Music Technology

[Exaltist Ethan]

Several years ago the only way to listen to music was vinyl. Years later the cassette and compact disc was invented, allowing a more portable way to listen to music. When computers came into question, compact discs had the ability to be ripped from the disc or MP3s could burn into a custom mix CD.

Then the MP3 player was born, completely negating the any reason why anyone would have physical media. And now we've entered the age of streaming, which you don't even need to own the media to listen to it.

When I was a kid my parents and I owned CD boomboxes and portable CD players. I remember getting a Sansa that had PlaysForSure technology that meant I could download MP3s directly on the device before there was smartphones that did it all. My first music subscription service was Rhapsody.

I migrated to Spotify when that became popular, and I listen to Spotify several hours each day. Spotify recently retired their Local Files feature and now the only music you can listen to on the platform has to come directly from the platform.

However, despite this, over half of my 400+ playlists are under 80 minutes in length, on purpose. Why? Because then I go to SoulSeek (a modern Napster clone), download the music from the service, then burn it on a mix CD from Windows Media Player so that my mom and I can listen to the music when she picks me and takes me back to her place.

I find the artificial limit of 80 minutes for an audio CD to be almost helpful, because it forces me to choose only my favorites, or the most popular songs, of an artist, rather than making random playlists of 50+ songs, although in a few instances I do just that.

For a short period of time I had data CDs of 128kbps MP3 audio. One data MP3 CD could hold over twelve hours of music, good for entire discographies of my favorite musicians and bands.

I own a portable CD player, an MP3 player and an iPhone. Most of the time while I am at home I'm listening to music on my Echo devices shattered across my apartment. Once in awhile, though, I'll use the CD player and one of the mix CDs I originally made for my mom and listen old school, with a spinning disc.

I'm wondering what other people's experiences are with audio-based technology. I actually own a starter vinyl player and a few vinyls, but I never spin any vinyls on it anymore. I did fill the MP3 player with music but I've since lost it and I don't know where I put it last.

I now have a sizable music CD collection. At one point I had over 400 audio CDs, some of them signed by the artists, but during a manic episode I threw them all away. Since then I built a music CD library of about 100 of the most crucial music I needed to own on CD. CDs are so ubiquitous that I can find most of them used on E-Bay for less than $5 per album.

Despite using audio CDs, data CDs, MP3s, and MP3 players for much of my life, I've migrated nearly all of my listening to Spotify and Last FM. I scrobble nearly everything I listen to, unless it comes from radio on Pandora or Sirius XM. I actually pay $20 for Spotify because I bundled it with SoundTrap. It's worth well more than that for me, honestly.

There's decent portable CD players for $40+ that has self-charging technology, can play data CDs, has its own speakers, includes Bluetooth, among other innovating features that hadn't been there in the past. The CD player I ended up picking up was a cheap one, one that needs batteries, has anti-skip technology and can play FM radio. I knew I wasn't going to use it much.

Unfortunately, I've used CDs often enough and when I migrated to Sansa MP3 players and smartphones I never really been the same. I just don't like walking around with a device that has some component in it spinning constantly. I'm not totally comfortable with the idea of a portable CD player, and when I do use my cheap player, I'm usually laying down or relaxing.

I probably have about 40-50 burned mix CDs and 100 standard audio CDs. I know the future is exclusively digital though, even famous CD retailer CD Baby has gone completely digital themselves. Nobody wants to buy them anymore and because of that, you can get them dirt cheap. But remember, with one audio CD, you can burn it FLAC, WAV or MP3 an infinite amount of times.

I remember when I was living in my east side place I used to burn CDs for people and only charge $2 per mix CD. Some people habitually used my service and I probably earned about $100 doing that. I even bought a large case of blank CDs and jewel cases just for the occasion.

This explanation of how I used music technology is long and winding and I could go on and on but I think you get the picture. When I was young I had CDs, then I migrated to Sansa MP3 players, then I had an iPhone and Spotify and for the most part, I never really looked back.

