Stay the fuck out of my music thread!

[Kosmonaut]

Nirvana - Nevermind

[DirtDawg]

Home, alone, ROCKIN' the fuck OUT!!

(I need this, today!)

Just a miscellaneous playlist of guitar heavy and heavy guitar stuff, some old, some new, some borrowed and some blue.

[Alex179]

Random playlists are often more enjoyable for me.

I have one of instrumental music (from metal to classical and most things in between).  It is among my favourites.  I love having so much damn music on my PC and iPod.   Less of a hassle than my hundreds of CDs (I had 500+ at once due to metal zine affiliation).

[DirtDawg]

Random playlists are often more enjoyable for me.

I have one of instrumental music (from metal to classical and most things in between).  It is among my favourites.  I love having so much damn music on my PC and iPod.   Less of a hassle than my hundreds of CDs (I had 500+ at once due to metal zine affiliation).

AGREED!

You're "preaching to the choir"  so to speak. I have been ripping and downloading everything I like for over twelve years.



NO!

Hard drive replay is not the same as a good vinyl pressing on my best gear or a well mastered CD, but it is the best of several worlds to me.

I actually have enough CDs that storage is a problem and cataloging/shelving is a fucking nightmare. (on the order of four thousand seven hundred last time I tried to list them in some way that makes sense, plus eighteen hundred or more LPs, not to mention about nine hundred, seven or fifteen inch tapes of live material. I have yet to rip over three quarters of my vinyl collection, FFS!)

I love using the computer, because you can search in any way you can dream up to find what you want. Not so, with shelves, closets, boxes, cases, crates or filing cabinets of shit to rummage through, if I want a certain CD. (part of the price of being old and liking all kinds of music)




Hard drive replay fucking RULES!!



(I have over seventy eight thousand tracks on my collection of HDDs, most are accessible via USB drives)

[Alex179]

NO!

Hard drive replay is not the same as a good vinyl pressing on my best gear or a well mastered CD, but it is the best of several worlds to me.

Agreed.  Analog has a warm spacious tone with respect to the more extreme frequencies that isn't as dry and digital sounding.

The storage and playlist capabilities are what makes Hard drive digital music so convenient for several listening applications and scenarios.   The car is the best since the traffic and overall noise of the car itself fuck with the sound quality anyways.   Just start a playlist and drive.

[DirtDawg]

My playlist is three hous long and my wife will return home with the floor shaking and she will need peace after dealing with her shopping trip.

I may soon be playing smooth jazz, like Michael Franks, Kenny G, which, I believe, cause cancer.

[DirtDawg]

NO!

Hard drive replay is not the same as a good vinyl pressing on my best gear or a well mastered CD, but it is the best of several worlds to me.

Agreed.  Analog has a warm spacious tone with respect to the more extreme frequencies that isn't as dry and digital sounding.

The storage and playlist capabilities are what makes Hard drive digital music so convenient for several listening applications and scenarios.   The car is the best since the traffic and overall noise of the car itself fuck with the sound quality anyways.   Just start a playlist and drive.

A test has been done by some University audio nuts and the consensus is that the car does not need more than 64kbps in resolution while your driving, for most people.

Do you know how many MP3 tracks fit on an average CD at that bitrate. It's a bunch and if you have one of those DVD car receiver things ...


I have been looking at players recently. I could have gotten a four hundred dollar Alpine multi-indash player for thirty eight bucks last week. I may yet put something in my old car.







(I will need bass, though, but I got that covered. Just need the electronics roadworthy)

[ASpHole]

NO!

Hard drive replay is not the same as a good vinyl pressing on my best gear or a well mastered CD, but it is the best of several worlds to me.

Agreed.  Analog has a warm spacious tone with respect to the more extreme frequencies that isn't as dry and digital sounding.

The storage and playlist capabilities are what makes Hard drive digital music so convenient for several listening applications and scenarios.   The car is the best since the traffic and overall noise of the car itself fuck with the sound quality anyways.   Just start a playlist and drive.

A test has been done by some University audio nuts and the consensus is that the car does not need more than 64kbps in resolution while your driving, for most people.

Do you know how many MP3 tracks fit on an average CD at that bitrate. It's a bunch and if you have one of those DVD car receiver things ...


I have been looking at players recently. I could have gotten a four hundred dollar Alpine multi-indash player for thirty eight bucks last week. I may yet put something in my old car.

Hard Drive Replay, as well as Digital recordings made and kept at a really high bitrate/resolution like the now studio/mastering standard 24 Bit/192Khz is actually better than analog could ever be. The problem lies with the RIAA standard 16 Bit/44Khz which has remained industry standard since the late 1970's , as well as data loss artifacts which are called jitter. Jitter is most noticeable at high frequencies, and is what made a lot of those older digital recordings sound cold and artificial.

