We'll communicate via email throughout the process, sending you notifications with tracking numbers and such at each step along the way.

Yes, it's possible, generally not advised, but possible -- there are a lot of caveats. It would be best to give us a call to discuss.

We receive A LOT of orders and the process is highly automated, so it's always best to stick with our standard way of doing things if possible.

The order form for the package you want will tell you how much data to expect based on the number of CDs and format(s) selected. You can either send your own storage device or purchase one from us (prices are also on the order form).

Note that if you'd like more than one storage device, perhaps you want a backup or some such reason, just send an email or give us a call and we'll add them to your order.

The prices for shipping are listed on the order form as they are dependent on the number of CDs you have. The prices cover three shipping legs: 1) a shipping kit sent to you after placing your order, 2) your CDs shipped to us for processing with the included prepaid return label, and 3) everything shipped back to you when completed.

Note that shipping is free if you have 400 or more CDs.

We're very speedy at getting shipping kits for new orders out the door. Many times they'll be sent out that same day (if the order was placed before 1pm Central), else it'll ship the next business day.

Yes, this is no problem. A lot of customers engage our services when they're moving, so we send the new shipping kit to their old address, and then the final shipment to their new address. It's no problem.

We can even do custom things like send the CDs to one address and the storage device with the digitized music to another address.

Just contact us via email or phone and we'll arrange whatever you need -- usually there's no extra charges.

Yes, we send the CDs back. Technically our service is providing you with a "fair use" copy of your media (the CDs) and you're supposed to keep the CDs to prove ownership of the digital copies. Whether you actually do that or not is none of our business, but to stay in compliance with copyright law we must return the CDs to you.

While keeping the CD discs themselves, some may want to dispose of the jewel cases, the question is how to do it. Most municipal recycling programs won't accept jewel cases (wrong type of plastic). Other than throwing them in the garbage, the only service we know that will recyle them is called GreenDisk Recycling. The downside is that you have to pay for their service and the shipping of the jewel cases to them.

Sorry, no, we only process audio CDs.

Analogue media like tapes and LPs require the audio to be recorded in real-time, thus making it very expensive (time is money!). There's no good way to build a business model around it.

DVDs are a copyright issue. They contain an encrypted layer meant to prevent ripping. Even though this encryption was cracked long ago and anybody can download software to rip their DVDs, the mere act of doing it is illegal. While you could probably get away with it privately, we could never get away with it commercially. And since we don't have the technical processes setup to do commercial DVDs, we also don't deal with privately made DVDs (home videos, etc).

Yep, no problem. The most straight-forward solution is to go with our Popular package and have us convert the CDs to MP3 and load it on a USB flash drive.

You should be able to then plug the flash drive into the USB port of your new vehicle and the audio system will automatically see the music on it. It'll present the music in hierarchical ARTIST, ALBUM, GENRE type interface for you to select what you want to play. The song titles and a picture of the album will show during playback.

If you're like 95% of our customers and you only want to have your music on your phone and listen in the car, the most straight-forward solution is to go with our Popular package and have us convert the CDs to MP3 and load it on a USB flash drive.

MP3 is the most universal format, everything will play it. And our default quality level (the bitrate) is set to the highest setting, so for all practical purposes it'll sound as good as the original CD (note to "audiophiles", I'm talking about normal people here listening on ear buds or in the car, not your $10k home audio system with platinum tipped audio cables ;-) ).

We'll include instructions for how to import the music into iTunes from the USB flash drive, then you just sync it to your iPhone from there.

Choosing a lossless format comes down to compatibility with your playback system. They will all sound the same (lossless is lossless, meaning no audio information was lost when converting from CDs).

Generally Apple Lossless or FLAC will be the best choice. For example if you have a Sonos, either format will work equally well.

We generally give the edge to Apple Lossless because it has a lot of support with high-end home audio systems (like Sonos) -- it also has support from everything Apple makes. And due to Apple having such a large ecosystem, we feel future support of the Apple Lossless format is probably a pretty good bet.

Some people disregard Apple Lossless right off the bat because they don't like Apple in general, and we sympathize with that sentiment. However, back in 2011 (?) Apple "open sourced" the Apple Lossless format, making it equal to FLAC in that regard. Once they did that, many high-end audio systems started supporting Apple Lossless in their products. So for the purposes of guessing which format will be supported long into the future, we would use the weight of Apple's ecosystem to give the edge to Apple Lossless.

All that said, there's nothing wrong with FLAC, we will convert your music to whichever format you want.

Our general advice would be to stay away from WMA Lossless, WAV, and AIFF unless you're an expert and know that you definitely want one of those formats.

The three packages differ only in the types of audio formats offered, the level of service quality is the same for all three.

There are two basic types of digital audio formats: lossless and lossy. Lossless formats give you the exact same audio quality as the original CD. All the bits of digital information on the CD that represent the audio are kept in the conversion. This is great for the purpose of high quality audio. But the downside is that storing all this information makes the lossless files rather large and not a good choice for portable devices like smartphones.

To get around this large file issue there are lossy formats (eg. MP3). The primary goal of a lossy format is to shrink the file size so that you can fit more music on your portable devices. The only way to do this is to toss-out some of the audio information from the original source (the CD). The encoders start with audio information that represents audio that human ears can't hear anyways and goes from there. The bitrate (eg. MP3 240kbps VBR) is the sliding scale of how much information to keep vs throw-out. The higher the bitrate, the better the audio quality, at the expense of slightly bigger files.

So then, the Popular package is all lossy formats like MP3. The Archive package is all lossless formats. And the Deluxe packages is a combination of both, you get your music back in both a lossless and lossy format. Customers would want both formats if they have a high-end home audio system and also want the music on their phones for on-the-go listening.