Maintaining a Digital Music Collection

:____(

probably shouldn't go below 192 kbps. iTunes Store is at 256, and 320 is considered near-CD quality, iirc

can't wait until we can look back and laugh at the time when we had to think about file format and bitrates

it'll be rose-tinted affection. 'choosing a bitrate when ripping' will be the new 'taking the record out of its sleeve'.

can't beat the warm sound of a 192

i actually do know people who wax eloquent about the sound of ATRAC compression of a vinyl record

Lower bitrate = hard drive can store more music!

it's like free money!

opportunity cost

the day finally came, i unplugged my ipod (which has been holding it down for at least 5 years) from my computer and somehow it lost everything on it. there was a bunch of stuff from my last computer that i had been meaning to back up, and i don't think i did. oh well, time to start fresh.

"maintaining" a digital music "collection"!

you don't sync?!

i don't sync. still find transferring stuff to ipod so cumbersome that i can only be bothered to do it every 6 months or so. maybe i could make more effort and then buy a Zeppelin (Nick to thread) for non-PC home listening.

see, even when you don't use iTunes it STILL finds a way to fuck you in the end

i don't sync because i download lots of stuff just to check it out, which doesn't make it on the ipod. also my ipod has been almost filled to the brim for the last year, so every time i want to put another album on i have to find something to delete. :/

Man it takes me like 4 days to rebuild my core library when I have an ipod go catatonic like that-- I have stuff on so many different CD-Rs and ext hard drives...

xpost 128kbps sometimes sounds fine for certain kinds of recordings. Vinyl rips usually sound ok in 128. Old garagey rock n roll shit usually sounds fine. It's basically cymbals, acoustic guitars, choral voices and string ensembles that suffer the most on 128.

Yep, I'm in the same boat, but it's good to have to clear out some space! Keeps you honest and only the best survives!

But in this day of cheap external drives there's no excuse for not having at least one backup.

RIP my ipod (4th gen 60 gig clickwheel, I guess I can't expect much more).

I am obsessive about backup so nothing on it was lost for good.

also my ipod has been almost filled to the brim for the last year, so every time i want to put another album on i have to find something to delete. :/

I got sick of doing this, so I just erased the whole iPod and started fresh, only putting stuff on there as I wanted to listen to it.

yeah, this is why i felt a sense of relief even though i'm sure i lost some stuff for good (i do have a vague memory of backing some things up on my external a few months ago, i'll have to check after work).

right away this morning i threw on my brass band collection and my key rap/r&b albums, which turned out to be almost 1000 songs.

Hard drives get really chancy (and slow) when you get within ten percent of their capacity.

I see no reason to begin buying digitally when two extra bucks buys me a back-up that'll last forever, as well as house decoration. And less funds for Apple.

I thought the problem of having stuff on your ipod that isn't on your HDD would be moot now that HDDs are so big and ipods still (relatively) small

has anyone used Twonkymedia or some other DLNA thing?

This expanded "Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 Kbps AAC" functionality in iTunes 9.1 is the missing link for my archive strategy! Just going to finally rip all my cd's to apple lossless for archive/iMac/airtunes/ps3(via medialink) and do the 128 aac for my iphone/shuffle. Perfect.

No better or worse than the headphone jack on the machine that's serving it.

― caek,

Why would these be related? The signal is transmitted wirelessly and undergoes d/a conversion in the AirPort, which has its own 1/8" jack.. And if the electronic noise of the computer is an issue if stated here, stands to reason it would be less in the AirPort. On the other hand, the device isn't that expensive so the d/a converter can only be so good I imagine.

yeah I don't know how the DAC chip is inside the airport. they may be using the cheapest possible off the shelf chip. but the airport does do optical out...

I use a personal set of genre tags instead of playlists in itunes. They're mostly nonsensical genres -like 'Tropical Daze', 'Bamboojazz', 'California Sketch', 'Black Devil Disco'...- but they help me keep my music library organized by an array of similar sounds and moods instead of a simple genre. Best thing is information doesn't get lost from one computer to the other (a problem I had to learn the hard way with itunes playlists) and that whenever I am in the mood to listen to a particular playlist I just type in the genre and listen away. Makes the eventual cleanup of unloved songs easier too.

How so?

