HardwareMusic thingummy

  

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 From:  ANT_THOMAS   29 Apr 2019 20:59 
 To:  Manthorp      95 of 168 
42301.95 In reply to 42301.91 
Whilst not directed at me, I find that an interesting question because I've not thought about how I play music in a long time. My answer historically would have been Winamp followed by VLC, then maybe Kodi/XBMC on the TV.

Nowadays I don't listen to an awful lot, but it is usually limited to Spotify or Google Play music. Either via my phone to a Chromecast Audio device, or using the browser on a computer. I can't remember the last time I played back anything from my large MP3 collection. If anything I just use them to transfer to my iPod for long flights.

I keep toying with the idea of making some sort of dedicated music listening room, but then quickly realise that I don't listen to enough to justify that. Whilst it might push me to listen to more, it probably won't and it'll go unused.
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    29 Apr 2019 21:13 
 To:  Peter (BOUGHTONP)      96 of 168 
42301.96 In reply to 42301.94 
I think you've identified the issue right there.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  Manthorp   29 Apr 2019 21:26 
 To:  ANT_THOMAS      97 of 168 
42301.97 In reply to 42301.95 
I asked this question today in my (young, at least by comparison (manthorp) ) office, and the default answer was Spotify.

It partly ages me: I like to 'have' the music, in a a legacy echo of owning vinyl, or cassettes, or CDs. But it's also about rarities: I have rips from bootlegs, home recorded stuff, Jimmed obscurities etc. that the licit brands just don't - can't - have on their books.
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked."
James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
 
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    29 Apr 2019 21:34 
 To:  Peter (BOUGHTONP)      98 of 168 
42301.98 In reply to 42301.94 
Yes, sorry, I didn't mean to be quite so blunt. Why is the concept of an inbox suitable for somebody who wants to play music? I appreciate that it made sense for somebody who was kind enough and clever enough to write the software for anybody for free. Good luck to him, he did it all alone and a load of people love it to death. I just found the whole experience clunky, unintuitive and not fun. 

Nevertheless, I look at so much praise online and elsewhere and I probably will give it one more try to see whether the issues were my ignorance, some configuration issue, or something else.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  ANT_THOMAS   29 Apr 2019 21:50 
 To:  Manthorp      99 of 168 
42301.99 In reply to 42301.97 
I used to like the physical media (CDs for me), but then got lazy/enjoy the convenience of the digital tech. I'm a fan of radio, though only whilst commuting 20 mins each way these days, from the point of view of not being in control of what I listen to. That translates well to the likes of Spotify and Google Play Music, where I can let them decide what I listen to. I can pick either a song or artist and let the service play based on that selection. Can often mean I discover something new (or old) I like, or it plays songs I already know and enjoy.

Then there's the discovery and new releases side of things, based around my likes. I don't exactly go to gigs or find myself immersed in new music like I used to, so things like that are appreciated.
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    29 Apr 2019 21:55 
 To:  milko      100 of 168 
42301.100 In reply to 42301.90 
It does seem to be loved. I haven't tried it yet - do you love it? 

I am kind of having issues with what is undoubtedly some very clever software. I look at a program like Dopamine that asks me questions during installation like "where do you keep your music" and then follows that with a very familiar folder search dialog, and then shows me my music that it has successfully found. I think that makes sense. Then I look at many others that assume a specific sophistication around prior music storage as though this is a music-player choice switch - or something else. Maybe I'm looking for something very specific: a simple music player which doesn't hide its capabilty in layers of complexity.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    29 Apr 2019 21:58 
 To:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)      101 of 168 
42301.101 In reply to 42301.93 
Windows 10. It surprised me too because I'd heard how simple it was.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    29 Apr 2019 22:06 
 To:  graphitone      102 of 168 
42301.102 In reply to 42301.92 
Yes, that might be useful. I did stump up for a DBpoweramp licence many years ago. Can't imagine it's still valid. We also have several hundred vinyl LPs to think about. I would love my trusty Systemdek to be allowed space in the brave new world - but it isn't going to happen (it hasn't yet so I can't imagine that will change) so the LPs will need to be converted as well. Probably WAV first and then... Still, that's another problem.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)   29 Apr 2019 22:34 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       103 of 168 
42301.103 In reply to 42301.101 
Maybe it's loads more complicated in Windows 10, like pretty much everything else? In Windows 7, I pointed it at my Ubuntu file server samba shared music folder (organized by album, as ripped) and musicbee automagically populated its library by artist/album/genre and even hunted up the album art all without me lifting a finger. Did this on my pc and my wife's pc (also Windows 7), no muss, no fuss. I like that it has a built-in equalizer too. Only thing I got wring was I dumped both mp3 and flac into the same folder (per album), but that won't be too hard to fix.
“I don’t know where you came from, but I’m sending you back.”
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    30 Apr 2019 05:53 
 To:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)      104 of 168 
42301.104 In reply to 42301.103 
Peter and you have persuaded me. I'll try again today.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    30 Apr 2019 07:32 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       105 of 168 
42301.105 In reply to 42301.104 
Well, fair play to advocates of MusicBee. Lying in bed this morning, reading over this thread, I logged on to the music PC and tried again. Blow me down if it didn't work perfectly. One major difference during the installation was that during the setup dialog that asks for folders to search for music, this time after I selected the folder with the FLAC files, it actually appeared in the list of folders to search. Last time even though I followed the same procedure, only the default Windows music folder (empty) was listed after I selected, and nothing I did subsequently to make it find the music had any effect. Maybe something failed in the installation - who knows?