That being said, keeping the audio source at a high bitrate/sample rate uncompressed format like .wav also negates some of the advantages of Hard Drive storage as the files are very large, and a lot of playback equipment cannot handle these resolutions.

Also digital recording is generally much more hassle free than analog recording, as you don't have to deal with calibrating head alignment, phase issues, Biasing, and the limitations of the tape formulation with digital that you do when you do serious recordin with an analog deck.

As far as those university researchers are concerned, they may be able to live with listening to a 64Kb/Sec resulution MP3 file on a car system, I on the other hand cannot stand listening to anything ripped at a bitrate below 128Kb/Sec.

[duncvis]

I dislike stuff encoded at lower than 128Kb/Sec also. WMA format is even fucking worse though. It sounds crispy and pixellated to my ears.

[odeon]

I prefer FLAC, whenever I can get it.

[DirtDawg]

NO!

Hard drive replay is not the same as a good vinyl pressing on my best gear or a well mastered CD, but it is the best of several worlds to me.

Agreed.  Analog has a warm spacious tone with respect to the more extreme frequencies that isn't as dry and digital sounding.

The storage and playlist capabilities are what makes Hard drive digital music so convenient for several listening applications and scenarios.   The car is the best since the traffic and overall noise of the car itself fuck with the sound quality anyways.   Just start a playlist and drive.

A test has been done by some University audio nuts and the consensus is that the car does not need more than 64kbps in resolution while your driving, for most people.

Do you know how many MP3 tracks fit on an average CD at that bitrate. It's a bunch and if you have one of those DVD car receiver things ...


I have been looking at players recently. I could have gotten a four hundred dollar Alpine multi-indash player for thirty eight bucks last week. I may yet put something in my old car.

Hard Drive Replay, as well as Digital recordings made and kept at a really high bitrate/resolution like the now studio/mastering standard 24 Bit/192Khz is actually better than analog could ever be. The problem lies with the RIAA standard 16 Bit/44Khz which has remained industry standard since the late 1970's , as well as data loss artifacts which are called jitter. Jitter is most noticeable at high frequencies, and is what made a lot of those older digital recordings sound cold and artificial.

That being said, keeping the audio source at a high bitrate/sample rate uncompressed format like .wav also negates some of the advantages of Hard Drive storage as the files are very large, and a lot of playback equipment cannot handle these resolutions.

Also digital recording is generally much more hassle free than analog recording, as you don't have to deal with calibrating head alignment, phase issues, Biasing, and the limitations of the tape formulation with digital that you do when you do serious recordin with an analog deck.

As far as those university researchers are concerned, they may be able to live with listening to a 64Kb/Sec resulution MP3 file on a car system, I on the other hand cannot stand listening to anything ripped at a bitrate below 128Kb/Sec.

Certainly, and most of mine are much higher bitrate. I used 128Kb/sec at first, mainly because I did not know better. I have replaced many of those early rips with my current process.

I think that the study was mainly intended to determine how much resolution the average person is capable of hearing in a car traveling down the road. As it turned out almost no one could tell the difference in 64Kbps and 128Kbps. That's the real story there. You can't have high quality audio in a moving car, no matter how good you think it sounds while you're making your equipment choices.



The only low resolution files I have left are things I have downloaded from the net or simply can not find anywhere (or I might have to BUY)

My next toy is probably going to be a Squeezebox, by Slim Devices.

These seem really cool!

I would also like to get the upgrade DAC mod and a tube output/buffer mod as well. It doubles the price, but the difference is amazing.

[DirtDawg]

I prefer FLAC, whenever I can get it.

I use FLAC for all my current rips. I use EAC for near bit by bit "perfection" from CD audio to WAV then encode to FLAC for storage. I actually don't mind the sound of WMA LOSSLESS VBR, but the files are not much smaller than FLAC, which is also lossless. The biggest problem is that even devices that recognize WMA don't always work with VBR.

I would dearly love to have everything stored in higher resolutions, but I'm a long way from that.

I think FLAC is the "WAVe" of the future.

[odeon]

I need more HD space.

[ASpHole]

I prefer FLAC, whenever I can get it.

I use FLAC for all my current rips. I use EAC for near bit by bit "perfection" from CD audio to WAV then encode to FLAC for storage. I actually don't mind the sound of WMA LOSSLESS VBR, but the files are not much smaller than FLAC, which is also lossless. The biggest problem is that even devices that recognize WMA don't always work with VBR.

I would dearly love to have everything stored in higher resolutions, but I'm a long way from that.

I think FLAC is the "WAVe" of the future.

FLAC is a nice format, however the problem that I currently have is that the version of WaveLab that I have will not open a FLAC file, much less an AAC file if I want to edit it into something.

[duncvis]

I need more HD space.

me too. I have enough for mp3 storage, and back it up onto DVDs periodically, but FLAC would take up far too much space for me. I'm not that fastidious anyway.