Analog, digital or streaming. What source of music do you prefer?
I was just wondering what all you lovely users prefer in terms of listening to your music collection. I know that both analog and digital sound very different, however I'm more interested in simply how your music collection is stored and how it reaches your ears. Additionally why do you prefer your way of listening to music, and is there a method you want to try but simply never got around to doing so?
Personally, I prefer listening to music through my beloved iPod Classic. My entire collection currently resides on my laptop, all in FLAC, but I modded my iPod to hold up to 250GB worth of music and so I can simply dump my entire library on there and have every song available on the go. I prefer this to streaming as I like the fact I don't need to rely on the internet and can pretty much listen wherever I go, however I would like to try out vinyl and tube amps to see if analog music really does provide a "warmer" sound that a lot of people seem to praise it for.
Digital. It's just better in every way. I have millions of songs in my pocket, searchable instantly and the audio quality is more than good enough. MP3 not FLAC. Even on my system (which is pretty good, I used to work in hi-fi) or my Quite Nice headphones I cannot tell any difference at all between CD, 256kbps MP3 and FLAC. Not in a blind ABX test anyway. If you tell me which is which then maybe. It's amazing how psychosomatic sound quality can be.
This is usually quite a controversial opinion but I am the opposite of a fan of vinyl records, and I say that as someone with hundreds of the things from my DJing days. They take up loads of space, their sound is necessarily limited, they degrade every time you play them and a few specks of dust can ruin one - but they solved a problem that (at the time) nothing else did. I just don't understand why people want them again. Just put a bit of carpet over your speakers if you want that "warm vinyl sound", then stop what you're doing and walk around a bit every 20 minutes to simulate having to change the record.
I'm not endorsing it, being a streaming + Bluetooth peasant myself, but what draws a lot of people to physical media is the authenticity. Same reason physical books are having a bit of a revival in some sectors. Sure you can have millions of items in a list on your digital device, I know I prefer it that way myself, but without having a physical component, that's all they are: items on a list.
I used to have 3 bookshelves full to the bursting with books, technical manuals, comics, etc. It's really something else to have a visual, tangible thing you can hold in your hand. I used to judge people by the contents of their bookshelves and the state of their collections. Then I had to move all that shit and promptly dumped all of that. Fuck physical media, they're a chain around your neck! Praise streaming and kindle!
I hear that argument from time to time, it's not entirely without merit. But, speaking for myself, I'm much more interested in listening to music than owning it. (and yes, same with books)
While I am mostly in your camp (although I enjoy collecting good FLAC rips) I have to say there's something to the experience of owning an LP with gorgeous art, and a booklet with lyrics and notes and other cool stuff. It adds a lot to the experience for me.
Okay, I get the authenticity and deliberation of inserting a piece of media into a player, but we still had that with CDs. For those that want that, why didn't they just continue to buy them? I can raise my hand and say that I do buy them because you get the best of every world with them. A physical object that you own, always DRM-free, easy to rip to whatever codec/format you desire, and the deliberate experience of playing the CD itself if you so choose. I can even expand on the last point in the fact that you can skip ahead and back to different tracks and also seek forward and back if needed. Furthermore, you can often get an album on CD more cheaply than the download version. Sure, the actual waveform isn't imprinted on the CD itself, but does it really matter?
I don't use any of my CDs after they're ripped, but do feel like I get the best value out of buying them. I've actually held off or entirely skipped buying some releases that are download only because I don't actually feel like I'm getting something for my money.
I think the whole “this sounds better” is sometimes just your brain tricking you into believing it sounds better because you want it to. That’s what pyschosomatic means, right?
I think a lot of people argue that it depends on when the album was made, as clearly back in the day albums were mixed for vinyl, nowadays they are mixed for headphone listening off digital devices.
"Mixed for vinyl" means the dynamic range has been reduced and the sub-bass filtered and so on. Mastering for vinyl is just working around the inherent limitations of the format rather than mixing for the desired final sound. Remasters of classic albums onto CD sound better than the vinyl mixes every time (except when mastered badly, of course).
