Just sawa comment where @Mike-H said he has just digitised a new 10 cd collection.
I ask why not just play the CDs ? CDs are falling in value all the time so preserving their sanctity seems of litke value and streaming services make most music available anywhere anytime.
So what is the point ?
For use outside the home via an mp3 player, presumably.
That and for the play count (for me anyway). I rather like to see what I have played and when. A facility missing from Spotify.
I am so deep in scrobbling it were as tedious to return as go o’er. As Macbeth nearly said.
Scrobble, scrobble, toil and trouble…
I assume scrobbling is how to do it? And not a strange illness?
Why is a play count important?
Ha ha ha, you’re funny!
I have played many a tune on some organs but never took count.
Am I missing something?
Yep, that’ll be me. Some of us have to go out and work, you know.
Well as a runner a discman would limit me to about 13k before I had to stop and put another disc in.
To be fair 13k sounds like more than enough.
Ah… the Iron Man chapter of the Afterword, constantly running, benching, crunching, wrestling alligators and applying organic moisturiser.
Thankfully there are fat lazy twots like me to balance things out. Literally (think seesaws)
I buy CDs, upload them to iTunes losslessly, which you I don’t think you can get from iTunes or Amazon when purchasing, then drag the files over to my NAS drive so I can stream around the house. I also transfer them onto my iPod Classic for mobile play.
I like knowing I’ve got a disc back-up should I ever require it (I know CDs are predicted to fail at some point, but to my knowledge none of mine have yet, and I’ve got CDs purchased back in 1985).
As KDH said above, CDs are not a reliable permanent means of keeping music. Some CDs fail in a few years and others seemingly last forever. Look up “Disc Rot” on Wikipedia for an explanation.
I live in a small one-bed flat, so space is at a premium. Vinyl and CDs take up a lot of space and digital files don’t. About 10% of my collection occupies a shelving unit (from Ikea, long discontinued) which is 1275mm tall and 400mm wide. I have four of these, about twice the number of CDs that these hold stored away in boxes plus a huge stack of box sets and a growing pile of recently-acquired CDs. Also a couple of hundred vinyl albums and a small box of old vinyl singles. Almost all of these are digitised onto a little 120mm x 82mm hard drive, connected to my laptop. I have another 3 copies of this hard drive in case of failure (which actually are in need of re-syncing now that I’ve added new purchases).
If I relied only on physical media I’d have to do some serious excavation to play anything that wasn’t in those 4 shelving units. Anything on the hard drive can be found and played in seconds.
I like to listen on my phone sometimes, particularly when travelling, but prefer lossless digital files to mp3s etc. I digitise them all myself rather than use Amazon’s mp3s, so that I hear them in the best quality.
If I play a digitised album from my computer through my hifi, I like the fact that once the album has been played I then get to hear random tunes/songs from my library afterwards, unless I stop it. I have my music-playing software set up so that random tracks are ones that haven’t ever been played before. Could be neglected music tracks, old forgotten podcasts, radio shows I recorded years ago..
This is where play counts come in quite handy.
Only read this after posting below Mike. This seems entirely rational and far more organised than
I am.
I can sort of see these points. But if one were a runner and I’m not, would you need to have your “entire” collection digitised? Also most people have more than enough bandwidth to stream it .Esp ,I presume, in the UK where internet signals would be pretty strong anyway.
Re play counts, I have a simple process. If the vinly or CD stays stacked up next to the player it tells me I’ve played it a lot. Mind you, at the moment, I can still remember what I’ve played anyway.
Re CDs fucking up, never had one -not a commercial release, not a burn, and this goes back to inception.
A runner sez generally its the me and @leicester-bangs stuff – John Digweed, Henry Saiz, Nick Warren, Oakenfold, Joris Voorn and Sasha etc mix CDS that are digitised and are what you need 10k in. Much as I love The Fall to bits, running to them is not really an option. Sudden tempo changes are not what you need, it’s all about a steady pulse and some slow building chords.
