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Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

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Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#211

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #196
kstenerud wrote: post #189

I've got all my music ripped to FLAC, sitting on my file server, a little N40L microserver with 8tb mirrored storage (my music takes about 300gb total). On the server, I've got a script that uses ffmpeg to convert from flac to whatever format I want (currently aac and mp3, which my player devices support). The script also applies replaygain to keep the volume consistent. I run the script once and it processes the who…

I know it was not your intention but your comment reminds me of the infamous HN comment on why dropbox is useless and would never be successful.[1] :)) "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in…

My setup is far simplified from the parent's--I simply have all my music backed up onto an external HDD that is attached to my HTPC (roughly 2TB of MP3s and FLACs). The "Music" folder is shared over the network via the Windows share option, and all of my Linux machines are able to trivially mount the directory as well using a SMB/CIFS share.

There's so little effort required that I'd barely consider it a DIY solution, considering that most of the OS's can see it and access the drive without leaving the file explorer.

I also discovered it happily continues to work when my ISP had an outage, since all of the IPs were local and still accessible provided that the router was up.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#212

Post by _bxg1 »

kstenerud wrote: post #206
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it was not your intention but your comment reminds me of the infamous HN comment on why dropbox is useless and would never be successful.[1] :)) "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in…

Actually, I'm rather shocked that there isn't an all-in-one solution like what I've cobbled together. It's not like there's any super secret magic involved; you'd just need a nice user interface on top of it all. There are even music streaming servers that you can deploy on a VPS (or locally) pretty easily. Pop in a little rsync script to move your converted lossy files to the streamer and you're set. It's just that…

Have you heard of Plex?

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#213

Post by durnygbur »

kstenerud wrote: post #189

I've got all my music ripped to FLAC, sitting on my file server, a little N40L microserver with 8tb mirrored storage (my music takes about 300gb total). On the server, I've got a script that uses ffmpeg to convert from flac to whatever format I want (currently aac and mp3, which my player devices support). The script also applies replaygain to keep the volume consistent. I run the script once and it processes the who…

I was wondering if some media server [1] set up in local network and serving audio and media files in popular formats from an external USB drive would do the job for me. Don't have the time to experiment even with such a simplified setup.

[1] https://www.turnkeylinux.org/mediaserver

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#214

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #29
atoav wrote: post #17

I mostly buy my music via bandcamp nowadays and from time to time I buy a vinyl. I don’t believe in the idea of the superiour vinyl sound, but I like that it makes listening a concious ritual. Because I DJ from time to time I like to have the stuff I like on my drive and so it ends up beeing either a download or vinyl. CD has totally fallen out of favour with me..

I once was chatting with a producer who worked for Disney for around 15 years. He said the so-called “warm” tone of vinyl vs the “harsh” sound of CDs is really that the vinyl format acts as a partial low-pass filter. So it’s really just that you’re hearing less high-freq sound on vinyl than on a CD.

Kind of.

Vinyl can't carry much bass, so it's cut with a special EQ curve - called the RIAA curve - that eliminates most of the bass and some of the mids.

Phono preamps have the opposite curve. In theory when the music comes of the preamp you get a flat response overall. In reality any added distortion warms up the bass a lot, the mids some, and the treble barely at all.

Because what's left of the bass is still cut close to the dynamic range limits of vinyl, it's always distorted. But because of the extreme EQ this rounds out the low end and gives the mids a boost.

The overall effect is a warm sound.

Vinyl isn't a true hifi medium. It's more like an Instagram filter for music. It can sound very nice, but it's a heavily processed sound, not a realistic one.

Digital has other issues. But for ultimate fidelity, personally I would always - no exceptions - prefer to listen to a lossless 24-bit digital recording of a master tape captured with studio-grade converters and streamed from hard disk than from vinyl, CD, or any compressed file format.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#215

Post by bo1024 »

snvzz wrote: post #188

CDs are massively inconvenient. When I get a music cd, I just rip it to FLAC. From that point on, I have a file. Much more convenient to work with, and easily backed up with all the other files. Having a good backup strategy, I'm more likely to be hit my lightning than lose a flac file. As for buying DRM'd music online, I haven't so much as considered it. It just won't happen, ever.

You can now buy non-DRM music from many downloading sources, including high quality FLAC. Example: Bandcamp

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#216

Post by _bxg1 »

kstenerud wrote: post #189

I've got all my music ripped to FLAC, sitting on my file server, a little N40L microserver with 8tb mirrored storage (my music takes about 300gb total). On the server, I've got a script that uses ffmpeg to convert from flac to whatever format I want (currently aac and mp3, which my player devices support). The script also applies replaygain to keep the volume consistent. I run the script once and it processes the who…

I just have all my music on Dropbox in max-quality MP3s. I use TuneBox on iOS to get a music player experience, and whichever MP3 players on my desktop OSes. Not lossless, but a simpler setup.

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#217

Post by timw4mail »

nickjj wrote: post #57

Instead or privacy terrors you have other terrors like wondering if the CD will even play, especially if you've listened to it a lot over 5+ years, even with good care. I'm surprised the article doesn't cover a more relevant approach like just playing local mp3s from your computer. You get the same no ads, no privacy issues, no algorithms but you have the added benefit of not having to lug around a binder of CDs to p…

My experience is that bit-rot with CDs is excessively rare.

Scratches and scuffs are rare "with good care". Even then, deep scratches are the real issue. Minor scratches are often irrelevant with the error correction.

So how does one need to wonder if the CD will even play?

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#218

Post by hhmc »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #202
hhmc wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still incredibly vulnerable to physical disasters e.g. a fire

A 2 x 12TB RAID NAS with two separate backups in two other physical locations.

That would work, but at that point is it really less effort and expense that using a managed solution (AWS etc).

Re: Why play a music CD? No ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms

#219

Post by omega3 »

kstenerud wrote: post #189

I've got all my music ripped to FLAC, sitting on my file server, a little N40L microserver with 8tb mirrored storage (my music takes about 300gb total). On the server, I've got a script that uses ffmpeg to convert from flac to whatever format I want (currently aac and mp3, which my player devices support). The script also applies replaygain to keep the volume consistent. I run the script once and it processes the who…

Slightly of-topic but how do you discover new music to listen to?
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