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Looking for CD Storage solution(s) for a small dwelling

vinylvirgin

vinylvirgin

Member
I'll cut to the chase. Are there any storage solutions for a sizeable CD collection in a fairly small apartment? I've already ruled out tossing the jewel cases and putting the discs into albums, or ripping my collection to MP3 (shudder!), which would take forever anyway.

How have folks here dealt with a situation like this?
 
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Rip them to Flac or do a Hi-Res streaming service. I live in 398sqft and having vinyls was more “important” than having CD’s (full disclosure, never really liked them) so I ripped all the ones I had. Also jumped onboard with streaming services. I only have physical copies of stuff, for whatever reason, I have to own.
 
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I used to keep cd's in a drawer in the entertainment center. After that they went into plastic tubs. Now i've been collecting those Case Logic zippered cases that hold a few dozen each and using those. It's always a nice surprise to open one and see what i haven't listened to in a while.
 
Use vertical space (aka, get a tall CD "bookshelf"). A 6' x 2' shelving unit is almost 700 CDs and if you get one specifically designed for the purpose they don't stick out very far from the wall.
 
I actually like to see the cases as well but some of mine are CD-Rs so they just come in a sleeve anyway. My storage method is called "4 stacks of CDs in two rooms"...

Those wooden towers look like they might be the perfect height for setting down a beer, but please always use a coaster...
 
GChief said:
Rip them to Flac
Click to expand...

^^This.

I did this at the advent of affordable hard drive storage (15+ years ago) and have done many incarnations of whole house audio systems networked together with my personal collection (no streaming). Backups on USB hard drives, if you house burns you will lose all the CDs. If ripping them to FLAC, not mp3, is too much work there are services that do it at a very reasonable price once you factor in what your time is worth. The good thing about that is you can get everything tagged exactly the same and even smaller copies (320, 128 .mp3) for portability to mobile devices at the same time they do the FLAC for you. Put the CDs in 24 bottle beer cases in a closet somewhere.

Once you have them ripped to FLAC and neatly organized you will be amazed at the options it opens up for ease of use.

Keep the vinyl handy for quality listening.
 
Rotating spinner... Holds 48. One thing you might think about is having a few different options in a few different places to spread them out a bit. And then you may have some that you like to listen to more frequently. I have my favorites and some I really don't even listen to anymore...

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Before I took on the task or ripping them and throwing out their jewel cases, I had a four sided storage solution that was probably 5 feet tall that let you spin around to each side. I gave it away a while back, so no pics, but I would be surprised if you couldn't find something similar.
 
Is it possible to stack spinners? Then you could have 72 plus 72 plus 72...

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So many towers. So little time.
 
I use several of these for prerecorded CD's and several 200 CD albums for CD's I've made from downloads or rips. I built one similar that was floor standing for my brother years ago. It had 15 drawers.
 

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Ikea has a few options on bookcases 8 inches deep. You can buy extra shelves, doors, feet. They can be stacked if you want to add to it or store DVD's.
 
Yep _ I had previously gotten a series of these cardboard CD "drawers" to hold the music - then recently I swapped all my CDs out of the Jewelboxes, and put the CDs and cover-art into vinyl sleeves from "SpaceSavingSleeves.com" - that typically cut it down to 1/4 to 1/3 the size. I did keep all my 2-CDs in 1 case and special box-sets intact.
Anyway, you can see the difference - the left tray is standard CDs in jewelboxes - the right tray is mostly CDs with cover-art in the vinyl sleeves ... Its like vinyl record jackets! Very slim now.

An of course, all the music is ripped in lossless mode into iTunes - so its rare for me to pull a disc anyway, unless its an SACD or HDCD

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I started all this with CDs stacked directly on IKEA shelving 20 years ago. Those particular shelves are long since out of production.

And this gives you an idea of how many Cases I got off the shelves - something like 2000 I think.
I kept the clear-on-clear cases in case I decide to sell some CDs later, but I put all the black tray Jewel boxes on the curb for recycling.


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Buy a Blusound Node2i for $549 retail and box up all of your CDs because you’ll probably never play them again. Subscribe to one of the better streaming services and enjoy not having to deal with the clutter of plastic discs anymore.
 
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