O/T: How do you listen to your collection

It’s nice to have music in any room nowadays you can play at the touch
of a button. I have a stereo in my basement “cave” that I play cd’s on
from time to time, but I primarily listen to MP3’s off my iPad (plugged
into a portable speaker) because I can take it from room to room or
bring it in the car on longer trips. I have about 25,000 songs from my cd
and vinyl collection that I’ve loaded over the years and I usually just hit
“shuffle” and see where it takes me. Just like 1970’s radio. I have a few
Playlists I created for fun, but I find I don’t really use them because I
think I enjoy it more when a random song I haven’t heard for awhile
comes on.

On shorter trips in the car, I may just listen to the radio. Or, more
frequently, since I have my phone with me most of the time, I have my
favorite 1500-2000 songs on there that I plug into the car for driving
around town. I only listen to Spotify if there’s a band or album I want to
check out. There are a couple of Podcasts I enjoy, and I’ll listen to
those while doing chores.

Jon O.

Ahhhh! A question many of us love answering!

Briefly, my collecting hobby began with my fist 45 in 1968 at 7 years old:
Leapy Lee - Little Arrows. 45s, "Hits" LPs and K-tel LPs was what I could
afford until finishing university in 1984. Working in IT, I soon was able to
afford more LPs, 45s and on 1987-06-19 bought my first CD!

I made my own cassette compilations for years, had a DAT deck for a while,
then in the late 90s, I moved to CD-R, finally moving to mp3 in the early
2000s, listening on a portable CD player, then moving to MP3 players, then
iPods.

Since I moved to Thailand in 2010, I essentially have abandoned physical
media. I'd amassed quite the 45/LP/CD collection while in Canada - the LPs
sold as a lot a few years ago, the 45s I left with a friend, and the CDs are in
boxes at the same friend's home. Summer 2019 in Canada I began to sell
the CDs, and parted with about 30% of them.

Before moving here, I managed to rip to VBR mp3 as much of my collection
as I could - first focussing on the biggest hits, then moving down the
charts. I also love other types of music, e.g., movie soundtracks, Classical,
etc., so I ripped these as well. Space was an issue on my laptop back then.

After moving here, I realized I didn't even come close to having enough of
my music with me, so I've been adding to the library ever since. I now make
Apple m4a files, and whatever WAVs I get, I keep them on hard drives and
all music is backed up in the "cloud".

I use iTunes exclusively for managing my library. Since I bought my first K-
tel LP back in 1969 (I was 8 years old at the time), I've been a fan of
playlists. I've created 100s - certainly over 1000 - ranging from genres to
chart-based (I have playlists of Pop Annual and Billboard Year-end charts,
#1s, etc.). I even made playlists of all my K-tel LPs (using better sources, of
course...)! It's amazing that to this day, when I hear a certain song, my mind
is ready for the next song from that K-tel LP! Also, "My 45s in MP3",
inspired by, you guessed it, those Mercury "45s on CD" CDs from the late
80s.

I normally listen to these playlists on my iPhone, and do so at the gym (club
remixes for the aerobic machine!). At home (in my small studio apartment
by the sea) I'll listen on the MacBook or the iPad. Always with headphones -
my high-end audio system I left with a friend back in 2010.

I cannot listen to streaming services, Youtube (although I use this as a
reference, especially when an original 45 is featured), and the like as I can't
handle it when they make "errors" lol, e.g., cheesy remakes, poor quality,
etc. I know from belonging to this group that I can get the best quality
available for my music.

