Parting with CDs

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Adam9, Aug 10, 2019.

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  1. Guy E

    Guy E Senior Member

    Location:
    Antalya, Turkey
    I futz around with artwork for my FiiO players too. It's a much simpler gadget than an iPod and the display window isn't square; it's a 640x480 rectangle, so the bottom third of an album cover gets cut-off. In the past year I've created tons of images to attach to the FLAC files that I load onto the microSD chip.

    What can I say? I'm a visually-oriented person, all the way.
    [​IMG] [​IMG] [​IMG]
     
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  2. Do you put them into the PDF format?
     
  3. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    For my homemade year-by-year comps from 1974 on up, I used LP covers and 45 RPM images for my files, but I prefer to use generic artwork for all the other years. I created a nice one for 1973. It was a time of rare creativity and whipped one up in Microsoft Paint. But, I want to make covers for the earlier years and am out of ideas. I'd like the artwork to somewhat reflect the year. I especially want to make ones for 1968 and 1966, since I just got through recompiling and remastering them.
     
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  4. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    And, the prices of SSDs are coming down. You can get a Samsung (supposedly the cream of the crop right now) 1TB for around $129 on sale almost anywhere you look.

    The only thing to remember about SSD is that the bigger the drive, the better, and don't fill it up! Leave at least 20% blank. Otherwise, a 4TB spinner works great for large collections. My suggestion is to avoid Seagate and their other brands.
     
  5. You've had bad experiences with Seagate? I've heard of them.
     
  6. Guy E

    Guy E Senior Member

    Location:
    Antalya, Turkey
    Yes. I assemble them on Gimp [.xcf files] which is a free program similar to Photoshop and export as pdf's. I have a number of templates set up; the Jamaican flag and LP for reggae albums, the orange impulse! background, which I use for any album released on the label. I've done similar templates for Milestones, Bluenote, etc. Sometimes I crop an album image so it's full-width.

    When I'm ripping an album with foobar, I simultaneously find the LP cover image, reduce it to 480x480 and drop it into a template. I'm usually done before foobar is.
     
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  7. wes4usc

    wes4usc Forum Resident

    I agree that this is basically a guy who just needed to clean up his house and then decided to pontificate about his choices. I was faced with the same choices and also made a liberating decision....the only thing was I kept the 3000 vinyl LPs, the 2000 CDs and the hundreds of DVDs and Blue Rays (not to mention the dozens of SACDs and DVD-As). What I tossed instead were all the medical journals. I can get all of that info online and it is easier doing it that way (and there is no difference in the sound quality).

    (Plus I have worked very hard all my life and I am able to afford a house where space is not that big of an issue for my collection, especially since all 3 kids have moved out and we now have 3 extra empty bedrooms!)
     
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  8. Crimson Witch

    Crimson Witch Roll across the floor thru the hole & out the door

    Location:
    Lower Michigan



    That's good to know !
    I'm trying to find something that is
    actually better than my best CD version.
    I am considering perhaps using streaming
    for a specified period for SQ comparisons,
    and for new classical music. It is one
    thing to own 27 different live versions of
    Purple Haze, all played.by Jimi ,, but it's
    another matter entirely owning 175
    different performances of

    Brahms' Symphony No. 4 or 53 versions
    of Rachmaninov's second ! I love to hear
    new performances of Classical greats as
    well as some of the lesser-well known
    pieces of antiquity. So it would seem
    streaming could serve the same purpose
    for me that FM radio.once.did, back when

    the programming was free-form and the
    DJs played.whatevrr they liked (within
    the station's library). If I find something
    I really like, I could then purchase a CD
    or download. .My hope is that Classical
    and Jazz will remain the domicile of

    good taste and liberal DR.
     
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  9. Purple Jim

    Purple Jim Senior Member

    Location:
    Bretagne
    Looking at the article in the OP, the guy made many wrong choices along the way (buying too much, embracing MP3s,...), so I have no pity.​
     
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  10. Crimson Witch

    Crimson Witch Roll across the floor thru the hole & out the door

    Location:
    Lower Michigan


    :laugh:
     
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  11. Guy E

    Guy E Senior Member

    Location:
    Antalya, Turkey
    With my iPod, I used the actual LP covers (I always liked finding crisp resolution), but the FiiO is strange, graphically. 3,744 out of 3,745 people would look at what I do and think, "What a loser."