And yes, that's exactly what psychosomatic means. "Psycho", to do with the brain, "soma", to do with the body. It means the brain can affect bodily experience - like with placebo effect or that thing where you read about the symptoms of a disease and then suddenly start to feel them. It's also how come audiophiles think their £10k amps with pure silver cables sound better than a £50 class T amp wired up with a coathanger. When objective measurement with an oscilloscope or other signal measuring gear shows no difference at all.
Getting a bit OT but fwiw, in my experience of hifi - which does include some eye-wateringly expensive gear I tried out in the shop I worked in - speakers matter. Up to a few hundred quid a set, speakers matter. Nothing else does once you're out of the garbage price range (so anything over £50 or so). Cables and interconnects in particular are a gigantic scam.
I'm one of the peasants. I've listened to vinyl on a friend's $10k system, I've listened to low-bit-rate mp3s. I can hear minor differences between the top-end gear and playing Spotify from my phone to Bluetooth headphones, but those differences aren't big enough to impact my enjoyment of the music.
I’ve never got my hands on enough equipment to actually do some form of ABX test so I can’t really confirm whether there is a noticeable difference, of course it’s all subjective anyway depending on your ears.
I grew up with vinyl. It fucking sucks, especially on the cheap turntables that were common in the 80s and 90s. I gave all my vinyl to my sister.
When CD happened I hugely preferred that, even though the early portable players were awful. I built up a large CD collection, and I ripped them to lossless while that was still legal in the UK.
There's a few things I miss. Some of those 80s indie bands are not (at least, not last time I looked. Maybe it's much easier now?) so easy to get as digital downloads or on CD.
I got a cheap minidisc player/recorder from someone I used to work with, and that was a cool little machine at the time. It's easy to see the limitations in the format though.
Now I have a huge collection of digital. Some poorly ripped MP3, some nicely ripped lossless formats. I'd like to do them all as Ogg Vorbis, but my mp3 players (Sansa Clips and Fuzes) can't handle it. I listen to a much wider range of music than I used to, and it's not full of noise.
Seems like the times are a-changing.
I've tried comparing at least 20 actual vinyls to vinyl FLAC rips. If there's any difference, I definitely can't tell.
I can see the appeal of the analog rituals and having a physical collection, but it's not particularly important to me.
As far as the listening itself goes, I find anything above decent ~$150 headphones and a v0 rip is imperceptible overkill.
I feel like that would be the only reason to persuade me to start a vinyl collection, having the physical album to hold is probably a lot cooler than having the album in digital format.
I've tried a range of headphones and also found that above a certain price-range the difference does become essentially negligible. The only reason I have my entire library in FLAC is because most of it came from CDs and if I have the storage I might as well rip it to the highest quality possible.
Oh yeah, I have everything in FLAC too. Definitely better for archiving since when some new compressed formats inevitable come out at some point, converting from lossless will almost certainly sound better.
But if you're loading up a phone or iPod or something and are running low on space, I'd suggest trying v0 if you haven't, or even something a bit more lossy. From my experience and all I've read, it's just impossible to tell a difference and you'll be getting 3-4x more music in the same space.
I thought gapless playback had more to do with the player. Is this not the case? I have some gapless albums that are ripped to mp3 that play back just as you expect as long as the player supports it.
Yeah all the songs on my iPod are in V0 I believe, simply because even with the mod there wouldn't be enough space for all the files to be in ALAC (Apple's own fancy version of FLAC). The audio chip in the iPod is pretty good, apparently the best one out of all the iPods they've ever made hence why I bought it. Like you said though, I don't think I'll ever notice the difference anyway as long as the files are in fairly decent quality.
Digital. Streaming services usually don't have all artists or albums.
I'm pretty much entirely based around my digital library, and I use MusicBee to organize and play everything. I've done a lot of streaming in the past but I just find it to be less convenient and more poorly organized so I tend to avoid it now.
I would like to collect vinyl because even putting aside the quality argument, I really like having something substantial. It feels a little weird to have such intimate relationships with pieces of art without having anything to touch or bind those emotions to, you know?
MusicBee is amazing, can’t believe it took me so long to find it but I was so happy to ditch iTunes. Organising my library and scrolling through the entire thing with completed album art is amazing.
