I have a collection of vinyl which I want to save as digital files on a usb hard drive. What file format uses the least amount of Hard Drive space for archival purposes?
so you are capturing your LPs to your computer and as of now they are uncompress wave files I assume? For archiving, you might want to consider a lossless format, such as FLAC, but the filesize is still quite large. for a good quality to size ratio, you might want to just use mp3. When encoded properly, mp3s can be very close to the original uncompressed file. You want to use the LAME codec, and encode using VBR (variable bitrate) with at least 192kbps, preferable 256. I recommend using dBPowerAMP, it is a great free converter utility. You can find the link to DMC's website in my sig below. After you download and install the program, be sure to download and install the LAME codec from the website's codec-central page. good luck...
