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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

#221

Post by ravenstine »

ljcn wrote: post #125
TimTheTinker wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps. I have heard they also master differently for vinyl since it can't provide the same dynamic, frequency, or stereo range as digital. Some listeners find the result more appealing.

That's essentially correct, and there was an HN article about that in the last few years, but I can't seem to find it.

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

#222

Post by kstenerud »

_bxg1 wrote: post #212
kstenerud wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Plex doesn't convert files for storage on a portable device, nor does it replaygain. It also has a terrible music selector interface and doesn't firewall punch.

Streaming is only part of the issue. I'm talking about the whole lifecycle, from backed up lossless to lossy-on-device in whatever format, or to a streaming service that integrates with your player devices, all from a single source of truth that you control 100% with no silly DRM or ads or restrictions.

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

#223

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

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 was a happy user of a Sansa Clip+ circa 2009-2011, but I think like most others, once we started getting decent smartphones, carrying a dedicated music player just didn't seem worthwhile anymore, except maybe for a long plane ride where preserving my phone's battery life was critical.

I suppose with headphone jack and SD slot becoming an increasing rarity in the Android world, the Clip might become more relevant again. But I hold out for the models that keep both.

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

#224

Post by Someone1234 »

omega3 wrote: post #219
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?

I'd like to know too. I also don't consider this off-topic considering we're contrasting streaming music with CDs, and one of the "value adds" of streaming is discoverability.

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

#225

Post by kstenerud »

omega3 wrote: post #219
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?

Same way I have for the past 30 years. I listen from time to time to stations that play the kind of music I like. Sometimes I check out various places that have top 100 charts. If I find something I like, I go get it and add it to my collection. Rerun the script and resync my devices.

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

#226

Post by nixpulvis »

The biggest problem I have with the way I listen to music these days is that I'm basing tricked into thinking my "library" is a collection of my music.

I get that a $10/m subscription isn't selling me each song I listen to, but it is letting me collect them, and that collection is a lie.

At any moment it may change, songs can be deleted at will by Apple, or Spotify. This service is great in that it exposes a much wider quantity of artists to me, but it's a price for a radio service, not a music collection.

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

#227

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

kome wrote: post #157

I still use SoulSeek.

SoulSeek was awesome for discovering music. Unfortunately, the quality of the music shared was usually at lousy quality (96-128kbps), with the result that I usually ended up deleting the albums later and re-acquiring them at higher quality from somewhere else.

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

#228

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

edpichler wrote: post #136
sschueller wrote: post #24

What bugs me is that quite a lot of things are not available. I ripped my entire CD collection and uploaded into Google Music (not sure if that feature still exists). I have all this music available but I can not find it on other peoples google music. So if I share a song, they get an error. Most of this music is nothing special and quite mainstream but if I search on other peoples devices I can not find the songs on…

Man, I lost my precious childhood videos after "saving" on the cloud. Google deleted it because of some seconds of the background music of AC/DC's on the radio.

Were these on youtube? I wasn't aware that Google did the DMCA takedowns complaints for the rights holder - I thought the rights holder had to make a complaint, and that would necessitate them being somewhere the rights holder could view them.

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

#229

Post by fuzz4lyfe »

kstenerud wrote: post #222
_bxg1 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of Plex?

Plex doesn't convert files for storage on a portable device, nor does it replaygain. It also has a terrible music selector interface and doesn't firewall punch. Streaming is only part of the issue. I'm talking about the whole lifecycle, from backed up lossless to lossy-on-device in whatever format, or to a streaming service that integrates with your player devices, all from a single source of truth that you control 1…

>Plex doesn't convert files for storage on a portable device

Yes it does, you can pick what quality you want when you sync[0]

> doesn't firewall punch

It does so via a reverse proxy if required[1]

[0]https://support.plex.tv/articles/201053678-sync-media-to-a-d...

[1]https://support.plex.tv/articles/216766168-accessing-a-serve...

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

#230

Post by legooolas »

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 do something similar (ripping to FLAC, putting on a tiny fileserver, except mine is an Antec ISK-300 with a single 6TB disk and external backups), and then use Logitech Media Server to serve it out to other machines.

"Squeezer" is excellent as a remote control for this, and I just have a stream URL I point players at to all play the same thing, or they can use DLNA and slurp music from the archive.

Works nicely, but does require more setup than most users will want to do when they can just plug in a "smart" speaker and stream from Spotify or whatever.

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