I like having Last FM because it tells me my music habits on Spotify, and helps me build playlists for either single-artist playlists or master playlists. I also use Rate Your Music (Sonemic), to, well, rate music I listen to. Although RYM is not directly meant to listen to music, it does have Spotify and other service links to listen to the music people are talking about. I also like the fact that I continuously pay artists as I'm listening to music on Spotify. I calculated that just in royalties I paid Martin Page over $80 indirectly for the streams that I had listened to him throughout the years on Spotify. The five CDs I bought from him were actually less expensive than that.

And then there is radio... Growing up I listened to 94.5 WKTI and 99.1 WMYX based in Milwaukee, then I migrated to .977 80's radio, and now I very rarely sometimes use Pandora and Sirius XM, despite paying for both. @dannerz introduced me to AccuRadio, which is very valuable because they are good at finding music you want to listen to but haven't heard yet. They play deep cuts more often on that than either Pandora or Sirius XM. When I'm listening to radio for either service I tend to listen to 80s/90s pop and rock stations.

But on average I'm listening to Spotify at least two hours a day.

So, I just explained my experiences with audio technology. What are your experiences with technology for music?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Spotify recently retired their Local Files feature and now the only music you can listen to on the platform has to come directly from the platform.

It's back now.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

For me, my firsts were cassette tapes and vinyl records (and an Edison Victrola), abit of dabbling in 8-track, and then to CDs, which is what most of my physical music is on. And then I got an mp3 player, and retired that once I got my first smart phone over a decade later. Walkman and boomboxes, turntables and no blutooth streaming or whatever it's called. And, of course, eaten tapes and years when it was very difficult to find any turntable pieces and parts. And probably the most important device for most of my life was a cassette tape adapter thingy so you could use a portable cd player (and later mp3 player) in the car.
As for radio, I grew up listening to the local classic rock stations, including 94.7 which is the station Bob and Tom are based in, and primarily the hard rock stations X103 in Indianapolis (103.3, though it's not the X anymore) and 98.9 The Bear in Fort Wayne. But lots of other stuff too, because I remember hearing Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Micheal Jackson, Madonna, Alanis Morrisette, Seal and Boys 2 Men were on the radio. As well as Hootie n the Blowfish and Uncle Cracker. But at least Mambo #5 was a catchy song while it was on. But, anymore I don't really listen to the radio. Too many commercials and stuff I don't like. I have a big enough collection now I don't need it, lol.

 

[exchemist]

Several years ago the only way to listen to music was vinyl. Years later the cassette and compact disc was invented, allowing a more portable way to listen to music. When computers came into question, compact discs had the ability to be ripped from the disc or MP3s could burn into a custom mix CD.

Then the MP3 player was born, completely negating the any reason why anyone would have physical media. And now we've entered the age of streaming, which you don't even need to own the media to listen to it.

When I was a kid my parents and I owned CD boomboxes and portable CD players. I remember getting a Sansa that had PlaysForSure technology that meant I could download MP3s directly on the device before there was smartphones that did it all. My first music subscription service was Rhapsody.

I migrated to Spotify when that became popular, and I listen to Spotify several hours each day. Spotify recently retired their Local Files feature and now the only music you can listen to on the platform has to come directly from the platform.

However, despite this, over half of my 400+ playlists are under 80 minutes in length, on purpose. Why? Because then I go to SoulSeek (a modern Napster clone), download the music from the service, then burn it on a mix CD from Windows Media Player so that my mom and I can listen to the music when she picks me and takes me back to her place.

I find the artificial limit of 80 minutes for an audio CD to be almost helpful, because it forces me to choose only my favorites, or the most popular songs, of an artist, rather than making random playlists of 50+ songs, although in a few instances I do just that.

For a short period of time I had data CDs of 128kbps MP3 audio. One data MP3 CD could hold over twelve hours of music, good for entire discographies of my favorite musicians and bands.

I own a portable CD player, an MP3 player and an iPhone. Most of the time while I am at home I'm listening to music on my Echo devices shattered across my apartment. Once in awhile, though, I'll use the CD player and one of the mix CDs I originally made for my mom and listen old school, with a spinning disc.