Spotify is absolutely rubbish for mix CDs.
Here’s what you need…
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/radiotonic/cosmic-music-of-the-east-german-olympic-program/6746616
You don’t want to be ‘digitising’* your CDs as you need them. If you do them as you get them it’s no task at all really and you can then put them on whatever system you use in whatever location eg MP3 player (nice and small so not internet connected), Sonos at home (I can’t imagine going back to CDs after 13 years of streaming music round the house), SD cards for the car.
Just because the Internet is ubiquitous, it doesn’t make it free and if I wanted to stream all the music I listen to on the move, it would cost me a fortune.
I guess the precursor of house streaming systems was the multi-disc CD player and I got my first one of those in the house around 1990 and it hugely changed the way i listened to music mainly because I would play new CDs that I hadn’t been so keen on and would have been usurped by a newer release when I had a single player (laziness probably plays a big part in this – why have a remote control when you have to get up and change the disc?!) – my 50 disc player was a huge beast and being able to retire it and move to streamed music back in 2005 was a step change.
*General point of order for this thread and a bit of bug bear of mine… ripping a CD is not digitising it. The only data any CD contains is digital, that’s how they work.
Back-up, back-up and more back-up. And convenience. I use my Sonos to play music and that uses my computer files. CDs are for the car.
It’s a myth that everything is “on streaming”. It isn’t (See my recent post about the gorgeous Eg & Alice album) – and even if it is, there’s no guarantee that it’ll stay there (eMusic customers know this only too well). Music is too important to rely on some scummy mobile phone network providing 3g/4g/WiFi . I rip CDs to my computer and it’s really handy to have a library of the music on there alongside downloads stuff. I still use a dedicated mp3/flac music player rather than a phone for on the move too so every new CD gets ripped. I don’t resort to recording Vinyl to digital though.
I have a couple of flight cases of vinyl (so probably about 200) which I have digitised ‘cos it has never been released on CD. Some things are tied up in legal wrangles after labels have folded or artists have died (e.g. Fiat Lux) and will never be rereleased.
An good inch or so of vinyl is Furniture, who had built up quite a catalogue on an indie label before Brilliant Mind. They signed to Stiff, who promptly went bust. Arista released their next one but dropped them and the CD on Arista is rare as rocking horse poo. So the only Furniture music you can currently buy is the Stiff album rereleased (25 years later) on CD by Cherry Red.
If I relied on The Man to stream my music, it would be a life mostly without the music of Furniture and I’d be missing a chunk of my life.
And don’t get me started on the more obscure New Order tracks.
Agreed, a definitive New Order boxset (even just the Factory years would be more than enough) appears to be about as likely as Half-Life 3 (gamer reference for you there). The 12″ singles on vinyl are still very much needed.
The only reason I do is so I can play them out of iTunes on my radio show. But that’s just for the ones that aren’t on iTunes anyway, i.e. some local jazz releases, cos they don’t live givin’ their music up to da man you dig?
This cat knows where it’s at.
Right down with it and in the groove. A real gone daddy!
The time to lump on is exactly at the time when an item’s stock is at its lowest.
The time to buy vinly, for example, was about 20/25 years ago up to about 2005.
I love buying CDs for 50p, particularly as I was one of those who poured scorn on the things (the price rather than the sound dynamics) when they were £16.99 … forget 1988, that still sounds riotously expensive in 2018!
Playing a Lee Morgan CD now – Blue Note ’68 – great original sleeve notes, easy to use, no work on my part, pristine condition, cheap as chips.
Cheap-er than chips quite often, these days.
And of course, if you own a new car ((sob) you may find you do not have a CD player option so will have to digitize to SD cards for mobile tunes.
I’ve encountered a few CD players over the last few years suffering from gummed up drives and drive belt rot.
In many cases this can be avoided be simply using the players regularly……keep em spinning.
