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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

#311

Post by icebraining »

TheCondor wrote: post #171
NotPaidToPost wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think CDs are still a very good option when you think about how you intend to maintain your digital collection in the next 30 years. CDs I bought in the early 90s are there, in a box. I'd like to see people's iTunes collections in 30 years... Yes, I know that CDs have a shelf-life and that real long term storage would involve backing them up. But CDs still seem a better option than the current alternatives. Edit: T…

Pressed CDs do quite well over time if you keep them in a dry and cool place. I do think finding optical drives will be the rub, they are already becoming niche products. With SSD prices as they are, it’s not hard to imagine a world without SATA connectors before too long. It’s really hard to imagine that there won’t be some Asian company selling optical drives with usb-x connectors or something but I expect people t…

> It’s really hard to imagine that there won’t be some Asian company selling optical drives with usb-x connectors or something but I expect people thought that about various floppy disks over the years too.

Well, you can buy a new 3.5" floppy disk drive for $15 right now. The problem are proprietary formats, like Zip disks - just avoid those.

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

#312

Post by skinnymuch »

swtrs wrote: post #132
apt-get wrote: post #90

I listen to a lot of japanese doujin music (self-released albums produced by amateur circles at conventions). This is often a couple hundred albums every year, between Comiket, M3, and other smaller conventions. The overwhelming majority of it simply isn't available as a physical release on typical online marketplaces, much less on streaming services. Importing the physical release + ripping or relying on community d…

Is there an online community for doujin? Sounds similar to the vapor/future/chillwave community on Bandcamp.

How do you go about finding the chillwave community on Bandcamp?

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

#313

Post by pier25 »

Off topic but...

I buy a couple of 4K Bluray movies every month. I want to get the best possible quality and also support film makers, but damn, other than the image quality getting movies from torrents is still the best user experience. It's not even a money problem for me.

Not only pirated movies are available weeks before you can buy them in Amazon, but you don't get any anti piracy ads, or trailers that you can't skip.

The available catalog in torrents is immense too. I waited like 6 months before I could buy the Dark Knight trilogy in 4K because it wasn't available anywhere. The Nolan 4K collection is also very difficult to get without spending an arm and a leg in my country.

You also don't get all the regional BS. I can't even get the digital online versions of the Bluray discs I buy because I don't live in the US. I've considered buying digital (iTunes, Prime, etc) but the regional catalog we get is poor. Google Play Movies for example doesn't even have 4K and, hear this, not only most movies are dubbed, if you want the original audio and the dubbed audio for the kids you have to buy 2 movies. Yeah. And then, since you don't really own the digital movie you bought, it can disappear from your library or you can lose the 4K version like what recently happened with iTunes.

I love movies, I want to spend money on movies, but damn the studios and distributors need to find a better way of selling their content.

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

#314

Post by fatnoah »

rchaud wrote: post #261

I'm definitely on board with physical media. Almost all the vinyl I've bought comes with a download code anyway, and album artwork shines on a 12" x 12" canvas much more than it ever could on the tiny thumbnail you get on a music player app. That being said, indie music stores like Bandcamp are digital only, but offer one-click DRM-free MP3 downloads for purchased songs/albums. The UX is focused on buying music first…

>Almost all the vinyl I've bought comes with a download code anyway, and album artwork shines on a 12" x 12" canvas much more than it ever could on the tiny thumbnail you get on a music player app.

My dad was huge into music and had a vinyl collection of 300-400 albums. As a kid, I used to check out the album covers and inserts as I ate breakfast. One that I distinctly remember is cover for "The Wall"

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

#315

Post by shuzchen »

dirkt wrote: post #26
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #3

No privacy terrors? What short memories we have. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

To nitpick: Pure musics CD (CD-DA) can't contain any DRM or rootkits, because the format doesn't allow for data - it's all sound. Only combined CD-ROM/CD-R + CD-DA formats together with the unfortunate eagerness of Windows to auto-execute everything allows such rootkits. So if you feed a music CD to a real old CD player, or to (say) a properly configured Linux computer: No privacy terrors.

To nitpick your nitpick: there were many attempts to implement DRM even on pure music CDs, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_Control

My personal experience with this was with some import CDs (from Japan) that, from what I recall, messed with the error correction part of the data so that it skipped horrendously in my PC (so it was impossible to rip in cdex) but played fine in (most) standalone audio players.

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

#316

Post by jslabovitz »

I've been collecting CDs for a few years now. I rip them for archiving and for easy playing (iPhone, etc.), but also enjoy handling the real object. I like the experience of simply listening to album the way it was originally intended by the artist, in the original order, with the production values intended at the time, not mixed up with other songs. Streaming, or even shuffling, often makes me tense and anxious (radio did too).

Because it's a bit of a pain to get music to the iPhone (with ALAC conversion, etc.), I recently experimented with matching albums with Apple Music and just using that version. However, I've been disappointed that many of those albums aren't actually the same ones as my CDs! (Again, this is Apple Music: other streaming services might be different.)

For example, tracks might be remastered (sometimes for good, sometimes not), and often the album is a 'deluxe' version with extra tracks. If there was a way to 'hide' those extra tracks, I'd be okay with it, but sadly it feels like the original intent of the artist has been corrupted by the record label to sell more content.

So I'm slowly returning to my first method, and only listening to ripped music, an album at a time, in its original order.

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

#317

Post by PeanutNore »

raehik wrote: post #158

Where are my Rockbox users at? My tiny plastic Sansa Clip+ MP3 player has been going for years, I'd be nothing without it. >10hrs playback, supports >128 GB microSD, plays OGG/FLAC/MP3/AAC/anything. The Rockbox firmware is still being developed, albeit at a slow pace. By far the best combination of hardware+firmware I own. Unlikely to replace it for another few years. Sadly not produced any more :(

I really loved the Sansa Clip but the battery in it failed on me and I never did replace the thing. Sad to hear that they stopped making them because being reminded about it makes me want to pick up a new one.

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

#318

Post by hectorm »

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…

My current setup is a Docker container[0] with a musikcube[1] daemon in an ARM board (ROCK960 Model C) and on my phone I use the musikdroid client. At first, it was an investment of time, but now requires almost no maintenance.

[0]: https://github.com/hectorm/docker-musikcube

[1]: https://github.com/clangen/musikcube

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

#319

Post by dev_dull »

jslabovitz wrote: post #316

I've been collecting CDs for a few years now. I rip them for archiving and for easy playing (iPhone, etc.), but also enjoy handling the real object. I like the experience of simply listening to album the way it was originally intended by the artist, in the original order, with the production values intended at the time, not mixed up with other songs. Streaming, or even shuffling, often makes me tense and anxious (rad…

> in the original order

I agree with most of what you said, but so many albums include awful filler music between hit songs. This was one of the reason mp3 downloads became so popular. Everybody knew record companies were just adding filling to get to a certain album lengths.

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

#320

Post by asdff »

indigochill wrote: post #155
titzer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that sucks. Ripping a CD is (still) not illegal in the US. Neither is sharing a CD with a friend.

So one could in theory create a distribution network of friends sharing and ripping CDs? We could call it... Wrapster.

The grateful dead used to (probably still does) let people plop their tape recorders right next to the mixing tent at shows. As a result, pretty much every grateful dead show has been recorded by someone and passed around the community.
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