Listening to Digital Media Vs. LPs

[Teasing the Korean]

I didn't know where else to place this topic so I'm putting it in Misc. Music.

Now that I've experienced nearly 20 years of music on digital media, and with 40+ years of listening to and accumulating LPs, I can say that I listen to them very differently.

If I'm doing a bunch of stuff around the house, I'm more apt to put iTunes or my multi-disc CD changer on shuffle. Needless to say, I can listen to CDs in my car and at work too. I'm more likely to skip around to stuff I like.

Putting on an LP is more of an event - I like the ritual of cleaning the record, the stylus, and uncorking the bottle of wine. I let the albums play straight through and I listen harder.

I feel much more of an emotional connection to LPs because of the aesthetic of the vinyl experience; but in many ways I feel more familiar with the music I've accumulated on CD, because I have many more opportunities to listen to them, put a track I like on repeat, etc.

Partly for this reason, I'm made more of a shift to buying digital media in recent years, although nothing can top the thrill of finding something I've really wanted on vinyl.

I'm curious if anyone has had similar observations.

[king ubu]

...I let the albums play straight through...

don't you have to turn them around halway through?

Seriously: interesting observations! I grew up right as the CD got wide-spread, but I still have about half a meter of vinyl and occasionally buy some more. I never play vinyl just for background listenig, or very rarely do so, for the same reasons you mention.

But on the other hand, most often I play CDs straight through as well, it's very rare that I hit the repeat button or program my player or anything. It happens that I hit the repeat button at the end of a disc, though.

[sidewinder]

CD playback has come a long way over the past 10 years and I'm enjoying CDs more and more but there's no doubt - there's an extra dimension to the sound when you spin the vinyl on a decent deck setup.

[7/4]

I usually just spin an entire CD.

I've tried using the shuffle on a MP3 player, but there's so much material on the player, it never ends.

.

[king ubu]

I've never used the shuffle on my ipod.

The only thing that goes beyond albums there is that I loaded the complete Lester Young, with recording dates as "albums", which with the "play all" option allowed me to play whatevver bit of his music I wanted... but "generation ipod" goes for single tracks, so I guess going for the full discography is quite to the contrary of trends.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I've never used the shuffle on my ipod.

The only thing that goes beyond albums there is that I loaded the complete Lester Young, with recording dates as "albums", which with the "play all" option allowed me to play whatevver bit of his music I wanted... but "generation ipod" goes for single tracks, so I guess going for the full discography is quite to the contrary of trends.

Do you mean that you can't load a few albums onto an ipod then just play one of them straight through, but have to pick out each individual track?

My wife wants one for Christmas, so I guess I'll have to learn about them.

MG

[Teasing the Korean]

Do you mean that you can't load a few albums onto an ipod then just play one of them straight through, but have to pick out each individual track?

No you can play straight albums. It's just that shuffle is a nice way to mix things up.

[Neal Pomea]

It was a ritual to go to a friend's house or have a friend over and listen to records together and visit. What would we do now? Zip something to one another on a phone or a Web site or e-mail or a SpaceFaceGooGooBookTweet? Is that supposed to be a connection between people?

If it works for them, great! Not for me. Why do those things have to have cutesy names in the first place?

Ok, run around on my lawn now.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Do you mean that you can't load a few albums onto an ipod then just play one of them straight through, but have to pick out each individual track?

No you can play straight albums. It's just that shuffle is a nice way to mix things up.

Ah, thanks TTK

MG

[relyles]

I don't even own an mp3 player. I do still own a decent turntable, but I rarely get to use it. The CD gets listened to usally because of the convenience.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

It was a ritual to go to a friend's house or have a friend over and listen to records together and visit.

Yes - I met my wife at one of these get togethers at a friend's house.

MG

[RDK]

I didn't know where else to place this topic so I'm putting it in Misc. Music.

Now that I've experienced nearly 20 years of music on digital media, and with 40+ years of listening to and accumulating LPs, I can say that I listen to them very differently.

If I'm doing a bunch of stuff around the house, I'm more apt to put iTunes or my multi-disc CD changer on shuffle. Needless to say, I can listen to CDs in my car and at work too. I'm more likely to skip around to stuff I like.