    I've always been a physical media guy. I became obsessed with records when I was still in diapers and apparently destroyed my dad's collection of Big Band 78's, flipping them on and off his record player... my 28-years old mom was glad to have one kid happily occupied. I have never been a radio listener at all, only as a matter of last resort. I never caught the YouTube bug. I've adapted to many changes in life, but with music, I'm consistent.
     
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  12. joshm2286

    joshm2286 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Texas
    I find myself listening to music more on You Tube and on Amazon music app on my phone or TV. Listened to some records at my mothers house earlier today and really enjoyed that. Thought about selling all of my Cds and vinyl records a few weeks ago to free up space in my room and to make it easier for me to move when i do. Thought about how much money ive spent on my music collection and decided to keep everything that i listen to and the expensive items. Crazy to think ive thought about selling off my collections of movie,games, poster and most of my electronics to go all digital download and streaming.
     
  13. InStepWithTheStars

    InStepWithTheStars It's a miracle, let it alter you

    Location:
    North Carolina
    I have had terrible luck with hard drives. I've owned four, and only one of them still works. That's the one I got in 2011 and, probably obviously, have filled it up by now. But that's eight years worth of photos, videos, etc. - not lossless music. I got a separate hard drive for that. I had not only my music backed up, but also the session files for an album I recorded for/with some friends. (It was actually a school project, but I didn't have the money to dump on another hard drive, and this one was only 20% full.) Some months after the class was over, I went to boot up the hard drive and the motor literally exploded and completely destroyed the disk or whatever the data is stored on and everything was lost.

    The next two I tried both had the same problem: worked for about a month, and then simply wouldn't connect anymore. They don't blink blue when they're plugged in, I've tried them on every computer, I even got a USB adapter thinking that maybe the issue was that the USB port wasn't providing enough power to the hard drive (have had this issue before with something else, can't remember what). Nothing. I recycled one of them and the other one is gathering dust.

    The one that exploded was a Toshiba - which, yeah, could have predicted that. The good one from 2011 and at least one, maybe both, of the ones that stopped connecting are Seagates. The good one was purchased in 2011, all the others were purchased after 2014. Hard drives aren't the only products I've bought which have a sudden drop in quality around the same time period compared to earlier ones. It's like a mechanic intentionally sabotaging your car to keep getting you to come back, except rather than fix it, they just sell you the same non-functioning thing again and again. Or, at least, they sell them to me.

    I've been burned enough by bad hard drives. My FLAC library is now stored on a handful of 64 GB flash drives. I keep them all in a small box which I always keep safe. They're labelled based on the artist names - ex. A-E, F-J, etc. I periodically run out of space and have to reorganize everything, which isn't much fun - but it's more fun than having everything suddenly erased and/or unusable. (Or in pieces.)

    Also, someone mentioned that Samsung is the cream of the crop with hard drives? Every Samsung product I've ever owned - phones, TVs, remotes, and other things I'm blanking on - have been faulty and unreliable from the start. If Samsung is the best option, I say don't buy anything at all.
     
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  14. InStepWithTheStars

    InStepWithTheStars It's a miracle, let it alter you

    Location:
    North Carolina
    I've never heard of a classical release which was brickwalled (though I have almost no interest in the genre so I haven't done much research), but be warned about jazz; there are numerous recent releases which have DR in the 5 range, which is completely dumbfounding. I oppose compression in rock music, but I at least understand why someone might do it, but jazz?? Why??

    That said, if you're paying for a premium lossless streaming service, it's not like you've wasted money - you can just click and move on to the next. That's a great advantage.
     
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  15. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    Watch this:


    I'm not just posting this video because some schmo says the drives are bad. I've had bad experiences with Seagate drives made in the last ten years. All I will use these days is Western Digital. I always have good luck with them.
     
  16. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I always try to find the best image available, and one that matches the original artwork. If need be, i'll fix it up in Photoshop to get it as close to the actual album cover as my skills will allow. My most recent repair is the cover of the first Chic album. There are song really good scans, and some wretched. However, the better ones are not quite right, and some don't have the record label logo and catalog number, which I always want for authenticity. What I did was find a picture of the promo copy, and it was almost exactly like the one in my closet that I am too lazy to dig out. :) So, I opened them both up in Photoshop and tried my best to duplicate the airbrushing and tint. However, it took me two hours trying to get the catalog number correct with the correct font. I eventually gave up and just used something that was kind of close. But, at least I got the photo right.

