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HOW do you listen to music?
Nowhere Dan
Posts: 1,516 Forum Member
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This thread aims to explore the relative merits of all the different means available to listen to music: digital/physical; streaming/downloading; blind punt/try before you buy; proprietary/open source; via record company/direct from artist; location-specific/mobile; hi-fi/domestic system; stereo/surround; even recorded/live. It's a constantly evolving set of methods to serve a perennial human need, so there should be always something for us to discuss. Happy to hear views of all 
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Hi there. Is the bluetooth in the car - in order to expand your phone's storage capacity?
No. It's so I can play music through my cars in build audio. .
Basically, my phone has 32gb storage as standard, I put a 64gb sd card in it, so I have almost 100gb storage in total, just so I can fit everything on there.
I bought this Bluetooth adapter and my car has three power outlets, one of them is sort of tucked away, so I just have the adapter plugged in all the time (make sure your cars adapters turn off with the ignition, not all of them do).
You pick a frequency on the adapter, then tune into it with your cars radio and It picks it up. It's excellent sound quality, but not all of them are- I got one before that was a bit shitty, but this one was about £30 and it's a bit better- you can get them for about a fiver I think. It's also important to pick a radio frequency that's not near other radio channels.
The good thing about it is anyone that gets in my car can play music/ calls through their phone too if they switch their Bluetooth on.
Cool beans!
I haven't got any music playing devices tho' I suppose I could play CDs on my laptop
Doesn't seem much point when everything is on YouTube
Quality doesn't bother me........I just like a nice tune.
I was trying to find Bob Dylan's "Feel My Love" off Time Out Of Mind on YouTube yesterday to share on a forum. Could I find the original? Nowhere. Just pages and pages of wannabees' cover versions. Some artists/labels are super-fussy.
This any good?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmXbyrlBCI8
CD,
Vinyl,
Cassette,
Car radio/CD player
Laptop (via the uprated speakers in a vintage jukebox wall box).
Memory stick in a TV.
Two vintage jukeboxes which play vinyl 45rpm records.
Via two more jukebox wall boxes/adapter/iPod to hi-fi system.
Do two musical instruments count?
If so, electric piano and tenor saxophone, (but not at the same time)
No hang on, I make backing tracks on the piano so I can play along with them on the saxophone.
Nope!
There is, but no better way, Bookie
Welcome to DS. And seeing as you're Maryinside, I imagine the latter is where you listen to most of your music
My ideal would be to take all my music files with me everywhere, and be able to listen to them at their full quality on a portable device. That won't be possible for I don't know how many years. The advent of streaming services and the ditching of hard drives in portable devices in favour of pricier flash memory has perhaps even further stalled the introduction of truly high capacity portable devices.
So now I have a music library sitting on a desktop Mac, pretty much doing nothing, except for ripping the odd new CD and loading a fraction onto a 16GB iPhone and the 160GB iPod, in ALAC format. I never remember what's on the phone. I have an iPad which is larger than the phone (32GB) but it is full of software tutorial videos. On my MacBook Pro Retina laptop I have given up running iTunes. Even with the music files on an external hard drive, the size of the library clogs up the laptop's tiny solid state drive. Anyway, why have a nice, sleek laptop all hooked up to bricks?
Will I change everything and switch to streaming? I'm not sure. I like the idea of bringing up my kids on my music library, and actually leaving it to them as a digital document much like I inherited my grandparents' vinyl collection. Also, I make tons of videos in which I use musical soundtracks. So there's a couple of reasons why having the file is better for me than streaming the file. There's also the audio quality issue, and the data usage issue.
All day.
That's the full range! Out of the digital sources I'm interested if you have a system so that you remember what album is on what device. It seems to me that physical libraries (CDs, vinyl, cassettes) are more easily memorable. I can name you all the Sting albums I own on CD, but I don't have a clue right now what music files are loaded on my iPhone.
Of course! I'm a musician, too. Nice to meet you
The days of compressed music, of trying to jam as many lower resolution tracks as you can on a hard drive or MP3 player, could be numbered. Gilad Tiefenbrun of LINN Products on the past and the future of high definition music.
From This Way Up on Radio New Zealand, 08 Nov 2014
Also listen to the radio a lot, mostly online, via a wi-fi radio or Apple TV, and listen to music on my phone. Have a trial with Qobuz which sounds very good but, like all the streaming services I've tried, is just not user-friendly or comprehensive enough to be my main source.
With a memory stick, I have them first filed by genre, i.e. Jazz, Jazz Vocal, Motown & Soul, C&W, Vintage Pop, Contemporary Pop. Then by individual artist.
That way it's not hard to find them using the TV as the main files appear on the TV screen and there's no effort in paging through them.
With the wall boxes I have the title cards on each of the three pages arranged as; :Jazz, Motown & Soul, Pop. I can select any number of tracks and the adapter will play them in that order.
Either way beats getting up and down changing CDs, as I never listen to one straight through.
Digressing,
Tricks of the mind.
Why is it on many CDs, you play you've sometimes no idea what is the next track until you hear the last few bars of the one playing?
CD
Spotify
Youtube
Artists' websites
Itunes
Television
Amazon
Downloads and ripped CDs on my iPod Touch or on a memory stick plugged in to my hi-fi
Spotify on my iPod Touch
Internet radio on my iPod Touch
Ordinary radio