FYCD Service Offerings

Please note that each of these tools will provide the same price if equivalent services are selected (in other words they all use the same price list and none of them add a surcharge for use).

Encoding Services

Basic Encoding

FYCD will encode (a.k.a. rip) your CD collection to the format of your choice at the bit rate you specify. Don't worry if that sentence doesn't make much sense to you just visit our Service Wizard, which will walk you through all the choices and make a recommendation on what you should order to best meet your digital music needs.

For a small additional fee you can choose to receive your music files in additional formats - because one size does not fit all.

We currently offer the following formats and bit rates (if you don't see what you're looking for, check out the Advanced Encoding section below):

Advanced Encoding

We believe that our basic encoding services represent a reasonable option for the majority of digital music consumers. However, we also support the audiophiles out there. If you've got golden ears and still have a hankering for digital music, FYCD is the service for you. If you visit our encoders page you will find a list of the encoders we use and a full list of the options we support. You can choose any combination of options you see fit (if you choose an invalid combination we will contact you and offer possible alternatives).

If you don't see an encoder or file format that you want, please contact us and we will see what we can do! If it's especially obscure or particularly expensive for us to acquire then we may suggest that you opt for our DIY Service but in general we love adding extra formats to our collection.

If you're really into digital audio and digital audio gadgets you will no doubt want to continue to keep up with the latest advances in digital audio technology. In this case, check out our DIY Service (see below).

Archiving Services

Even with a fairly modest CD collection of 250 albums you probably have spent around $3,000. Want to protect your investment? You backup your harddrive, don't you? (Even if you don't you know you should!) Well, let us backup your CD collection. We can use a lossless compressed format of your choice (or use an uncompressed WAV file) and put your entire collection onto DVD roms. You can put your original CDs away safely and use the copies on DVD with no loss of quality. In fact we may even be able to improve the quality; if you have scratched CDs that skip in normal players we can often repair these defects. See our FAQ on restoration for more details.

We also provide an "offsite backup" service. For a modest fee we will retain an encrypted backup of your digital files and provide you with a password to access it. If any time you need to access the backups just let us know and provide us your password and we will provide you with a replacement CD. Your very own "iron mountain" for secure storage of your valuable music collection.

As part of our archiving services we can provide you with a nifty storage box that contains your FYCD produced files along with a catalog of all your songs. With every encoding we do we also provide a report on what was encoded, what had defects restored and what we couldn't encode.

"DIY" Service

If you're technically proficient, our unique do-it-yourself service may be the way to go. Like any DIY project, if you put in the time and effort yourself you get to control the output exactly the way you want. The trick with DIY is to know what to do yourself and what to have the experts do. That choice can sometimes be determined by the need for specialized equipment. For CD encoding this is where FYCD's expertise comes in...

FYCD's DIY service puts you in control. We encode your CD collection to WAV files and we provide you with the software tools you need to transcode your collection to any format of your choice. The physical handling of discs is one of the major bottlenecks for batch encoding because you have to be present to swap discs - FYCD's state of the art equipment handles this chore (and we also use the highest quality equipment to ensure the best digital audio extraction results). Transcoding WAV files is highly dependent on the encoder and the options chosen - it can easily range from 5 seconds to 5 minutes for any particular audio track. However, if you've got the time (and can leave your PC running for extended periods) then there's nothing stopping you doing the transcoding yourself. You can transcode your collection (or subsets of it) to any format you want as many times as you want - all with no further charges.

FYCD's DIY service helps protect against the future by supporting pluggable encoders. The software we provide to you is from the same code base that we use ourselves. When new formats or improved implementations of encoders are released FYCD staff work to encorporate these updates into our software. We will also provide you with those updates, as a pluggable encoder, for a nominal fee (see the Pricing page for details). So when a new format comes out you can rest assured that you won't have to go back to square one to protect your investment in your music.

FYCD's DIY service helps protect against the future by providing your data in "plain vanilla" WAV files. The WAV file is just an envelope into which we put the uncompressed CD audio (which is 2 channel, 16 bit, 44.1KHz PCM data). There are approximately X billion CDs in circulation - this format is here with us for a while yet! Any new hardware device or file encoding format is likely to offer an upgrade path to go from WAV to whatever the new improved version is. Once again this protects your investment in your current music collection.

Consulting Services

Coming soon. FYCD will consult with you to determine your best digital music options based on whatever project you may be considering. The FYCD staff includes both veterans of the high end audiophile world (our very own golden ears) and also those on the forefront of encoding technology (the super geeks). Let us put our talent and creativity to work for you!