I'm wondering what other people's experiences are with audio-based technology. I actually own a starter vinyl player and a few vinyls, but I never spin any vinyls on it anymore. I did fill the MP3 player with music but I've since lost it and I don't know where I put it last.

I now have a sizable music CD collection. At one point I had over 400 audio CDs, some of them signed by the artists, but during a manic episode I threw them all away. Since then I built a music CD library of about 100 of the most crucial music I needed to own on CD. CDs are so ubiquitous that I can find most of them used on E-Bay for less than $5 per album.

Despite using audio CDs, data CDs, MP3s, and MP3 players for much of my life, I've migrated nearly all of my listening to Spotify and Last FM. I scrobble nearly everything I listen to, unless it comes from radio on Pandora or Sirius XM. I actually pay $20 for Spotify because I bundled it with SoundTrap. It's worth well more than that for me, honestly.

There's decent portable CD players for $40+ that has self-charging technology, can play data CDs, has its own speakers, includes Bluetooth, among other innovating features that hadn't been there in the past. The CD player I ended up picking up was a cheap one, one that needs batteries, has anti-skip technology and can play FM radio. I knew I wasn't going to use it much.

Unfortunately, I've used CDs often enough and when I migrated to Sansa MP3 players and smartphones I never really been the same. I just don't like walking around with a device that has some component in it spinning constantly. I'm not totally comfortable with the idea of a portable CD player, and when I do use my cheap player, I'm usually laying down or relaxing.

I probably have about 40-50 burned mix CDs and 100 standard audio CDs. I know the future is exclusively digital though, even famous CD retailer CD Baby has gone completely digital themselves. Nobody wants to buy them anymore and because of that, you can get them dirt cheap. But remember, with one audio CD, you can burn it FLAC, WAV or MP3 an infinite amount of times.

I remember when I was living in my east side place I used to burn CDs for people and only charge $2 per mix CD. Some people habitually used my service and I probably earned about $100 doing that. I even bought a large case of blank CDs and jewel cases just for the occasion.

This explanation of how I used music technology is long and winding and I could go on and on but I think you get the picture. When I was young I had CDs, then I migrated to Sansa MP3 players, then I had an iPhone and Spotify and for the most part, I never really looked back.

I like having Last FM because it tells me my music habits on Spotify, and helps me build playlists for either single-artist playlists or master playlists. I also use Rate Your Music (Sonemic), to, well, rate music I listen to. Although RYM is not directly meant to listen to music, it does have Spotify and other service links to listen to the music people are talking about. I also like the fact that I continuously pay artists as I'm listening to music on Spotify. I calculated that just in royalties I paid Martin Page over $80 indirectly for the streams that I had listened to him throughout the years on Spotify. The five CDs I bought from him were actually less expensive than that.

And then there is radio... Growing up I listened to 94.5 WKTI and 99.1 WMYX based in Milwaukee, then I migrated to .977 80's radio, and now I very rarely sometimes use Pandora and Sirius XM, despite paying for both. @dannerz introduced me to AccuRadio, which is very valuable because they are good at finding music you want to listen to but haven't heard yet. They play deep cuts more often on that than either Pandora or Sirius XM. When I'm listening to radio for either service I tend to listen to 80s/90s pop and rock stations.

But on average I'm listening to Spotify at least two hours a day.

So, I just explained my experiences with audio technology. What are your experiences with technology for music?

I have two observations.

The first is that this thread seems to be not about music, but about recorded music only. This is a fairly new phenomenon. For most of history, music was not passive but active. People sang and learned to play musical instruments themselves and performed for one another, or went to performances, to hear professionals. Some of us still do this but it has become a minority interest.

