CDs? Vinyl? Cassettes? Online radio? Streaming services like Spotify, Deezer and others?
Me, I’ve always liked CDs, I buy music CDs, I’ve got a small collection, around 250 music CDs. Up until a few years ago, I used to have a nice Sony CD player but it was so old it died. So I started ripping all my CDs to my computer, as ogg files. Still these days, every time I buy a new CD I rip it to ogg files on my computer and I listen to them there, I also copy the ones I like the most to my phone so I can listen to them while I’m not at home.
When I want to check out an album, I search for it on Youtube or Spotify, and listen to it and if I like it, I buy it on CD.
I now rip my CD’s to mp3 files or buy single mp3 songs and then burn them to a USB drive. My vehicle plays mp3’s, my home stereo plays mp3’s and I have wireless speakers and an older laptop I use as a jukebox to play mp3’s on my patio and I can use online music sites. If I am listening on my main laptop I use headphones. If I want to hear some new stuff I stream music on my ROKU.
The advantage is I have thousands of songs on one USB drive. If I had CD’s my whole rear seat would be CD wallets. I have albums on it, but I also make playlists of the different genres I enjoy, so only listen to the best songs from my albums and downloads.
My casual answer is that I no longer have a CD player, but that's actually not correct. I have an external Apple optical drive, but since I use laptops, I have to attach the drive if I want to use it, so I typically don't. I have most of my collection now as .mp3 files on USB drives, mainly so I can listen to them in my car when I drive.
There is so much new music I like online via streaming audio or podcast, some of which I pay subscriptions to, that most of my at-home listening is streamed. I have sizable collections of both vinyl and CDs, but I rarely listen to them any more. And I don't buy new CDs.
I started out with vinyl and cassettes because, well, there was not much else than that, except radio (which, in my opinion, sucked most of the time).
I held back a bit on buying vinyl because CD was on the rise and I planned to buy the titles on my wishlist as soon as it was issued on CD. Lucky me, most titles I wanted were low price
Since I ripped all my 300 CDs to FLAC, I don't play much CDs anymore although I happen to have a gorgeous vintage Pioneer PD-S705 CD (1996) Player.
Everything is played now from my (Ubuntu_MATE) mediacenter using the DAC in my Yamaha amplifier.
b.t.w. The rip software that I used is "asunder", which is in the standard repository of Ubuntu-MATE.
Beware that Asunder is an (redbook) Audio-CD ripper, not a player
I use Audacious -> ALSA's IEC958(Toslink) -> Yamaha amp's build in DAC
(circumventing pulse/pipewire)
The (5.1 surround) amplifier you see on the picture is reasonably lightweight, I guess around 30 pounds (12 a 13 Kg).
I still have, or 5 actually.
My two mission 770 as main, a KEF center and 2x Technics SB-F1 as surround.
I don't need a subwoofer. The missions go really really deep
Cool ! I can't really do that but on the other hand, my neighbours are party animals so they don't give a flying fsck about some noise
( B.t.w. I had another pair of Technics SB-F1 lying around plus an old Philips amplifier, I promoted these to computer amp+speakers on my main rig.
Works great ! )
I have Q Acoustics Hi-Fi speakers on my desk, so naturally I like uncompressed (lossless) audio. I use TIDAL to listen to CD quality streams. For local files, I prefer FLAC, whether that's on the desktop or phone.
In the car, FM radio (analogue) still sounds better then DAB (if the station is simulcasting).
I finally got rid of my CD library a couple of years ago. I have about 300 CDs of various music styles that I ripped to mp3. They all reside on my one 300GB partition dedicated to music. I have the mirror of that as a partition on my "offline" Western Digitial 2 TB MyBook USB drive.
For playing at night, to help me "disconnect" from the world and help me fall asleep, I still have my
I started out with vinyl and cassettes because, well, there was not much else than that, except radio (which, in my opinion, sucked most of the time).
Same here except you missed 8 track tapes and FM converters because the only cars I could afford where older used ones that only had AM radios in them.
I also had a huge collection of LPs, but I got rid of those about 30 years ago, and replace the best of those by the more recent CDs which have all been donated to SallyAnn since.
I’m a CD guy as well. I collect and then burn them to my laptop. I use Rythmbox to play my music. For new music I do listing to internet radio thru Rythmbox. I have stations from all over I listen to and write down the songs/artists I like and then shop for their CDs.
I used to have a Spotify account for new music, but they do not treat the artist very well so I stopped.
I do have an old Denon 5 CD changer with a new Sony Stereo and B&W speakers. My old Marantz 2220B died on me during a lighting store and as much as I love that thing, it is way too expensive to fix. With the Sony I can use bluetooth to pipe music from my laptop or I load up my changer.
I had bought an 8-track player console for my dad, as my thank you gift to him when I graduated from University. I never was attracted to them myself, and bypassed the 8-track, and jumped to cassettes, even buying Pioneer's first "popularized" cassette deck, which was an absolute gem!
I had a huge collection of vinyl too, but had moved into an 160 year old Queen Ann Victorian which flooded the basement where I had them in moving boxes waiting to be unpacked and ruined them before I could even unpack them. It was a huge loss as vinyl was already making it's big come back. Most had only been played once to transfer them to cassette and they had the paper inner sleeve and the heavy duty outer sleeves which the place I bought them only gave out of you bought them while it was raining. I always waited for rain to buy albums.
As for a Music Player running on my computer, I found Rythmbox to be annoying. I limit my usage of Rythmbox to listening of live streams from SHOUTcast broadcasters, when I'm in the mood for exploring "World Music" (regional ethnic music). Along those lines, I am partial to the novelty of sounds coming directly from Africa, India and Spain.
Previously, I was a Winamp devotee but, over time, found the evolution/support somewhat erratic, so I abandoned that as well.
I finally landed with something I consider straightforward for playing single songs or playlists, which is how I enjoy my music. I am not one for having any application "load a full library" (music, videos, books, pdfs, whatever). So my new "core tool" for player is:
I listen to the vast majority of my music through a bluetooth speaker,I own a couple of JBLs and a Bose.Free Pandora is fine for me and if I want to listen to anything from my personal collection I use Strawberry and my laptop through one of the bt speakers.
I do have a 20+ year old Sony 6.1 surround sound blu-ray player that I can pop a cd in if I really want to shake the house.
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