Putting on an LP is more of an event - I like the ritual of cleaning the record, the stylus, and uncorking the bottle of wine. I let the albums play straight through and I listen harder.

I feel much more of an emotional connection to LPs because of the aesthetic of the vinyl experience; but in many ways I feel more familiar with the music I've accumulated on CD, because I have many more opportunities to listen to them, put a track I like on repeat, etc.

Partly for this reason, I'm made more of a shift to buying digital media in recent years, although nothing can top the thrill of finding something I've really wanted on vinyl.

I'm curious if anyone has had similar observations.

My thoughts almost exactly!

[JSngry]

Just as the bathroom has become the sole opportunity I have to read uninterrupted, so has the car beco me the last place for me to urinate in private, er, I mean, listen to music uninterrupted.

And since I don't have one of these

vinyl has become a rare treat indeed. and I'm ok with that.

Got an iPod about 4 months ago, just now getting around to using it. Like the flexibility and storage capacity, don't like the ear buds, can't wear "headphones" at the office, and typical MP3 quality, although perfect enough for casual/background use doesn't hold up to close listening. Great concept, but give me a FLAC-capable iPod an watch me smile a little more.

Truthfully, I usually have more fun listening to music in my mind (be it real or imagined) than through any recorded medium (more than just enough to get it in there). But that's just me, and that's just right now.

[neveronfriday]

Great concept, but give me a FLAC-capable iPod an watch me smile a little more.

Cowon S9 (32 GB)

After lots of trial and error, I eneded up with the S9. Flac (plus lots of other formats), video, great sound (with your own headphones, NOT with the ones that come along with the S9). 32GB is the maximum (and enough for me, even with FLAC), the GUI is a bit confusing in the details (can be exchanged with freely available alternatives) and it's a bit pricey, but all around, probably the best-sounding player at the moment (some Sony players come close, albeit with other difficulties; they aren't compatible with 64bit Vista, for example).

The S9 has been a constant companion of mine and has never once let me down. The sound is, again, fabulous (and you know, I'm a rather picky guy).

[rockefeller center]

but give me a FLAC-capable iPod an watch me smile a little more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockbox

Supported Apple devices: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockbox#Apple

Codecs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockbox#Codecs

[king ubu]

Do you mean that you can't load a few albums onto an ipod then just play one of them straight through, but have to pick out each individual track?

No you can play straight albums. It's just that shuffle is a nice way to mix things up.

Ah, thanks TTK

MG

Sorry for the confusion!

What I wanted to say is: I always use the album option except for some cases, where like Lester Young I loaded the complete discography onto the ipod.

Since we have some rather newbies here (as digital media player users, that is), just a note again that Winamp lets you pull music off the ipod onto your computer (in case you accidentally delete something that you still have on your ipod - happened to me a couple of times...)

As for the FLAC thing, isn't that a bit of a touchy thing to interfere with the firmware? The only thing I did do so was with an external burner (that cost only 20% of an ipod or even less) where the firmware was also being offered by the manufacturing company... I'm cautious about this, but if I could play FLAC and MP2 without conversion, that would of course be nice! (Winamp does that automatically, but I've never bothered to find out what settings it uses, or if the compression rate can be adjusted for this automatic compression - ituned btw also does change MP2s into MP3s automatically).

[rockefeller center]

Sorry, OT (again)

As for the FLAC thing, isn't that a bit of a touchy thing to interfere with the firmware?

Sure, it can be. But in case with Rockbox on a hard disk music player I don't think it's really dangerous:

Although Rockbox's official title is "Rockbox: Open Source Jukebox Firmware", in many instances it is not actually installed to (or run from) flash memory. Instead a minimal bootloader is installed in the supported device's flash which is capable of either loading Rockbox from the hard disk or, alternately, the original factory firmware.

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Rockbox

But, like always, it's good to know what you're doing (i.e. RTFM) before updating. Personally, if I had an iPod I'd be curious to try out Rockbox.