As an aside, I also have managed to include artwork for my files. And I don't
mean just whatever I can find, but the "original" issue of a song. I mean, say
for 45s, I use a (cleaned up) 45 or picture sleeve, for LP/CD tracks, the LP
sleeve/CD insert. I try to use the first time a song was issued on a media in
its particular "version", i.e., a first time stereo issue of an always mono song
would get the original LP or CD it was issued on. So for example, The
Beatles - This Boy gets the 1976 Capitol (Canada) 72144 45, not Past
Masters. It's fun - and a challenge - to try to determine when a song was
first issued in stereo, or in a particular version!

davidlg1971 wrote: Similar story to others: Approx. 15 years ago my prior spouse and I had about 5000 CDs. We'd regularly visit Amoeba Records in San Francisco and buy 20-30 CDs, compilations, CD-Singles, etc. These I'd transfer to MP3s for our iPods. I also created custom edits, and mixes. As a rule I tag the music according to its original release - year, LP, track # and artwork. So very quickly I realized I had to get organized. These days I'm at the stage where I track down compilations for unique mixes / versions. So my strategy from about 2010-onward has been to have a 'Master' drive and a 'Listening' drive. The Master is split into sections: FLAC - original rips + custom edits MP3 - by decade or genre for artists with less than 4 tracks MP3 - by artist where I have 4+ tracks Album Artwork folders within the MP3 folders - containing different sizes - 300 DPI, 600 (default), 1000, 1500, and higher for future-proofing. For some artists, this is a lot of work - separate folders for singles, compilations, bootlegs, live recordings, etc.[Over the past 6+ years I've been slowly learning Photoshop to enable restoration of scans and downloaded images to make them look presentable.] If I buy a compilation - as I just did with Elton John's 1990 Very Best 2-CD set, the Master drive gets FLACs and MP3s. After ripping FLAC I rip WAV files, and use Sound Forge to edit them - removing silence, creating custom edits / single recreations, etc. I rarely EQ, but sometimes needs must. In this Elton example, the whole comp sounded great - no adjustments. Then I generate VBR MP3s, using the MP3 'Comment' field to denote where they were sourced from. I A/B the new MP3s against the existing version(s) on my Listening drive. If the individual tracks sound better, or are in some way unique - I create copies of them to the Listening drive and update the artwork and tags to reflect when it was originally released. For Elton, of the 30 MP3s archived on the Master drive, 8 were also copied to the Listening Drive, 3 of which replaced existing rips. I have an 80GB iPod Classic hooked up to my sound system in the car. It's old and needs the battery replaced. I also have a 32GB flash drive, so I often create another copy for that, and update the artwork to the 300-dpi version because otherwise my dashboard screen won't display it. (First world problems, I know.) It's always full, so I regularly have to figure out something to pull off to make room, temporarily relocating the displaced folders to the Master drive. All this is a lot of work, but it's mostly maintenance at this point. Someday I'll go FLAC-only, but that's probably a decade or so away at this point. I got remarried two years ago to a wonderful woman (like me, a former musician), and she is adamant I archive both drives regularly, given all the work that went into building it. More work:)

Reading your story I wondered during the divorce who got all the CD's you or her? Also these days a 256GB Ipod Touch (2019) is a great solution compared to the 80GB Ipod (hell even a 160GB Ipod is better!)

Also storage is cheaper than ever. They make 256GB USB's as well I used them all the time. Plus the USB drives are up to 5TB. Just a few suggestions!

Edited by PopArchivist

PopArchivist wrote: Reading your story I wondered during the divorce who got all the CD's you or her? Also these days a 256GB Ipod Touch (2019) is a great solution compared to the 80GB Ipod (hell even a 160GB Ipod is better!) Also storage is cheaper than ever. They make 256GB USB's as well I used them all the time. Plus the USB drives are up to 5TB. Just a few suggestions!

Thank you for the ideas! I'm thinking either a 6TB or 8TB
external drive as a failsafe back-up.

As for who got what, it was pretty easy - we kept our discs
in separate places anyway. My physical percentage of the
overall number was always small - like 15%, because I
routinely traded in what I didn't see a need to keep. And
I have FLAC back-ups of everything I thought was
worthwhile.

Since then my CD total has been rising steadily. I'm
trying to cool it off now, though.