Maintaining a Digital Music Collection

cracking stuff f-n-b.

however one point re Sonos Port :

"I’m not completely happy with the price, but at least the 30% upgrade credit took some sting out. Product of the year in the streaming category is the Sonos Port. It’s performed flawlessly since I’ve set it up, and was pleased to find on the new S2 network supports Bandcamp, and automatically connected to my app giving me access to all my music on it. I have access to all the files via Roon, but it’s fun to browse my recent purchases.
"

i am on the S1 version of the app, and it totally supports all my Bandcamp purchases.
not to drag this into the same chaos as the Sonos thread, i have a Connect, and so far see no reason to upgrade as most of my listening is via my NAS archive, which is a shame as i was ready to throw them my money.

lol. otm except that Sonos malarkey :)

You should be set for local files for as long as you care to use it. "Bandcamp support" would only relate to streaming. Bandcamp downloads are the same as ripping music yourself.

currently i can still stream my bandcamp purchases via Sonos i.e. not playing the digital files in the archive.
there have been no plans to withdraw this option in S1 (yet!) as far as i know.

i just realised that somewhere along the line i must have ticked (or had ticked for me) the box in iTunes that says 'keep my iTunes folder organized' because i have about 13GB of redundant music stored in hierarchical folders inside a legacy 'iTunes Music' folder. most of which, but somehow not all, has resulted in dupes in Apple Music.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

good video / post fnb

I don't remember seeing the Bandcamp option in the S1 app, oh well. I obviously play my Bandcamp downloads with all my other FLAC files via Roon, like I said, "I have access to all the files via Roon, but it’s fun to browse my recent purchases." My main issue with the Connect was performance -- both would completely disappear from the network for days at a time, even though my wifi signal is good, and other devices work fine. That also happened with my Raspberry Pi gear. So it's nice to have something that just works. Another option I looked at was Bluesound Node, but it's even more expensive.

It figures you Brits not only get better deals on many of the UK/European based speaker brands, but also ELAC. Argh. A couple years ago I really wanted a pair of Mission QX-5 -- I even had a pair ready to be shipped, until the dealer said they learned they weren't allowed to sell to North America. The only US dealer with access wanted to charge twice what I would have paid the UK site (Audio.affair.co.uk).

bah i can't remember which thread doglatin was complaining about apple music in

but doglatin you might consider Plexamp? it works with the Plex media server, doesn't organise your music, has a mobile app that works with the media server to let you stream your library from anywhere - pretty neat

Yeah Plexamp is great. Does require the Plex Pass subscription though - I got the lifetime pass years ago, well worth the money.

i bought a refurbished ipod classic (128gb flash mod) and gave up smartphone this week. no more will my android tell me to turn down my music, or interrupt me. i am the one who presses pause now, fuckers.

i'm having a lot of fun sourcing bad bitrate 00s pop from slsk, some ripped from early web radio "AOL MUSIC FIRST LISTEN!" and having not a lot of fun transcoding my entire FLAC library to ALAC. it's truly astonishing how itunes for windows has been laggy for an entire decade.

anyone else still using an ipod? curious about other DAP choices...

check if your classic is one of the models that can be rockboxed, it will save you the trouble of converting your flacs to apple's trash format

Sound quality on my ‘pod is twice as good for some reason than my phone. And yeah dedicated devices rule.

I can't be doing with carrying around a phone AND an mp3 player... a large-capacity iPhone is a good compromise (tho iTunes is indeed a trash program... MediaMonkey is a nice substitute)

cal, yeah, i can't believe how loud this thing is. my android couldn't drive my high impedance headphones. i installed rockbox but the battery life is practically cut in half with it. a shame. running musicbee for playback and tagging on windows. so efficient.

It’s just easier to get ‘solitary’ with music without distractions with the pod. Like a tape or cd kind of experience

^ thats a good point. i'm still rocking a 160gb ipod - i recently tried to shift over to a large-capacity iphone for the sake of not having to carry around two things, but there were too many small annoyances about it and i realized i'm just ipod4life. having a 100+GB player that doesnt do anything else, isnt connected to the internet, is really loud, and has a screen just big enough for 8 or 9 lines of text is pretty damn difficult to improve upon.

i never got into the digital music devices like ipods or mp3 players as i collect cds now but it used to be cassettes and some records and 8 tracks way back but i do make my own cds if i can not find them on cd with the youtube to mp3 converter which is nice!

it's tempting

The idea of one of the new fancy DAPs from Shanling, A&K or Fiio is appealing for the improved sound quality and single focus but carrying two devices is not. Convenience over quality, it seems.

