best way to store CDs?

[liberalitch]

I say on their sides like books in a book shelf.... CD stores store them that way in bins.
The commie (SO) says stack em....
what's the deal?

[Goldmund]

1. Rip them

and save them on the hard drive.

[liberalitch]

2. No CD burner....

what to do?

[Goldmund]

3. You don't need a CD burner...

just a program like ITunes, which is free -- it'll let you convert CD tracks into MP3s. Of course, the whole thing makes sense only if you have really good speakers attached to your computer.

[liberalitch]

4. I don't.... yet

[Goldmund]

6. My setup can beat your setup's ass...

Joking, of course, but I wonder why more people haven't gone the way that we have at our house:

we have a big low-res monitor instead of a TV, attached to a computer with a TV card, a decent sound-card, and a set of really good surround speakers. We spent $400 so on speakers, but they are shared between music, TV, DVDs, and the XBox.

[Colin Ex]

5. I have them in a Fellowes wire rack.

Holds about 120 or so, and it's pretty much completely full. Lets you keep your best discs right there.

Disadvantages, however, lie with such stuff like slipcases (which I have a lot of, thanks to my small collection of local releases). Paper cases also get a little damaged. My solution is to keep them stacked next to the discs that didn't quite make the cut on the wire rack.

Also, paper cases show wear and tear after awhile, and again, I have a lot (damn you, indie). Dust also gathers on a few of them, which means you have to fiddle around with them to get them clean sometimes (makes for a good excuse to reorganize your CD collection, I think, but that's just me).

My setup for CD-Rs is to keep them in wallets, since there aren't any liner notes / etc. to worry about. So I have three wallets of varying sizes packed full of CD-Rs.

Works out well.

[Pert_UK]

7. In a CD storage wallet, separate from the cases.....

You know, the ones with the plastic pockets for the disc to go in.

The reason for this is that I have several friends who have been burgled and the people who stored their CDs like this didn't lose their music collections, whereas the others did - you can't sell a CD 2nd hand if it doesn't have a case, so it's not worth stealing!

P.