| Author | Message | ||
     Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9170 Registered: 05-2005 |
Serious question. I’m interested if others have transitioned to different sources as I have. For me it’s: 1 Through my Mac. Mostly MP3s at 320, which is what I rip CDs at, but sometimes I buy files in lossless formats such as wav. I can tell the difference between lossy 320s and wavs, but it’s often minimal to my ageing ears. As well as individual albums, I also make a lot of iTunes playlists. 2 Streaming Amazon music through an Echo speaker. The sound quality is mostly excellent. I don’t imagine they are sending wav files through the ether, but it sounds great. Right now it’s playing Go-Betweens songs for me and is doing a damn good job of picking them. I also make playlists for Amazon music through my iPod Touch. 3 CDs through my hi-fi. The best sound, mostly. Even MP3s burned to a CD sound better through the hi-fi than through the computer, but the convenience factor is lacking. 4 Tapes through my kitchen boom box. The worst sound, but I enjoy playing tapes that are up to 30 years old for the nostalgia factor as much as anything. 5 Records. Sometimes the best sound. Some things just sound better on vinyl, eg Remain In Light. I go through periods of playing almost exclusively vinyl, but I’m not in one of those periods right now. 6 iPod Touch. MP3s at 320 and whatever format is used when you download songs from Amazon Music. It sounds mostly fine to me. | ||
| Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 1251 Registered: 03-2007 |
Padraig, All of my home listening is through my two hi-fi systems ( one in the lounge; one in the converted loft space. ) Very similar set-ups although I have added a Streamer ( Moon MiND 180 / NAS ) to my system in the loft as that is where I mostly listen to music. I almost always listen to albums in their entirety. I do not make playlists. I only purchase lossless digital downloads ( FLAC ) and burn those to CDR and / or play them through my hi-fi system via the Streamer. I still have my vinyl record collection but I do not currently own a turntable and I cannot see me doing so again. I have a FiiO X5 Portable High Resolution Audio Player that I load with lossless files ( FLAC.) I rip music to MP3 ( 320 kbps ) for playback in my car. I don't own an Echo or similar speaker. No cassette player / cassettes in the house. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4327 Registered: 03-2005 |
Good topic, Pádraig. A dozen years ago I bought a property with a main house and a second small house. (It cost the same as a normal property in the same neighborhood with one house.) I have two nearly identical sound systems, one in each house. In the main house I keep my CD collection. I listen to CD's there. I would listen to vinyl there but for a problem with a piece of equipment. I do not listen to any mp3 or iPods in the main house. Typically, when I buy a new CD I will play it a couple times at least in the main house and then, if I conclude that it rates, I'll load it onto two different elderly laptop computers at 320kbps. The computers are synched to two different iPods, one with a substantially larger capacity than the other. The small house has the virtue of being located pretty far from all the neighbors. This makes it a better place to listen to music in the later hours. Here, I have an iPod dock on a CD player. I can also play CDs on this system but seldom do so. I also have a turntable and this is the only system right now that will function for that purpose so I will play records. That's a hassle. I have to tiptoe around the wooden subfloored room to avoid making the tonearm jump. I listen mostly to the iPod on this system. Even at 320kbps, I find the sound meaty, beaty and pleasing. I have a library of 14,000 songs for the smaller capacity iPod and approximately 17,000 songs for the larger capacity one with a lot of room to spare on the larger one and only a small amount of room to spare on the smaller one. I have to remove music from the smaller one when I add new music. I do this regularly. It forces me to decide which I really need to keep something like "Reunion Dinner." (Answer: no.) I've taken to culling on the larger unit as well because I find the sheer quality control on the smaller unit yields better listening experiences. That's why the bigger one doesn't have 25,000 songs. I use a "smart playlist" program function with my own parameters and listen to the songs in "shuffle" mode. I like the variety. It's like my own cosmic radio station, or mixtape. It will take me from mid-60s Italian pop to shoegaze to milkmaid a'churnin' music to Southern soul. I have programmed the unit to choose from songs not played before, or not played in a very long time (3 or 4 years depending upon which iTunes library) or relatively recently added. I found that the default "shuffle" has Apple-chosen tendencies that are unacceptable. The worst is to favor songs with a high play count. The assumption seems to be that I like those songs when actually the machine is reinforcing its own early random song selections by playing them over and over. You can end up with songs that have been uploaded for ten years but never ever played. The car also uses the same iPods. The drawback is that I tend not to hear albums-as-albums very often and I also tend not to learn song titles unless the lyrics make it obvious. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4328 Registered: 03-2005 |
