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For the time being, all discs are on shelves either purchased or made by myself. As a woodworker, I plan to switch to drawers when time permits making them.
If you're an audiophile, that probably means you have tons of music that needs proper storage. So how do you do it? Do you have racks, shelves, boxes, drawers, or do you put it all on a hard disk and stick the original discs in the garage?
Beloved Red Book CDs in the living room CD shelves (the others are in various closet drawers away from daylight and dust). Copy-controlled CDs (not many; in fact very few) in the closet of toilet just below the toilet paper (in the place they deserveto be in order to keep the valuable living room spaces for the real material). Aaahh!! Thought for a dedicated living room having a HEPA filtering A/C system and air locked UV filtered tempered glass CD shelves.
All the records that are not in rotation are in those nice Per Madsen racks in the back room with the wine "cellar" and office equipment. Most of the CDs are in the den with the equipment. Of course, there are records propped up in one corner of the bar near the t-table and some CDs stacked on a side table near my chair. Plus the records on the floor not yet placed back in the racks and the big pile of unopened cd's on the cabinet in front of the shelves. Hmm, it seems they're pretty much all over the place and that's not necessarily a bad thing. All are safe. All are accessible.
I was lucky enough to hit a used furniture store when they had just received a truckload of government surplus stacking file shelves. They have a gorgeous mahagony finish, fit LPs perfectly, and flex not a bit with the weight. I told myself to begin discarding after I filled a ceiling-to-floor stack of these things, but now this weekend's acquisition, Carl Boehm and the Philharmonia doing Beethoven's 6th in stereo, sits lined up on the floor with a hundred other overflows. Oh well.
I should say most of the above. My LPs are on welded steel shelves a friend built for me. By far the cheapest, easiest, most secure way to store vinyl. The CDs are in a built-in bookcase in the hallway leading to the listening room. I haven't yet gone the hard disk route, but that is becomming more interesting as the quality increases.
Right now, most of my collection is shelved, except for perhaps half of my LPs, which are boxed. As much of a problem as "how to store the media" is, where to store it is an even greater one for me. With 2000 CDs and 1000 LPs, my collection requires its own room within my house.
Yea, a bunch are on shelves, but 300 are in a disc changer. With a decent DAC it sounds very good indeed, and the convenience is huge. Get any cut on any disk as fast as you can press the buttons on the remote, and no worries about the greasy fingers of some intoxicated party guest. I did have to create a spreadsheet of which disc is where, though.
I like the physical pleasure of opening a CD album, taking out the disc and putting it in the machine. Then I enjoy taking it out of the machine and putting it away on the shelf or, unfortunately, in some of the stacks because I have run out of room in the racks.
I have 55 years worth of recordings: LPs, cassettes, and CDs, mostly CDs. The LPs are stored, in their original packaging, vertically on three shelves. The cassettes are stored vertically in their original packaging, on two smallish racks designed for CD, DVD, or cassette storage. The CDs (about 1000) are removed from their plastic cases and stored in 10 sleeved albums, along with their respective booklets. They reside vertically on shelves. They are grouped by format and arranged alphabetically. Each grouping allows room for additions. Works great! And the floor space required is minimal, considering I have 55 years of recorded music and about 1500 albums total.
My old CWD racks were converted to record storage after it was discovered that wood cabinets sound bad. I use whatever CD racks are available cheaply when I need additional CD storage. Overflow LPs are in milk crates and boxes. My records and CDs aren't in the main listening room, so I'd rather spend my money on equiptment upgrades than record storage.
Shelves for my CD collection, LPs, cassettes and DVDs. I like the tactile and physical aspect of browsing, pulling media off the shelf, flipping through liner notes, etc. Probably for the same reasons I enjoy making my own coffee starting with whole beans, over buying it at Starbucks. But I also have a big hard drive in a Mac G4 Cube that serves up a bunch too.
I have a considerable amount of shelf space dedicated at home to CD and LP storage. I keep a selection of CDs I'm listenting to at the moment on my laptop for when I'm away at school, because it is simply impossible to keep collections of CDs around a dorm room.