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So I think I'm done with buying music on physical formats. I've been justifying it for years for a number of reasons, but I'm ready to just go forward with digital files and have less stuff around. Now this would change the logistics and equipment that will best suit the way I listen to music so I'm reaching out to y'all for some brain food on how to do this whole thing.

First thought: I'm looking to replace my cd player/turntable/amp set up with a DAC/amp. I want to keep running my current speakers (Klipsch Heresy II's) cuz they sound purdy. I could keep my current amp (Pioneer SA-7500 II), but I'd like to downsize that as well to keep things compact. Anyone have experience with "micro amps", DACs, and/or combinations of the two that could give some insight on what I should look for? Even a fairly small vintage SS amp would be cool. I definitely want some EQ options, bass & treble controls at the least, and the option to run a second set of speakers would be a perk but not a must.

Second thing to tackle: file formats & software. Part of me loathes the idea of having the same songs in both FLAC and MP3 for different purposes (e.g. potable vs home listening). Is there an easy way to keep copies of both organized with a certain software client? Anyone running a DAC that makes 320kps MP3s sound just fine? What software do you use to organize & listen to music? iTunes is kinda meh, Foobar is aight (only messed around with it on other people's computers, might like it more if I customized it myself), what other options are there? My favorite was actually the Zune player back in like 2007

& does anyone have any cool methods of displaying album art while listening to music on yr computer? That is one thing I feel like I'd miss a lot...

An the last thing (for now): where the fuck do I sell all my CDs? I have a couple ideas (bulk selling via CList/eBay, BST/throw in with pedal sales, take the rest to record stores). Would Discogs even be worth it? Are there other sites like that for CDs?


Also feel free to tell me I'm a fool for considering all of this

Just use Flac for everything but you're setting yourself up for failure if you go digital-only.

If they're good cds, you can put them on discogs. Record stores will take them but the trade in value is shit.

D.o.S. wrote:Just use Flac for everything but you're setting yourself up for failure if you go digital-only..

I know you have more thoughts on this, so let's hear 'em

Um, a couple. Established formats work. You can find a tape player pretty easily. You can find a turntable pretty easily. If your power goes out at the wrong time or your PC crashes you don't lose all of your music at once. Remember when I accidentally lost 2 gigs of samples? That shit happens all the time, and it's part of the reason that I prefer to buy physical copies.

That said, I'm looking to move in the not-so-distant future and at that point the benefits of digital become tremendous.

Yeah that's definitely something I've thought about. I'd probably get some sort of cloud set up to automatically back up my music folders, as well as an external HD.
Not perfect, but like you said, just not having to worry about having so much shit to lug around is really appealing.

- backup, backup, backup - the 'losing your files' argument is invalid if you keep on top of that shit. I have 2 portable hard drives for this so all up the library is stored in 3 places at once. Cloud thing works but i just manually wipe and dump every month or longer depending on how much it changes. If i lost files it would be my own fault.

- foobar is GOD you just have to do the research and set it up the way that works for you. There are options for the album art too. Only other thing i can speak for is itunes, which IMO is the furthest thing from professional and encourages a messy system of files that will be hell if ever switching to other players.

- for home theatre you're gonna want FLAC or equivalent obviously but if its possible to use the same format for home and portable maybe skip the double format thing, that will be a huge PITA to keep track of. To be honest most of my library is high quality mp3 VBR and i don't have any problems but i dont live in a place where i can use anything but headphones and my hearing isnt great so yeah this totally pointless.

I transfered all my CDs (a few thousands I think) to mp3 before moving to Japan because I was not going to ship at least a dozen cases full of records 10,000km away. I still buy CDs (I'm trying to go digital only but old habits die hard) but I only listen to them on my computer (at home or at work) or on mobile devices sometimes. At home the computer goes to a mixer and then to either Beyerdynamic DT770 pro headphones or a pair of KRK RP5. I usually use 320kbps mp3, which sounds fine to me...

As for backups, I've got my files both at home, at work and on at least one external drive. I would feel a bit stressed not having them in at least another location...

You also have to be considerate of format evolution -- I have jazz records from the 40's and 50's I can still play today, but more than two-thirds (to pull a measurement out of a hat) of digital files of a comparable life span are totally fucking invalid now.

Going digital only would fuck me so hard. If you're able to easily procure the music you want in digital formats only I'd say go for it, but I know I'd never be able to do that.

Also, unless you're dropping tens of thousands of dollars on equipment and are going to have a specifically sculpted room for listening experiences, FLAC is bullshit. FLAC is always bullshit. Fuck FLAC.

FLAC is good for burning cds and or reproducing music, though. Particularly if you're going digital only, lossless formats are the way to go.

It has it's purposes, but mostly it is just a huge waste of space. I really don't think the human ear can differentiate between FLAC and 320 unless they have good enough equipment. Which goes to my original point of only do FLAC if you're dropping serious bills to make this work.

FLAC did bring about one of my most favorite troll posts though:


So old, still so so good.

D.o.S. wrote:You also have to be considerate of format evolution -- I have jazz records from the 40's and 50's I can still play today, but more than two-thirds (to pull a measurement out of a hat) of digital files of a comparable life span are totally fucking invalid now.

what do you mean by invalid? i get that it's a problem because even though we'll always be able to convert files to newer formats you don't really want to be doing that more than once, but one could potentially argue that old digital files being converted to newer formats and losing certain information in the process isn't that different to a record ageing.

i think FLAC would be fine if the file size associated with storing music in lossless formats wasn't still pretty fucking annoying in relation to the price of storage media and data transfer speeds but having shit tier australian internet and 40,000 songs in my library there is no fucking way i'm switching over.

Taking a stab at putting words in DoS's mouth, I think hes saying that older audio files in a comparable sense of time are super shite now compared to being able to listen to old as shit jazz records.

Like, 90s audio encoding is total shit and you would have to find a proper physical release to be able to encode it into the 21st century. I think this will be less of an issue going forward since digital files now don't sound like a bag of smashed assholes (looking at you, youtube) but who knows what improvements will be made in the future.

Exactly. Lets say you were trying to do this exact thing in 1998. You decide to use RMA, because you love Real Player. RMA is proprietary, so in 2016 you're totally fucked because all your shit is in RMA, which only plays in Real Player.

Just to pull an example.