Scronch is right, if you encode your collection using APE you can't be wrong but you'll need HDD space.
As a rule of thumb considering that APE will fit roughly 3 albums in a gigabyte, you 'll need approx.
120 GB of HDD space for your 200 LP 150 CD.
As for recording LP's (I did about 100), it's a long road. Particulary if you want to post-process
your waves to remove big pops & clicks. Plus you can't record an LP faster than 33 1/3 rp !
So I think it's a safe bet to also use APE for LPs !
I tried to summarize my own experience with the formats I know in the following figures.
For different coding/bitrates it gives a rough estimate of the number
of albums you can fit in 1GB, the needed HDD space for your 350 albums and
a subjective indication of the quality starting with mp3/128k bits
please take those figure with --xtreme caution !
mp3/128kbps CBR : #albums: 18-22 HDD: 20 GB Quality :
mp3 VBR (r3mix) : #albums: 13-15 HDD: 25 GB Quality :
mpc standard : #albums: 13-15, HDD:25 GB, Quality :
mpc xtreme : #albums : 10-12, HDD: 35 GB, Quality :
ape normal : #albums : 3, HDD: 120 GB, Quality :
Ogg will lie somewhere in between mpc standard and extreme.
Some links :
Monkey's (APE) Site:
http://www.monkeysaudio.com/Forum on mp3, mpc, ogg etc.. :
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/Site on mp3 quality (mainly lame) :
http://www.r3mix.net/For digitizing your LP's :
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~abcomp/lp-cdr.htmAn other one for LP to WAV :
http://www.vinyl-restoration.f2s.com/If you want to learn/play with MPC :
http://www.uni-jena.de/~pfk/mpp/Same for ogg :
http://www.vorbis.com/index.psphope this helps.