I do it so
1) I can play it at work. I’m lucky enough to be able to listen to music all day at work. All on a hard drive connected to a personal wi fi hotspot then played on a Samsung tablet using Neutron music player (the best on Android i think) and listened on some brilliant Sony wireless headphones.
2) In the car, no CD player. Memory stick with 5000+ of my favourite tunes on.
3) On holiday. WiFi hotspot, portable hard drive, Bluetooth speaker. Instant party!
4) At home. The fantastic Sonos app gathers all your music in one place so it’s easy to play anything you have.
I do it so I can make playlists for running, train journeys, the kitchen iPod dock etc…
Huge fan of smart playlists.
Me big luddite dinosaur!
I have some mp3 files, but only selected rips that I wanted to compile onto CD (Afterword CD Swap being a recent example), or those that came with Pledge Music/Kickstarter campaigns.
(oh, and some “unofficial” stuff).
Music listening for me is the shiny disc (or it’s larger plastic-y counterpart).
No music on my phone, no MP3 player.
I don’t do digital
In my confused “old” world, Spotify and YouTube listening is fir reference, sharing or to roadtest some new discoveries
All our CD’s are digitized when we get them. We got a Sonos system 3 years ago and I dedicated myself to digitizing the 500 or so that we already owned. I keep meaning to do the same with all our DVD’s.
At the risk of repeating myself (actually it’s not a risk, I am repeating myself!). All my CDs are digitised before I get them. What other sort of CDs are there?!
…and almost all modern vinyl has been digitised at some point between the performance and the pressing plant.
So what?
Actually, on reflection, a point arises.
When Steven Wilson remasters Bongos Over Balham or whatever and he takes stuff from the original analogue tapes and works his magic, does he record it back onto analogue tapes before it gets mastered for the various formats? Or does it all become digital files which are then used to create the masters? Does it matter? Does anyone here know?
Steven Wilson does Bongos Over Balham?
Where do I sign … Not particularly worried about analogue to digital compression and wizardry, I just want to hear the Chilli’s free of crackle, hiss and the occasional jump
(a 2 quid bargain bin copy only lasts so long)
Bloody hell, 3 mentions for the CCCBHMs in one day, and I hadn’t even read these posts before mentioning their monster smash hit album in another stream!!
Yes but vinyl is, by specification analogue. CDs are and always have been purely digital. You can convert the digits from a CD to another format but you’re not digitising it.
Transcoding, in tech-speak.
In answer to your question, Mike; yes, the original tapes are transferred to high-res (24 bit, usually 96kHz) digital. The mastering is done in the digital domain.
Vinyl is usually pressed from 24-bit WAV files, which saves the bother of sending the tapes to the vinyl pressing plant. Some more nerdy releases are dubbed onto analogue tape but most of those are mastered in the digital domain.
While/if I have your attention, Steve.
Wondering about music player software that extracts the information from .flac compressed files “on the fly” to make them playable. Are there some that are “Truer” than others, or are they all using the same standardised routines and it’s ultimately down to your DAC and audio equipment?
In theory, Flac decoders are all the same (Flac encoders change over time as they get more efficient). I have heard of differences and there are audio-targeted “audiophile” media players available, but I think they are primarily designed to use smaller amounts of memory & processor (e.g. to run on Pi).
On my Win 7 PC, Windows Media Player sounds different to VLC. WMP doesn’t support 24-bit and so on, so I only use VLC.
For serious listening, my streaming preamp and Squezebox Touch decode the Flac files natively (i.e. in code running in the hardware).
In practice, it’s mostly down to the DAC and speakers.
Natively?
Does this involve body paint and a grass skirt?
I’ve adopted a new approach to my project of playing all the unplayed music in my digital library. As of this week I’ve started playing them in Alphabetical order by Artist instead of at random.
About half-way through the “A”s currently.
Tracks by the Allman Brothers, Alog, Altered Images, Amadou & Mariam, The Amazing Blondel, Amen, America, American Music Club, The Amorphous Androgynous and Amparanoia so far this afternoon.