Divorcing..Splitting the cd collection..

I am sorry to hear that you and your wife are going to divorce.

Given that the "reasonable usage" rules that the people assume makes copying for one's own use acceptable do not generally extend to making copies for one's friends, or to making copies so that you can continue to listen to the music AND give the discs away (whoever does the ripping)... I could not recommend most of the advice above.

One way to split it might be to have one person split the collection into two parts and have the other person choose which 'half' to take first. Depending on the emotion involved, it could be advantageous to be doing the splitting.

OTOH, if you were doing some ripping of discs you owned for the convenience of setting up a music server, many of the suggestions above are good ones.

What Macdadtexas said. It seems complicated but it's really not that hard. If you got yourself a mac mini and a hard drive you could rip all the music within a few weeks time and then let your wife keep the CDs. Hard drives are so cheap now days that you should back up your collection. Get an extra one and copy your whole drive once you get done ripping. Itunes is so easy to use and it sounds better I think than any CD player I've used and I've had some pretty good ones. I'm very happy with my digital sound and I am using a Mac mini and a 600.00 USB hard drive.

Go the mac mini route. It is faster and more stable. Best your wife pay you for the cds via buying you the mac mini. Otherwise, buy her the mini and you keep the cd's. I would not value the actual cds at more then $1 each. So, before going to a server solution, best you just do a mini. Used, it should be only about %500.

Well, I guess all the above solutions cannot help the loss of the real CD collection. They all describe just the keeping of musical data - not the medium itself and all the memories coming with it. So I'd suggest you sit down and really sort out who's gonna get which. It might come down to a couple of CDs where it is impossible to compromise but in most cases you'll beable to give away or keep the respective CD. In the end both of you will have at least half of the common memories (if desired at all!) and it's a fair agreement. For the rest of the CDs go for a decent hard disc and iTunes as described above. I'd suggest to rip NOT data reduced!
All the best for both of you!
Tilmann

Kiss and make up.