The second observation is that most modern recording and playback systems people use are poor quality, musically, compared to what we had in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Computer downloaded music, played back through earphones, is just terrible. The frequency range is lousy, especially in the lower registers. But people don't seem to care about that now. It is all about portability, rather than the quality of the sound. Whereas in the period I am talking about, when recorded music was not portable, the emphasis was on making the quality of the sound as close as possible to a "real",i .e. live performance, whether the recording was on vinyl, tape or CD. People spent a lot on good speakers, amplifiers, FM radio receivers etc., and sometimes even bought reel-to-reel tape players to get taped sound quality almost as good as a vinyl LP. So perhaps one change is that music for many people has become divorced from the idea of live performance, or of giving music their full attention. They are happy to listen to it walking down the street on crappy earbuds, with traffic noise in the background.

I have a mixture of LPs, from 40-50 years ago but mostly in good condition and a collection of CDs. I still have the speakers bought before going up to university and a radio receiver/amp I bought at the end of the 70s. I got a new record deck in the mid 80s. So all my kit is 30 or more years old. The only new stuff I have is a DVD player and screen that is linked in with the rest of it, so that I can watch films with sound played through the sound system. Excellent for opera DVDs - and actually not bad for watching YouTube recordings of performances.

But I don't try to listen to music on the move at all, not even in the car. I find it too distracting.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The second observation is that most modern recording and playback systems people use are poor quality, musically, compared to what we had in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Computer downloaded music, played back through earphones, is just terrible. The frequency range is lousy, especially in the lower registers. But people don't seem to care about that now.

Most people, you won't hear too much of a difference in recording medium quality anyways. Their ears aren't sensitive enough in depth and range for it to matter, and the the quality of what it's being listened on will be what makes a difference.
This actually has been researched.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

I used to have quite the CD collection, but then I got an iPhone and used Spotify for years now. It’s all I need, I very seldom come across a song that Spotify doesn’t have.

 

[John53]

The good old days of recording songs onto cassette from the radio.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

Me neanderthal. Me play music out of bear femurs.

 

[ChristineM]

I started with vynil and a cheap record player. When i could afford it i bought some expensive kit made up of various separates (lynnnturntable, nad cd player, Armstrong valve amplifier, isobaric speakers) to which i added a cd player at sometime.

Also had an mp3 player before i moved to France. At the time i was not using them so sold the lot. I do miss the warm sound of my old system, Babylon Sisters by Steely Dan played perfectly.

Now i have around 1000 older songs on my phone and use Deezer quite a lot. We also have portable cd players, 1in the lounge and the children each have one.

Sometimes standing in various points in the house it can sound like music wars have broken out

 

[Nimos]

So, I just explained my experiences with audio technology. What are your experiences with technology for music?

I used to use vinyl as my primary source of music, never really listen to many CDs as I went more into MP3s, but nowadays and for the last many years, all my music comes from youtube.

 

[exchemist]

Most people, you won't hear too much of a difference in recording medium quality anyways. Their ears aren't sensitive enough in depth and range for it to matter, and the the quality of what it's being listened on will be what makes a difference.
This actually has been researched.

That's either not true or, at least, I'd like to see the research and read what it actually says, as I feel sure it must be more nuanced. It is very obvious that the bass response of ear buds is poor, for instance. As a bass singer, who often practices by singing along to a recording, it is very clear that the speakers in the living room are far clearer than earphones.

 

[Stevicus]

So, I just explained my experiences with audio technology. What are your experiences with technology for music?

I started off with vinyl, as well as 8-track tapes. Some people would use reel-to-reel tapes, although we didn't have one of those devices in our house. I remember having a small record player as a kid, which my brother and I shared, although our parents had a larger stereo record player in the living room.

The main problem with vinyl was that it was fragile and easily scratched. However, the ability to buy music in the form of 45's made it cheap enough to buy a couple of songs without having to buy an entire album.

8-track tapes didn't last too long. Reel-to-reel also had problems, so cassette tapes took precedence, although the sound quality was not as good as vinyl. Also, rewinding and fast-forwarding tapes to find your favorite song could get a bit tedious.

We also had this, although this was even less popular than 8-tracks:

The Playtapes were just a flash in the pan.