I use a little bit of everything. My first experience with decent speakers (as opposed to the crappy earbuds that came with my phone) was when I got my first turntable. I think having decent speakers/ equipment matters in that I can definitely hear the difference between my lousy computer speakers and the sound system I have now. With certain records I even think there's a difference between my current turntable and the low end one I used to have. That being said, I'm not a snob or an audiophile. I also buy CDs and stream music via bluetooth, and haven't bothered to do any real comparison or analysis of sound quality. Ostensibly I can't really tell the difference and if there is a difference it isn't sufficient to diminish the listening experience. I don't see any point in spending thousands of dollars on increasingly "improved" equipment.
Having physical records for me is less about sound quality and more about 1. being a tactile person who likes to be able to touch things, 2. being a sucker for certain kitschy/novelty releases, and 3. enjoying the history of some of the records I have. For example, I found a 1963 recording of the March on Washington in a record store last year. Sure I could probably listen to it online, and it's not a rare or expensive piece, but it's fascinating to me to have that piece of history in my collection.
I have some nice memories of sitting with friends and flipping through/ listening to their (or their parents') record collections. A digital collection is convenient but seems less conducive to this.
100% streaming. If I'm searching for something specific and it's not on spotify, it's probably on youtube.
I generally stream my collection through Spotify, though I do have some high-quality recordings of favorites on my Plex to use with my living room speakers. I'm an avid vinyl collector though I don't own a record player just yet.
I do use Spotify for finding music so I wouldn't say I don't use streaming at all. I do want to start collecting vinyl however the cost per album is so much higher compared to say a second hand CD which you can rip to FLAC.
I mostly collect vinyl as art pieces; most of the records I have exhibit a ton of cool album-related artwork that I wouldn't be able to get my hands on otherwise. But in terms of music quality there's no discernible benefit between CD-> FLAC and vinyl.
I use digital most of the time, and I usually settle for 320 or v0 quality unless it's one of my favorite albums, then I might keep a FLAC of it just because it makes it feel more, I dunno, special? Something like that. A decent amount of stuff I listen to isn't on streaming services and swapping from a service to local listening is annoying to me when I could have all of it on one player. I would like to collect vinyl and CD in the future but more for the physical aspect of being able to hold something I love in my hands than actually listening to them. Collecting is so cool to me.
I know what you mean about the special FLAC albums, knowing that it’s higher quality than your standard crappy MP3, regardless of whether you can hear the difference, somehow makes it more special.
I also love collecting things, probably the only reason I’d even think about collecting vinyl as in terms of portability vinyl just sucks, but it’s cool to hold a physical copy looking at the massive album art.
Rest In Peace iPod, must’ve been a sad day indeed.
Big CD collection at home and my old iPod for being mobile. Most of what's on the iPod is stuff from my collection. The occasional single from iTunes makes it's way in there but, if I like a band I buy the CD.
I enjoy it all, really. They each serve a different purpose for me, though.
My vinyl collection is much more of a "trophy" collection for me. I have a few dozen of my favorite records that take up one shelf. I play them only one or two times a week, and sometimes only one side of a record. I like having the unique artwork and the process of listening to vinyl gets me in the mood for the specific record I'm putting on.
Streaming is my workhorse method of listening to music. I put it on my Google Home and do chores or flit about the house. I stream at work and in the car, too. Streaming does more, no doubt about it. Playlists, endless amounts of music, crazy genres you've just now decided to give a chance, you name it. The quality is also still pretty high, too.
Digital is best for quality though and through, but I haven't downloaded albums to quality digital in so long that I barely feel it qualifies for a point here.
Idk. Vinyl is a fun hobby but it;s not necessarily the best or most frequent way I digest music.
95% Spotify, with a few FLACs for albums that I especially care about.
Also occasionally Soundcloud through the NewPipe app. Spotify has a great selection, but a lot of smaller artists or remixes are only on Soundcloud.
Digital. At home I stream it from my phone or PC to my stereo through a Chromecast.
Digital for day to day. I have a crappy data plan and limited bandwidth at home (just all costs too damn much). I only stream for new music, then I buy/download. I love being able to control what I listen to, can't really do that when streaming.
I love buying cds and vinyl, there's something about the ritual of putting the disc in or the record on the player and sitting back and listening. Album art and lyrics are what I miss when I buy/download digital.
Digital. I resisted Spotify for a long time but finally gave in last year. I'd like to get a record player and start collecting physical music at some point too though.