Edited November 12, 2009 by rockefeller center

[king ubu]

Yeah, but often with these soft/hardware manuals I don't understand sh*t... I don't even know what "firmware" is, although I updated my external burner's firmware. I'll look into the rockbox thing though. I still burn most of my live shows (FLAC downloads usually) to CDR, as I don't have any means to hook up an external drive to my amplifier... so having FLAC on an ipod would be rather useful.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

and typical MP3 quality, although perfect enough for casual/background use doesn't hold up to close listening.

Stop using the "typical" setting!

I rip all of my mp3s with Exact Audio Copy & LAME set-up for VBR Q2 (called VBR-2 or Quality 2 in some programs). The resulting files are indistinguishable for the source CD. Yes, the files are bigger because of this, but not nearly as big as FLAC. All current mp3/iPod players can play VBR mp3 files.

Kevin

[king ubu]

I'm even more anal and usually do MP3 @ 320 kbs, no variability... but it makes more sense, I guess. Typical with iTunes would be 192?

[neveronfriday]

Yeah, but often with these soft/hardware manuals I don't understand sh*t... I don't even know what "firmware" is, although I updated my external burner's firmware. I'll look into the rockbox thing though. I still burn most of my live shows (FLAC downloads usually) to CDR, as I don't have any means to hook up an external drive to my amplifier... so having FLAC on an ipod would be rather useful.

Flurin,

I've been in the same boat for quite a while but I've got a link here that might interest you (German, longer read ... take your time).

Until I read that, I was quite sure that it would take tons of money to do what I want to do (especially, to be independent of streaming etc. ... no time to explain right now why).

In short: This guy bought himself a cheapo Netbook (one whose fan could be shut down 99% of the time without ruining anything), hooked it up to a (realtively) cheap but excellent (!) DAC (Digital Audio Converter) and then hooked his external drive(s) into the Netbook (which runs foobar).

Bingo!

Done.

I never really thought about a route like that which basically prevents you from having to either buy into expensive hardware you can hook up to your amp and helps you stay away from the various streaming solutions (which I wanted to).

Read it and get some good ideas!

I have 18 external drives (some 1,5 TB) and this guy's solution can be had from around 500-700 Euro (or considerably cheaper, if you already have any of the parts at home, which I do).

For some (!) people I think this comes as close to realizing what they've always wanted to do at a very affordable price!

Here, in german, his basic premises:

"- high-endiger Klang

- maximale Formatflexibilität bezüglich der Audiofiles

- leichte Bedienbarkeit bei minimalem Pflegeaufwand

- schickes Design der Bediengeräte

- Kosten- und Energiesparsamkeit

- Internetzugang"

http://www.fairaudio.de/leserberichte/2009...obar-usb-1.html

[neveronfriday]

Tried to edit and timed out several times:

The Dac is around Euro 250 (and the heart of it all). It can also be used for other things on top of what this guy did with it.

Ignore his home-network angle ... I'm going to do it without that aspect.

My current plan:

a) My netbook.

b) Buy the DAC.

c) Connect any drive (or two) ...

d) Connect to my amp.

e) Done.

I checked out a setup like that about four weeks ago and it was about as audiophile as you can get. Superb sound (with FLAC)!

Edited November 12, 2009 by neveronfriday

[Claude]

I also use my PC a lot for music listening (lossless files). The stock SPDIF digital output from the onboard audio chip is connected to a high end DAC (Electrocompaniet). The Foobar2000 player allows for bit-perfect playback, by circumvening the Windows sound mixer.

A lossless CD rip on the PC hard drive sounds exactly the original CD, when played through the same DAC.

To switch tracks from my listening seat, I either use a PC remote or my laptop (desktop sharing over the network).

It's especially convenient with CD box sets, where you can keep playlists to play sessions individually, with or without alternates, etc. It also allows to compensate bad mastering, with EQ, phase inversion, etc, something that is no longer possible with purist audio equipment.

Edited November 12, 2009 by Claude

[neveronfriday]

It also allows to compensate bad mastering, with EQ, phase inversion, etc, something that is no longer possible with purist audio equipment.

Yep, one of the (many) major incentives for me.

BTW: The guy used the "Musical Fidelity V-DAC" which I checked out (see above).

[neveronfriday]

And one more:

I still haven't figured out if I can actually run my LP rips 24/96 through a setup like that (I think so)?

Claude, do you have an answer to that (for people like me who are dumb and blind)?