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Comment by dr_faustus | Hacker News Reader

If you really like Bach and are interested in his complete works, you should definitely check out the Hännsler Bach Edition. (http://www.haenssler-classic.de/en/series-and-editions/johan...)

Its 199 Euros which is really not a lot if you consider its 172 CDs. And its not just a cheaply thrown together compilation but it was curated (and in large parts conducted) by Helmuth Rilling who is one of the premier Bach experts of our day. The quality of performance and recording is very good throughout. You certainly find superior recordings for some of Bachs works but I have yet to find a real disappointment in the set (I'm only about half way through).

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Too bad there is not an online version of this. Hardly any device in my home is able to play CDs.

Understood. I just bought a Chopin collection that was only available on CD.. not remotely as large as a complete Bach collection obviously, but a few CDs anyway. It's been sitting around for a couple weeks because about the only thing I can do with it is go to my desktop PC and rip it, and getting around to that takes awhile. I've been looking forward to listening to it, but.. fragile plastic discs, man, what's up with those?

Even if I had a bunch of CD players around, the idea of swapping between 172 discs doesn't sound great.

There are CD ripping services around. In the UK they charge around ~60p/CD (gets cheaper at ~500 CDs). Some will rip lossless, which is what I was after for the 800 or so CDs I stupidly ripped at 192Kbps over the years.

I've found myself in a similar position. I even ripped some CDs at 128kbps, back in the day when my computer had a 4GB HDD. I really need to go back and redo them all, but the amount of effort required is really demotivating. How do such services work? You take all your CDs to them? I imagine postage costs would be astronomical otherwise!

Most will collect. Some will let you drop your collection off. Some[1] will ask you to load your CDs into their spindles. I think all of them want your CDs out of their jewel cases. Note that I've only looked at services in or around London.

[1] http://www.russandrews.com/product-CD-Ripping-Service-4300.h...

I wouldn't feel any moral qualms about downloading the torrent (still huge) if I had the box of discs on my desk. The swapping of discs isn't as bad as the tagging. Is the set tagged on Musicbrainz?

Since you only have to change the CD once about every hour, its not as bad as it might seem. ;)

Yes, if you're talking about using Exact Audio Copy to rip to FLAC once.

Otherwise you'll still be left with a whole bunch of fragile and physical plastic discs that can only be played on specific ancient devices...

There is the http://www.naxosmusiclibrary.com, which is a streaming service with tons of classical. Currently 96,609 albums with 1,403,008 tracks, the vast majority of which is classical. They have 3620 albums of J.S. Bach music (and quite a few more of the rest of the Bach family). It is a little pricey, but I've always been tempted to subscribe.

The Berkeley public library subscribes to this and allows remote streaming. Maybe your local public library does too.

Turns out my local library subscribes, thanks for suggesting I look...

There are a lot of hidden gems in the Naxos recordings, especially of rare composers and music but personally I find their quality subpar.

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