxes in a closet. This is far from an ideal situation for me, and I was wondering if any other forumites have large CD collections how they go about storing them. BTW the DVD collection is starting to get up around the 100 mark also.

Grumpy John, here's my solution....unstocked in the photo, but nearly full at this point....several hundred strong!
Cheers,
Michael

[Grumpy John]

Ashore, Master Splinter, Mini and Chris, I think you misunderstood me. I already have my CD's loaded on my hard drive (28+ days worth of listening). I was looking for a better way to store the physical CD in the case so that they are easier to access. I have a 6 stack CD player in the car and never listen to the radio, going through the black box is annoying and I miss not having the liner notes to read whilst selecting CD's to pick for the car player.

Lignum, how true, but LP's were nowhere near as portable.

Michael, this is more what I was looking for. More details please, how many CD's does it hold, timbers used, dimensions. Did you make it yourself or is it an "off the shelf" item (no pun intended)

Thanks everyone for the suggestions so far.

[cellist]

Ashore, Master Splinter, Mini and Chris, I think you misunderstood me. I already have my CD's loaded on my hard drive (28+ days worth of listening). I was looking for a better way to store the physical CD in the case so that they are easier to access. I have a 6 stack CD player in the car and never listen to the radio, going through the black box is annoying and I miss not having the liner notes to read whilst selecting CD's to pick for the car player.

Lignum, how true, but LP's were nowhere near as portable.

Michael, this is more what I was looking for. More details please, how many CD's does it hold, timbers used, dimensions. Did you make it yourself or is it an "off the shelf" item (no pun intended)

Thanks everyone for the suggestions so far.

G'day, Grumpy John.

I'll try to be specific for you in answer to your questions.
I made this wall cabinet. The timber is Victorian Ash. Dimensions: H: 1220, W:920, D: 145

Joinery: Corners as per photo below

Back rebated for 4mm mdf panel

Side panels dado'd for shelves

Shelves are 6mm toughened glass with one polished edge.

Not easily visible are the small supports under the shelves (a small block of wood glued into position will be quite adequate) to support the centre of each shelf (perhaps overkill, but I HATE saggy shelves).

It hangs on the wall by "L" brackets I made, which screw into the side uprights and then through the back into the wall. The unit is not light, as the glass shelves add up.

As for the number of CD's, well, I just counted one reasonably full shelf, and it holds pretty close to 100. Hey, a suggestion: A good way to reduce the physical size of your collection would be to get a lot of slim-line cases and put them in there. Each one is half of a normal CD box in size.

But back to the cabinet: This one has 8 shelves, counting the bottom as one. So it will hold pretty close to 800 CDs. Solves your problem in a big way, I reckon.

I have also labelled the disks with small sticky labels that are numbered and indexed to a document in my computer. It can re-ordered alphabetically, so as I add new disks, it's just a matter of finding its name and the corresponding number in order to locate it. I made little dividers made of whiteboard material, which are a CD size plus a "tongue", and I've put the index numbers there too, such as 1-50, 51-100 etc. Easy to find anything that way. A more anal person might print out the list and hang it from the cabinet, but I'm not that insane yet.

Hope this all helps, and I'll leave you with just one other thought: Shelves are always the bugger in building units like these. Glass is expensive, but are in my opinion the best choice, as they are thin and strong. Thin timber has this funny way of bending and flexing, and FORGET plywood. Don't go there.

If you can come up with another shelf idea, I'd love to hear about it.

Cheers!
Michael

[Waldo]

G'day Grumpy John,

I don't have one yet bit would consider it as my CDs clutter up my office drawers even more so. The thing holds 500 CDs which equates to a 2.5m high stack. But then there's the what do you do with the CD cases? :U

http://discmanager100.com/

[Grumpy John]

G'day Michael,
Thanks for the quick response. You have given me something to think about by using glass shelves. I will probably need to run a dividing upright piece to separate standard CD's from boxed sets and DVD's. I would prefer to keep my CD's in their original cases so as to have the liner notes available. This project is not high on my todo list, but I definately to do something before too long as LOML is bugging me about my CD's & DVD's messing up the place.

Cheers
GJ

[mjmjm]

Hi Grumpy John,
Here's what I did.
I built a fixture that stores them flat. You can have as many stacked up as you want. I've got about twenty high per shelf.
I was going to put dividers between stacks, but I figured it wasn't really necessary.
This is double sided, so all up I have room for about 500 of the things.
This sits on top of a set of drawers so there's no wasted floor space.

Michael