I remember when CDs came on the scene, although that required the purchase of a separate CD player. (My 8-track tape player wes still usable with cassette tapes, with an adapter.) Of course, when CDs first came on the scene, most people had vinyl and very few CDs - although I recall some music fans binge-buying CDs. Being able to randomize, skip songs, or even have more than one CD in the machine at a time was quite a nifty gizmo to have. The CDs were also more durable than vinyl, which were still incredibly fragile. They were initially touted as virtually indestructible. I remember seeing on TV where someone spread peanut butter and jelly all over a CD, cleaned it off, and then it still played perfectly.

Though I was still a bit reluctant to purchase a CD player at first, having remembered the experience with Playtape and 8-track tapes. I still had a Walkman which played cassette tapes and had an AM/FM radio on it (but I had to buy batteries on average about every two weeks).

I used to have a rather extensive vinyl collection - and quite a few tapes - all gone now (sad story). When MP3s came on the scene, I took to it like a cat takes to milk. I downloaded a Winamp player on my PC and started scouring Usenet to find MP3 songs to download.

One thing I do miss about not having vinyl and a turntable is that we no longer have the ability to use the "neutral" setting and play records backwards. That was kind of fun, especially when they'd slip something in there that could be played backwards.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

That's either not true or, at least, I'd like to see the research and read what it actually says, as I feel sure it must be more nuanced. It is very obvious that the bass response of ear buds is poor, for instance. As a bass singer, who often practices by singing along to a recording, it is very clear that the speakers in the living room are far clearer than earphones.

No, most people ears really aren't that good for the recording medium to make much a difference. Unless you have especially good hearing it's all in the speakers.
And is the bass response of ear buds poor, or have you not used good ear buds (I personally don't like them). And lots of headphones have great sound. But they aren't the cheap ones, or even cheaper ones.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Like most of the oldies here, I had to make do with vinyl records as to my music listening but I also listened to the radio quite a bit, and recorded from this later on - and not always music - often being things like HHGTTG, radio plays, or other such. I was never a fan of vinyl and turntables (being an engineer), but I made the most of what was available and when I could afford such I did buy a reasonably expensive set of equipment so as to make the listening more pleasurable. This consisted of the best separates that I deemed best for the money (about £1000 in the 1970s) and this included a good cassette player such as to record my favourites onto tape and not wear out the vinyl. These being - a Sugdens A48 amp and Tuner, Planar Rega 3 turntable, Celef speakers, and an Aiwa 6400 cassette deck.

I can't remember when cassettes began to be popular but apparently about the time I bought the expensive HiFi set-up. Before this I did have a Leak amp and an Armstrong receiver as I recall.

I probably had a rather OCD attitude to vinyl, given the annoying pops and scratches so often inherent in some albums but I at least tried to minimise such by regularly cleaning them and even went so far as to slit the inner sleeves so as not to get scratches from particles as the record slid inside. I had a few friends who apparently left their records out in the open (gathering dust) - but they did see them as expendable, whereas I saw them as having some value that might be retained.

Over the years I have had various portable devices - cassette, CD, and Mini-disc, but now use a Sony Mp3 player with headphones, and I'm reasonably happy with this. The HiFi is not operable - having an amp that needs repairing - and hence a lot of the music I collected over the years I can't play at the moment. This being because I did collect quite an array of genres, some not available on CD or at all now, but I have also bought many CDs and have ripped these to Mp3 - most being of my favourites. I do often buy Mp3s from Amazon too when I'm less likely to want the whole CD or album. And even if my ears can't tell the difference, I still would rip to 320kbps where available, but 128kbps would probably suffice.

Although hardly HiFi, I have had for several years reasonably good combination units to incorporate radio, CD, Mini-disc, and now USB drives - one was a Sony and the current one is a Denon. With the latter's USB device allowing for random play of about 500 items, as does the Mp3 player.

All I can say is thank God for digital music. What we had to put up with - records so warped they looked more like a rollercoaster, as well as the defects that often came with the record, and cassettes had their issues too - might produce nostalgia (given the popularity of vinyl again) but the artwork was the best thing about most vinyl albums. At least Classical and Jazz records tended to be thicker, flatter, and of better quality.