I have enough pockets for both an iPhone and a Sony digital Walkman (with a 256GB memory card that I'm forever on the brink of filling up).

i setup a NAS last year, went with the ASUSTOR brand based on good reviews. it's been a relief to have mirrored copies of my music, but the manufacturer's janky streaming/library management software has been a huge bummer, ridden with bugs.

this thread has put me on to Plex. i'm setting it up now, very hopeful it will end the suck.

i bought a refurbished ipod classic (128gb flash mod) and gave up smartphone this week. no more will my android tell me to turn down my music, or interrupt me. i am the one who presses pause now, fuckers.

I genuinely don't understand this. I have an android phone with a 256GB SD card just for my music. It never interrupts me or tells me to lower the volume. I can listen to music at uncomfortably loud volumes if I want. Surely this is a settings issue. I just don't get the logic of the separate iPod advocates - maybe someone can explain.

I get annoyed with texts and notifications and the like when listening to music on my iPhone during walks, so I usually put it in airplane mode.

xp I had a Sony phone that would occasionally turn down your volume if it was over 60% volume with some kind of reminder about protecting your ears. No matter what app you were using. Some European initiative in that area. Annoying. You don't even know what impedance are my listening implements oi!

Notifications and stuff, i get the appeal of a device clean of them.

xp my phone is in Do Not Disturb mode 100% of the time, unless I'm expecting a call

I used to get that warning / turning down when I was listening on an underpowered Bluetooth speaker, might have shouted at the phone a bit.

this thread has put me on to Plex. i'm setting it up now, very hopeful it will end the suck.

― davey

i'm just now trying the software out. immediate impression is that this Plex thing is much, much more agreeable than ASUSTOR's native apps.

i do have tons and tons of comps/singles/EPs... at least Plex seems to *gasp* find all the songs from compilations and group them to play together (at least it did for the first couple i tried). Siegbran, could u elaborate a li'l on the shortcomings you alluded to? i'm wondering what difficulties to expect.

- Plex only indexes Album Artist, not Track Artist. So when you navigate to the Artist, you only see their albums, not their songs on compilations.
- search doesn't always return tracks from compilation albums
- Plex stores the Year only on the album level, so if the individual songs are from different years (say, in the range 1995-2015), too bad, Plex will store them all as 2015
- Plex stores Genres only on the album level, so if you have an album with nine "Rock" songs and one "Reggae" song, Plex will store for all ten tracks "Rock, Reggae". It will then put the rock songs in the automated reggae playlists, etc.

I genuinely don't understand this. I have an android phone with a 256GB SD card just for my music. It never interrupts me or tells me to lower the volume. I can listen to music at uncomfortably loud volumes if I want. Surely this is a settings issue. I just don't get the logic of the separate iPod advocates - maybe someone can explain.

― Duke, Sunday, 28 February 2021 23:05 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

as cal noted, listening to your music on a device engineered to do nothing but play music allows you to give the music your full attention - i'm not interrupted by phone calls, notifications, occasionally faulty touch screens, auto-updating apps that change everything i had configured... i had a decent sony smartphone with a reasonable sounding headphone port, but it pales in comparison to the ipod. volume varies upon the sensitivity and impedance of your headphones. personally, i genuinely don't understand why anybody who listens to music so frequently wouldn't carry a dedicated DAP.

I just don't want to be that guy at the airport taking up two wall sockets charging my four different devices

I've thought of DAPs before but I'd miss CarPlay and AirPlay.

i dl'd an old version of itunes (10.1) for windows earlier and it runs smooth as butter, what gives? they really ruined/bloated it with cloud features and all that fluff...

as cal noted, listening to your music on a device engineered to do nothing but play music allows you to give the music your full attention - i'm not interrupted by phone calls, notifications, occasionally faulty touch screens, auto-updating apps that change everything i had configured... i had a decent sony smartphone with a reasonable sounding headphone port, but it pales in comparison to the ipod. volume varies upon the sensitivity and impedance of your headphones. personally, i genuinely don't understand why anybody who listens to music so frequently wouldn't carry a dedicated DAP.