Ok, I'm too compulsive, I can't help it. "A dozen years ago" was supposed to read "A half dozen years ago . . . ." "It forces me to decide which I really need to keep" was supposed to read "It forces me to decide whether I really need to keep . . . ." None of which matters. But it was still bugging me an hour later. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1331 Registered: 04-2005 |
None of your fancy new fangled streaming nonsense here. Still prefer a good old solid object. I work with computers all day long, so associate them too much with work maybe ? Vinyl, CDs and a cassette player. Don't use the latter much, but it is surprising how (some) 30 year old tapes are still OK. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9171 Registered: 05-2005 |
Thanks, lads. Randy, this smart playlist function, is it on the iPod or is it a function of what you’re playing the iPod through? I could just look at my iPod, but I figure you’ll give a better and more detailed answer than I’ll be able to get from Mr Jobs’s acolytes. Andrew, yes, tapes definitely outlast CDRs in my experience. Hugh, FLAC is a bugbear for me as iTunes won’t play them. I’m sure I could get another program to do so for a Mac, but wavs and ALACs do fine as my lossless files of choice. | ||
| Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 1252 Registered: 03-2007 |
Padraig, My understanding is that there is very little, if any, difference in quality between FLAC and WAV. I prefer FLAC as it has better compression ( i.e. same quality but smaller files.) As regarding tape outlasting CDR, not all CDRs are equal and a lot depends on the quality of the blank. I have for years only used Taiyo Yuden blanks ( now sold under the name CMC ) and I have rarely has a problem. What I can say for certain is that, while it is functioning, CDR far exceeds the quality of tape playback. Andrew, I have added Streaming to my system as I believe it is the future whether we like it or not. The cost of shipping CDs is becoming prohibitively expensive ( US$15.00 / US$17.00 for a single CD from the U.S.A. to the U.K. as an example.) I would prefer to stick with CD but it is becoming increasingly difficult due to the high cost. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4329 Registered: 03-2005 |
Pádraig, it is an option on your Mac. Go to iTunes. Then put the cursor on "File". A the top of the drop down menu is "New." Move your cursor to that. It will show you another menu. Choose "Smart Playlist." I'm in my main house right now, with just one of the laptops. It has only one Smart Playlist. On it I selected some playback rules from the long list of options offered. I chose: "Match any of the following rules: Last Played not in the last 1460 days Plays is less than 1 Date Added in the last 24 months Live updating." What this means is that when I chose this playlist, which I have called "Playlist 3" on this particular machine, the song shuffle setting on the iPod will only choose songs that comply with one of those three rules. A song that hasn't played in four years is eligible. It doesn't matter if it played 20 times in the past; it is now eligible to be picked up by the shuffle play. A song that has a prior play count of less than 1--in other words a song that hasn't played before--is eligible. And a song that was added in the past 24 months is eligible for play regardless of how many prior plays it has had and regardless of how recently it has played. "Live updating" simply means that the eligible songs change automatically as time passes and songs are played (or not) without having to re-synch the iPod to the computer to update the eligible songs for the Smart Playlist. When you synch your iPod to your Mac, the iPod will import this set of playlist rules. So, using my example, on the iPod under the "Playlists" option I will find "Playlist 3." If I choose that and I have set the iPod to "shuffle" "songs" it will pull only songs that comply with the rules I chose for that playlist. For me it's a way to force the iPod to favor unplayed songs, newer-added ones, and not bore me to death with replaying old stuff too often. On my other computer I have three different smart playlists, depending on my mood. It is the one matched to an iPod more often used so I tighten up the parameters some. For example, for recent acquisitions it use a shorter time frame, I think "Date Added in the last 12 months" but maybe it's 18 months. Hopefully this makes sense once you start looking at the Apple menus and options. You can experiment with it and you're likely to create several different smart playlists to see what works best for you. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9172 Registered: 05-2005 |
Thanks, Randy. Experimenting I will go. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1979 Registered: 08-2006 |