Well instead of listening through a library of +7,000 songs I only listen through these playlists of 300/400 songs. Makes it easier to differentiate the songs which I really love from the ones I downloaded in the spur of the moment. Also mood is very important to me, if I listened through a genre like say 'black devil disco' (which is where I keep all the kosmiche + house music) on a random rainy day chances are I'll be erasing a good chunk of it. I only do cleanups when I am in the mood for a particular 'genre'.

http://lifehacker.com/5511473/start-to-finish-guide-to-whipping-your-musics-metadata-into-shape

I end up retagging almost every field of everything I import.

Likewise. Best to fix it immediately!

I'm pretty lazy about retagging. To the point that I end up with the same artist being listed twice under slightly different spellings. However, I usually at least try to make sure that the artist/album/title information is correct.

i'm less & less concerned w/ any of this tagging/importing/etc. stuff. i just want to listen to music

Well yeah but you gotta find it to listen to it?

I'd rather work on metadata than listen to the music.

i'd rather work on metadata than read a blog about Animal Collective

i'm less & less concerned w/ any of this tagging/importing/etc. stuff. i just want to listen to music

didn't you start this thread though?

I've been sharing occasional albums in flac, especially ones that are out of print or pricey imports. I've been having an ongoing argument with a guy in Australia who is pissed off that I don't download his .cue and .log files! He said he went through all that hard work, he wants me to keep them. I try to explain that they're useless to me. I used dbPoweramp to rip my CDs to flac in order to listen to them, not to be able to burn CDs with identical spacing between songs. My goal is not to distribute them to anal retentive freaks to make bootleg CDs. My tags already show that they were ripped perfectly, complete with an AccurateRip Disc ID, so no need for .log. If that's not good enough for some people they can fuck right off. Am I wrong?

I don't understand anything you just said.

i leave the .log files in because occasionally people ask for them but i have zero use for them myself. why would anyone care whether you download their log files? i doubt most people who d/l from me even re-share what they've leeched

ripping/bootlegging communities have some of the most anal retentive, insufferable people on the internet, IME. wouldn't get far without them, though.

Moka, what bands are filed under Bamboojazz?

Sung Tongs

Thinking about using the iTunes 9.1 feature of converting stuff to 128kps AAC to the iPod (vast majority of my collection is 200-256 kbps MP3). Is there going to be a noticeable quality difference? I mean, clearly there's an enormous gap from 128 to 200+ MP3 that I could tell even on shitty jogging headphones, but I don't have many AAC files to compare.

try it. pick something representative and transcode it (from lossless if possible) to various formats and pick the best (what qualifies as best depends on your priorities)

i did this and ended up just using the default settings - there was no discernible difference (to me, but then i do most of my listening with added traffic noise) and using the defaults was less typing 8)

(and these were oggs, so default is 112kbps variable)

Thinking about using the iTunes 9.1 feature of converting stuff to 128kps AAC to the iPod (vast majority of my collection is 200-256 kbps MP3). Is there going to be a noticeable quality difference? I mean, clearly there's an enormous gap from 128 to 200+ MP3 that I could tell even on shitty jogging headphones, but I don't have many AAC files to compare.

I use 128 AAC and it sounds decent enough for me!

Moka, what bands are filed under Bamboojazz?

― fuckin' raggett... how does that work? (Whiney G. Weingarten)

I created bamboojazz almost with the sole purpose of drinking piña coladas and margaritas on late summer evenings. Last year a couple of friends were obsessed with margaritas so this was sort of our pre-party soundtrack before the night took over. It's mostly comprised of afro-latin jazz with a laidback spirit.

Here are a few of the artists and songs:

Yusef Lateef - The Plum Blossom
Nina Simone - See-line Woman
Kenny Burrell - Moon and Sand
Dorothy Ashby - Lonely girl
Fortin-Léveillé - Soleil
Jorge Ben -Oba la vem ela
Coleman Hawkins & Ben Webster - La rosita
Smokey & Miho - Consolação
Dexter Gordon - Love for Sale
Stanley Turrentine - Wave
Caetano Veloso - Manhata
Gato Barbieri - Tupac Amaru
Herbie Mann - Coming Home Baby
Coralie Clément - Samba de Mon Coeur Qui Bat
Paul Desmond - Samba Cantina
Cannonball Adderley & the Bossa Rio Sextet - O Amor Em Paz
Maria Rita - Dos Gardenias
Horace Silver - Qué Pasa
Sara Tavares - Lisboa Kuya
Amancio D’Silva - A Street in Bombay
Faruq Z. Bey with Northwoods Improvisers - Oncala
Yo La Tengo - Let’s Be Still

Just bought 3 CD's.

/inyoface