Anyway, now I have two players to try against each other.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    30 Apr 2019 07:36 
 To:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)      106 of 168 
42301.106 In reply to 42301.103 
 
Quote: 
even hunted up the album art all without me lifting a finger

Yeah, it didn't do this bit which was a surprise. It actually appeared to have found some of the album art, which showed up on track listings, but none of the covers next to the albums were there. 
 
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  milko   30 Apr 2019 09:36 
 To:  Manthorp      107 of 168 
42301.107 In reply to 42301.91 
"What's your own media player of choice, Milko Bar Kid?"

realistically nowadays, Spotify for most of the time. Discover Weekly gets me through a lot of the week very nicely. In the office da kidz choose the music so I'm all hip to the latest London trends, innit. We've recently had a CD revival in the house as li'l Dylan is able to get to grips with that pretty nicely (faves: Mr Scruff, the first Gorillaz record - he's probably dated by when I bought a lot of CDs although that last one is Tina's). We had a big old iPod Classic hooked up to speakers for a while too.
I've got Kodi/XBMC on a Mac Mini lined up for playing MP3s but it's a good long time since I used it for that, it's our main way of watching TV/movies at the moment. Having just a couple of nights ago wired in a reasonably fancy sound system I should probably give it another go.
milko
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 From:  milko   30 Apr 2019 11:00 
 To:  milko      108 of 168 
42301.108 In reply to 42301.107 
I should add, I don't like Spotify's relationship with music artists one bit. It's an excellent discovery tool (albeit it's good not to rely on it entirely) and it's very good at generating playlists for me. But their rate of pay for musicians is shite and it's having/going to have a weird effect on the way music is made and sold due to attempts at gaming the algorithms. I try to buy something from artists I like, separately (so I have a few unopened CDs of albums I've saved on there) if I can't get to see them live - something that's gotten much harder since sprogging. Bandcamp is also a much nicer way to pay musicians for MP3s. 
milko
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 From:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)   30 Apr 2019 14:34 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       109 of 168 
42301.109 In reply to 42301.105 
"only the default Windows music folder (empty) was listed after I selected"

OK, now that you mentioned it, that happened to me too, and I had to go into the preferences or whatever to fix it. It does default to users' Music folder and refuses to see others at first blush. I'm so used to software installation being compulsively stupid, once I blew past that it was all dead easy, and I knew what to expect when I set up Mrs.'
“I don’t know where you came from, but I’m sending you back.”
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    30 Apr 2019 18:34 
 To:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)      110 of 168 
42301.110 In reply to 42301.109 
So far it's a dead heat with Dopamine. Dopamine beats it in the ease of use stakes and MusicBee has the features. Still don't know which to go with, I may leave both there. I've got a 250GB M.2 drive with nothing on it but Windows 10 and a couple of media players (well, yes there's all the sensible stuff like AV etc.) so no issues there.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    30 Apr 2019 19:05 
 To:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)      111 of 168 
42301.111 In reply to 42301.109 
I have to say that copying CDs, which I thought was going to be one of the hardest parts of the exercise (and yes some of it is is incredibly boring) has turned out to have some fun bits. Came across the first Dido CD and suddenly remembered watching Roswell High as though it mattered. Then the Diamond Dogs CD took me right back to setting up my "record player" (I won't bore you with the component parts but I remember them all) when I rented a room in the house of Modern Classical composer Eric Graebner. Good God alive, I played him Diamond Dogs and he "quite liked it". He probably didn't.
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)   30 Apr 2019 19:19 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       112 of 168 
42301.112 In reply to 42301.111 
I use Asunder to rip on Ubuntu. I don't know if it's particularly fast or slow (which I think is mainly down to hw), but I just pop in cd's, it does the cddb lookup thing, I hit rip (with my presets for quality/format/folder), do other stuff, and then 10-15 minutes later (depending on length of cd, faster if I don't do flac) it pops it out and I drop in the next. It doesn't seem tedious, but I don't do it very often and never rip > 3-4 cds from [unnamed source] at a go anyway. Might feel more passionate about it if I was faced with 100s.
“I don’t know where you came from, but I’m sending you back.”
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    30 Apr 2019 19:39 
 To:  CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)      113 of 168 
42301.113 In reply to 42301.112 
i've done about 200 so far and looking like the pile isn't even scratched

edit: which is a good thing - ho ho!
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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 From:  william (WILLIAMA)    30 Apr 2019 19:43 
 To:  william (WILLIAMA)       114 of 168 
42301.114 In reply to 42301.113 
Gotta love how EAC gets really serious and warns about major read failures and how it FAILED to make an exact copy and then I play the track and it's fucking PERFECT! 

old ears...
never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead
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