Man, I'm so stuck in my ways. 9 out of 10 times, I play CDs. I appreciate the sound quality but it also makes me consider what I'm playing (I have a single-disc unit, on purpose). I do have a Bose Bluetooth speaker, and, thanks to Amazon, every CD I've ever bought from them is miraculously available for free through Amazon music. So when I'm cooking, I play that. But I can't write and listen to music, at least when it's delivered through headphones, and I write for a living so I'm music-less most of the day. Every now and again I'll check out new music on Spotify but if I like it I buy it because Spotify is no bueno for artists. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9173 Registered: 05-2005 |
I can’t write and listen to music either, it’s far too distracting. But it’s good to play music on a break from writing. | ||
| TROU Member Username: Trou Post Number: 485 Registered: 05-2005 |
I listen to cd's, mostly while driving, otherwise on a not so very good mini stereo in the sitting room or with the radio-cd in the garden. Someone offered me recently a record player, now plugged to the unused big karaoke material brought back from Vietnam by my partner. My old vinyls (400 in this format says Discogs) have never sounded soo cool! I've also filled the 70go of my loyal sunflower Mac, mostly with rented music, and listen to it preferably on random mode. No download or streaming. Never... | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 1980 Registered: 08-2006 |
Oh, man, TROU, the sunflower Mac. Mine still resides in my closet because I can't bear to part with it, even though I haven't used it in many years (although it still works). I think it's my favorite product Apple made. It always made me happy to come down to my home office and see it sitting there. The newer iMacs just don't have the same soul. I'm super impressed yours is still in service. | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 1290 Registered: 08-2004 |
Mostly use my iPod through earphones. Usually at work or during long walks with doggo. I have Google Homehub too which can be hit or miss what you get compared to what you ask for. For instance: Everything I drag or copy to iTunes automatically uploads to Google Music and thusly should be available through the speakers at home. The other day I broadcast early My Bloody Valentine and ended up with a bunch of early songs by The Cramps. Technology fail ends with a nice twist. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 9181 Registered: 05-2005 |
Jerry, there is only one MBV song on Amazon Music streaming - and that's only there as part of a soundtrack album - so maybe it's the same with Google? Maybe MBV just don't allow their music on streaming services? | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 1293 Registered: 08-2004 |
I don't use any streaming myself either. The Google Music app and home app are linked to my cloud which is all music I own. Somehow in the transfer it has become mislabelled. Hence the mix up. Probably my fault somewhere along the line but that's what humans do. | ||
| Burgers Member Username: Burgers Post Number: 137 Registered: 05-2005 |
I have a stereo which plays CDs, vinyl and cassettes. I’ve had it for 30 years. All of my CDs and some of the vinyl is ripped to a Brennan B2 which I play through the stereo amp. That’s mostly what I listen to. I record the BBC 6 Music shows which I listen to through my television. I’ll sometimes listen through a laptop or iPad. I don’t do streaming but do sometimes download. Hugh’s right about the prohibitive cost of postage. I recently ordered Anna Burch’s new album from Polyvinyl. The LP was $20, the postage $26. There’s a chance I’ll also get hit with a VAT and Royal Mail handling fee totalling another £15 or so. So potentially £50+ She also has a European label which is more affordable but for lesser artists I wouldn’t bother. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 4332 Registered: 03-2005 |
The postage thing in the U.K. would be a major limiter for me. Like most of us, I like having a physical copy and, for the most part, I do. I can't understand why the Royal Mail is so unreasonable about VAT. Has someone made a conscious decision that they don't want U.K. residents purchasing things from overseas? That seems the only reasonable conclusion from where I sit. When I purchase something overseas, I most often pay through Paypal who applies the appropriate California sales tax to my purchase total. This goes for anything I buy, from whatever country or other state of the U.S.. This ensures that California gets its cut on its citizens' online retail purchases. (The US doesn't levy sales tax.). There's no collection function required of the Postal Service and thus no handling fee. Paypal presumably makes its money by holding my money however briefly and probably also by giving me a less than optimal currency exchange rate but it's certainly nothing like the crazy £8 handling fee, or whatever it was that Hugh told me! Burgers, you might want to search out U.K. dealers who specialize in selling overseas CDs and LPs. They will presumably have a means of getting things into the U.K. for a more reasonable cost. If you haven't done so you might want to try through discogs. |