― maelin, Monday, 1 March 2021 14:29 (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

You can mute notifications with a swipe. My touch screens have never been faulty. I've never experienced auto-updating apps impacting my listening experience - and again you can set the updates so that they don't happen when you're out and about. The only thing you mention that seems a reasonable interruption is a phone call. Thankfully I hardly ever get those, and I could mute them in a second before leaving the house, if I wanted to be uninterrupted. Fair enough if you get a better sound from your iPod, but I only listen on the go in an urban environment, where I'll always have a certain level of background noise and don't strive for perfect sound.

I only listen on the go in an urban environment
I only listen on the go in an urban environment
I only listen on the go in an urban environment

“ You can mute notifications with a swipe.”
No shit?

Well yes. All of the objections raised by maelin can literally be turned off in a second in the settings.

If I mute notifications I still get a brief, annoying dip in the music when they pop up, this has been true of all of the many android phones I've owned, no I am not buying an iPhone.

Well yes. All of the objections raised by maelin can literally be turned off in a second in the settings.

Yes. For real. Everything can be completely muted in a second.

Like while music is playing?

tbh for me a big part of it is that if i have to turn it up or down or do something with my music it means i'm reaching for something other than my phone, and the less i'm reaching for my phone means that much less temptation to thoughtlessly scroll through websites and apps

Like while music is playing?

― calstars, Tuesday, 2 March 2021 00:39

Are you 90 years old? If you choose to listen to music on your phone, you can mute everything in a second. No sound, no vibration. No calls. No notifications.

And let's face it, you would not hear those anyway if you were listening to music on a separate device.

Not sure how this would be done, though, if say you’re listening to something you really love, or are having a transcendent experience with, and then mommy calls, wouldn’t your experience be interrupted. You’re saying I would just swipe but

an automatic pause when the children in the bar become too shrill imo

Not sure how this would be done, though, if say you’re listening to something you really love, or are having a transcendent experience with, and then mommy calls, wouldn’t your experience be interrupted. You’re saying I would just swipe but

I think Duke's point is that you can turn on "Do not disturb" before you start listening. On my Android phone this is simply done by swiping down from the top (like you would do to turn on/off wifi, airplane mode, screen rotation, etc etc) and tapping the "Do not disturb" icon.

There are a bunch of options that can be set for "Do not disturb", such as duration and exceptions. See here. Of course, the exact configuration of possibilities may depend on version of OS and hardware.

my point was that smartphones are not conducive to paying full attention to anything, at all

when i had a smartphone, i spent considerable time locking it down. i installed a minimal launcher, deleted unnecessary apps, turned off all notifications... yet still found myself interrupted, frustrated and disturbed. it's all too easy to habitually check email, youtube, text or whatever while 'listening' to stuff... smartphones are engineered to be compulsive, a habit, a responsibility. keeping all your digital music on one means it can just become noise in your ears. idk, ymmv.

The appeal of dedicated devices is that they sound better and don't even offer the opportunity for distractions / staring at yet another screen. Yes, you can mute notifications on your phone, I get that. It's not the same.

My ideal would be to downgrade to a flip phone and then get a dedicated player, but unfortunately my current job requires me to have a smartphone so I'll settle for the SD card approach for now.

this is why I use a Kindle, I definitely get it. I'd quite like a standalone DAP that supported streaming though – from a local server or a Spotify. All the ones I've seen are like the iPod Touch and include all kinds of apps and notifications, which misses the point

many xps to Siegbran, shit, it sucks having e.g. a bunch of missing remixes when i run an artist search with Plex. i've been reading the Plex forums and kind of scratching my head. why the hell do they afford filters by field but no full-text search? and god knows why they insist on indexing by Album Artist only but it seems senseless. meticulously re-structuring my collection in the filesystem as they prescribe is way, way too much to ask. my directory tree is not a complete mess and i wish it could fill in the blanks.

i guess the answer would be to use a tag editor to write the Track Artist over to the Album Artist field if (and only if) the Album Artist is not already populated? i don't know how to do that on whatever flavor of linux my NAS uses, and running that operation over my entire collection could be destructive if i make any mistakes, so i dread to try it, but idk what else i could do.