    The other one was Chicago VIII. I found a good image online, but it just didn't have the Columbia logo at the left-hand upper corner. So, I recreated it using the first album cover. It turned out pretty good.

    These are the lengths i'll go through to get what I want.

    When I was two years old, i'd wake up at five in the morning and actually play records on the stereo console. I remember one particular morning actually playing an exercise record at top volume and woke everyone in the house up. I think I used a step stool or something. My father was pissed! We were living in army housing with two brick units joined together.

    But, we listened to the radio which is where I heard the bulk of pop music.
     
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  17. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    Streaming listeners and vinyl buyers have their own detractors as well.

    But I agree about CD's as I actually buy them more now than I did ten years ago - so I get to see it with my own discussions on the topic. No real need to defend it though, a few quips about SQ being the same (or better, in the case of lossy streaming) + owning it the rest of my life and of course the buyer's market today should put things on perspective. I love my vinyl LP's but the used market has spiked cost-wise in the last few years.
     
  18. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    The topic came about on another thread where physical media owners were trying to shame streaming users about their unethical practices (even though it's completely legal to use said service). I was called a number of things, as a result of that - stupid and uncaring I believe were two replies.

    But when a rebuttal came in about used CD's from decades ago and how artists don't see a penny from that anymore, suddenly the "but it's not illegal!" black card went up. In other words, when I stream something I bought used decades ago, on Tidal, that's someone a terrible thing to people because reasons.
     
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  19. Guy E

    Guy E Senior Member

    Location:
    Antalya, Turkey
    It's interesting how life can grab you at such a young age. Becoming an obsessive music fan at age two sounds ludicrous, but the magic of the phonograph record is one of my very first memories. I can remember standing at the love seat/bay window, utterly entranced, playing my dad's records. And I decided that I was going to be an architect at age four when I got a block of modeling clay and started building houses, amusement parks and other fantastic things. I never changed my mind... I was never going to be a fireman, astronaut, or doctor.
     
  20. Kristofa

    Kristofa Enthusiast of small convenient sound carrier units

    Location:
    usa
    I like his examples on what should stay and what should go. Folks with large collections know how challenging that can be.

    Now that I am out of room, the CDs that are “heave-ho” are greatest hits collections and compressed brick walled masterings. The trick is to still keep them lossless. If the collection ever unwantingly disappears, my collection is still lossless.
     
  21. DME1061

    DME1061 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Trenton, NJ
    I certainly don't take it seriously or lose sleep over it.....I just find it slightly annoying when CD buyers are considered an out of touch group because we haven't fully embraced streaming (which I also do as a secondary option).
     
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  22. boe

    boe Forum Resident

    Location:
    western New York
    JD - Are you really downsizing your collection? I’ve got 1000 lps ready to go out the door to a dealer who will give me a fair price. Keeping around 300 (the BNs and Flies On Sherbert on Peabody aren’t going anywhere soon). (At my peak I probably had around 5000.) But am hanging on to all cds (so far). I’ve gotten used to streaming Spotify through a really good system (one on each floor of the house) and I’ve found that unless I’m doing nothing else but listening, it’s good enough for my semi-addled brain. BE
     
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  23. Bingo Bongo

    Bingo Bongo Music gives me Eargasms

    Location:
    Ottawa, Canada
    Same here. Once I burn a CD to iTunes, I don't need it sitting collecting dust.

    I have my Beatles LP collection if I want to get nostalgic, but a little booklet in a jewel case ain't gonna do it! Steaming won't do it for me either, as I don't believe in renting.

    [​IMG]
     
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  24. Ghost of Ziggy

    Ghost of Ziggy Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hell
    I’ve managed to hold onto all my cds and lp’s through a divorce, so not losing them now.
     
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  25. Grant

    Grant Life is a rock, but the radio rolled me!

    I'm scared to death of flying, but i'm learning about flying and considering taking classes. The prospect of becoming a mastering engineer is kind of gone.
     
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