How do we buy music these days?....

[Jody]

I used to DJ a bit,

Best £150 i've spent in years. Especially if you can't be doing with the space/hassle of actual decks

 

[Julia9054]

Child 2 has a lil’ tour coming up if anyone fancies a bit of quirky singer-songwriter stuff and is near any of the places

(shameless mum promotion)
https://www.olliewest.com/
Edited to add website link

 

[winjim]

Best £150 i've spent in years. Especially if you can't be doing with the space/hassle of actual decks

View attachment 681872

I've never tried mixing on anything else but I have to say I do love vinyl. It's a physical medium so you can touch it, manipulate it, you can see the music in the grooves.

That said, I don't have space for it so those might be fun. I've recently taken up guitar again though so any spare time I have available for music is taken up with that.

 

[Dadam]

I've stopped doing it so much now but I had got to the point where I had roughly 30 or so songs both on vinyl and CD and a favourite trick was playing them simultaneously and switching between the 2 asking friends which sounded nicer, once they had decided I would invariably press eject on the CD player and congratulate them on choosing the analogue version. In order to do this it is imperative to have a decent Turntable/arm/cartridge set-up and an Amp with a good Phono stage, now I don't claim to have the best TT in the world but my Thorens TD166 with Rega arm is very good. It's not all about S/N ratios Analogue is simply a 'nicer' sound a lot of which is down to the way it is mastered. CD mastering often leaves a lot to be desired (google 'loudness wars' for a better idea of what is done) basically a lot of digital mastering does not take advantage of the dynamic range available, quiet passages are boosted and loud parts limited/compressed so everything sounds OKish on inexpensive mass market systems, this is not audiofoolary but documented fact. Some music is definitely better on CD, anything by Roger Waters for instance where he's going from whispered vocals to explosions then Vinyl cannot cope with the range as CD has a far lower 'noise floor'. That's why I will always have both formats hooked up to my QUAD.
I'd agree that the average person cannot really tell the difference but really that is due to the fact that they don't really have a system capable of resolving the quality of good recordings. The down side of this is I can hear how poorly some music is recorded on either format.

I'll try to dig out the link to the study I alluded to. It was a double-blind test on equipment worth £10k+ but was a good 20+ years ago so may not be available online, though should be cached somewhere.

I agree with the point on mastering and loudness wars, but a lot of vinyl releases aren't great either; cashing in on the vinyl craze of recent years. To be scientific you'd have to have the same track from the same analogue master, but mastered appropriately for both formats. And then remove any clue as to the source of each.

I'd like to have a really good turntable setup at some point but don't have the room right now. I like the vinyl experience but not the crackles and pops. Some think that's part of it all but drove me up the wall. I couldn't go digital fast enough.

"Nicer sound" is too subjective; could mean anything. Maybe the preference would be reversed if you had a different CD player or turntable, maybe it wouldn't. But ultimately it's down to preference and "better" includes other considerations like accessibility, cost, environment.

 

[Jody]

I've never tried mixing on anything else but I have to say I do love vinyl. It's a physical medium so you can touch it, manipulate it, you can see the music in the grooves.

That said, I don't have space for it so those might be fun. I've recently taken up guitar again though so any spare time I have available for music is taken up with that.

I got rid of my decks and vinyl back in the late 90's and very much agree on the how nice it was to mix. Belt drives not so much but loved using some of my friends 1210's

If you liked the seeing the grooves then you will probably enjoy digital. The track is laid out very similar in it's wave form meaning you can mix visually without the need for queueing in headphones (especially if you knew how to mix in a previous life).

Such a neat little package

Weirdly, I've wanted to take up the piano again recently but don't have room for one :-(

 

[I like Skol]

Well, it's all gone a bit anorak for me. I only wanted to buy an album.

Better do this before someone else does...

 

[Venod]

But ultimately it's down to preference and "better" includes other considerations like accessibility, cost, environment

Statement of the thread.

A lot of bollocks talked about quality of music, all wasted on me, ears diminished a long time ago, a mp3 sounds as good as a CD and vinyl to me, and a lot more convenient.

 

[MontyVeda]

Statement of the thread.

A lot of bollocks talked about quality of music, all wasted on me, ears diminished a long time ago, a mp3 sounds as good as a CD and vinyl to me, and a lot more convenient.

Also with MP3... there's big difference between 128 and 340, which is supposedly CD quality. Yes it's a 'lossy' format but I can't tell what's lost.

It's bit like arguing jpg vs png images... you won't notice the difference unless you re-save a jpg X amount of times and can see the compression.

I guess its the same with MP3, edit and resave X amount of times and you'll notice the lossy aspect eventually... but just listening, nah. Not to the average listener anyway.

 

[Deleted member 1258]

Statement of the thread.

A lot of bollocks talked about quality of music, all wasted on me, ears diminished a long time ago, a mp3 sounds as good as a CD and vinyl to me, and a lot more convenient.

Same here, my ears are 71 years old now and past their best, I doubt if I could spot the difference between the different formats if I tried to, I just enjoy the music what ever the format.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Statement of the thread.

A lot of bollocks talked about quality of music, all wasted on me, ears diminished a long time ago, a mp3 sounds as good as a CD and vinyl to me, and a lot more convenient.

I remember back in the day when i had a decent turntable,amp and speakers and going out and buying expensive speaker cable and trying to convince myself the sound was better than the cheaper stuff.

 

[Venod]

Same here, my ears are 71 years

Your ears are the same age as mine.

 

[sevenfourate]

Via a FREE Spotify account. So I don’t ‘buy’ anything…..

Apart from the CD that’s in my car any any given time; and the occasional radio playing via a smart speak in the man-cave - I don’t do much must-have / specific-to-me music. So at this point i wouldn’t pay for that privilege…..

So right now I’m what you call a freeloader. You know a chancer - a taker if you will 😉

 

[Mo1959]

I occasionally buy from here if I want something in higher quality.


https://www.hdtracks.com/#/home

 

[Rezillo]

Spotify also does this for you. Choose an artist and it will make a playlist of other artists that go well with it. Listen to an album of your choice and leave it running. It will pick things that go with it to play afterwards. I have discovered lots of new to me music this way
As has been said before, you can download on to your device and play without Internet. We pay £16.99 a month for a family subscription and there are 3 of us using it. It has 3 separate log ins so it doesn't lump all our musical tastes together.
My kids are both musicians. The bands they play in don't release physical cds any more but release new music via streaming services. It pays them bugger all unfortunately but physical cds cost a lot to produce and they wouldn't make any money from sales of those either (even if their fans were still buying)

My nephews' band covers all angles and formats:

https://www.aliteband.com/

 

[Dadam]

99% of my listening is streaming on Apple Music. I’m well hooked into the Apple ecosystem with multiple devices and the Music app is well integrated and so much nicer to use than any other media player app I’ve tried (I’m looking at you, google play! ).

The other 1% is CDs or FLAC.