Headphone random conversation

[JarlBSoD]

For the most part in the last few years I have used Youtube to listen to music. Most of the bands I listen to are getting to stage in their careers they want to retire now... so not many new albums to buy and with most streaming services just wanting to do singles now, it gets hard to figure out where to buy albums from. I need to figure something out soon as the only PC we have that has a CD drive is about 8 years old and starting to act up.

My music library is mostly a relic. There are some new things in there but most of its 10+ years old at least. Lots of its way older... i look at some and ask myself, why do I have that? Its only now I have good headphones I notice its so... lacking. Needs more Dire Straits for starters.

I used to buy a new album every week, now its one a year if I am lucky. Shame I bought so much on cassette. Those all gone now. Guess I should try to recreate my previous collection... so many gaps.
It got to stage I am buying collectors editions they are so rare.

Make a FLAC "backup" library of all your CD's while you can

 

[anort3]

Make a FLAC "backup" library of all your CD's while you can

I spent 3+ months doing just that a few years ago. Digitized my ~500 CDs all with the same encoder in FLAC. Over the years I'd ripped most of them to various bit rate MP3s but I wanted everything done to the same standard.

I may not be able to tell difference between high res audio and normal. I have learned a few things about audio formats and unless I get some FLAC files I may not tell a difference. One format - MQA - was supposed to be lossless but evidence points towards them being no better than FLAC which is free, and often no better than MP3.

It was an attempt to create profit selling people music that isn't that much better than mp3. Corporations got involved as they smelled profit. Just as they sell High spec USB cables to people that don't know it doesn't make any difference on a digital system.

So hi res isn't worth it and as you age you lose the ability to hear as much as younger people can. It starts at 35 and gets worse as you age. This means my 320kb/s recordings are too big as file size = how much dynamic range a file has, and I can only hear so much now. Not going to shrink my files now. Not going below a certain size even if I can't hear it.

So I can't hear anything at a high lvl but headphones have made everything clearer, so not a waste of money. I haven't spent a day listening to my music in.... years. Music was just sort of there.

The DAC plays uncompressed audio, that is why it sounds better. It doesn't need to use Bluetooth.

Don't assume you can't tell a difference until you try it. I can hear way better than my age would imply and even then age related hearing loss is usually in the higher frequencies. I've always thought that's why earlier "high end" headphones all leaned bright. because by the time people could afford them they'd lost some of their high frequency range. That's no longer true though now that so many companies are doing great headphones.

Edit: Also FLAC is lossless. MQA was supposed to be. It's not. It's actually quite bad. Which is why MQA went bankrupt.

 

[Brian Boru]

Dire Straits

Mark Knopfler was [is?] one of the greats. I imagine old recordings will be enhanced in the near future, once AI figures it out.

 

[Colif]

Make a FLAC "backup" library of all your CD's while you can

I might pick up an external CD drive next year as it might be more reliable than mums PC is. Finding one that works with win 11 is fun. Shame rip speed still only in real time. Finding all of the music would be interesting, some of it is ancient, and some will be impossible as I don't have sources.

Foobar didn't appreciate me moving all my music from hdd to ssd and half my playlists were causing errors. So I wanted to delete them all. I wasn't sure how though. I went to its help screen and noticed the Update option... picked it, I was 2 versions behind. Updated and it offered to import all my playlists and info. I decided to start again.

It looks better now but it was missing info... about all my music. Took an hour to download all the tags for my music. 22.5gb. I thought it was actually getting to music files as I don't have that much I don't think.. 46gb total. It took an hour to get them all, it did seem to find a few albums I didn't know I had.

Curious, can streaming services access music on other servers. Most of mine is on Onedrive.

 

[anort3]

Shame rip speed still only in real time.

Nah. I use Exact Audio Copy and it takes about 3 minutes.

Exact Audio Copy

Exact Audio Copy is a so called audio grabber for CDs using standard CD and DVD-ROM drives. The main differences

www.exactaudiocopy.de

No, a streaming service won't be able to access your music stored locally or in the cloud.

 

[JarlBSoD]

I might pick up an external CD drive next year as it might be more reliable than mums PC is. Finding one that works with win 11 is fun. Shame rip speed still only in real time. Finding all of the music would be interesting, some of it is ancient, and some will be impossible as I don't have sources.

Foobar didn't appreciate me moving all my music from hdd to ssd and half my playlists were causing errors. So I wanted to delete them all. I wasn't sure how though. I went to its help screen and noticed the Update option... picked it, I was 2 versions behind. Updated and it offered to import all my playlists and info. I decided to start again.

It looks better now but it was missing info... about all my music. Took an hour to download all the tags for my music. 22.5gb. I thought it was actually getting to music files as I don't have that much I don't think.. 46gb total. It took an hour to get them all, it did seem to find a few albums I didn't know I had.

Curious, can streaming services access music on other servers. Most of mine is on Onedrive.

You can auppload local librarys to youtube music but i have never tried it so nothing i vouch for.

 

[Colif]

I used to have all my music on Google music but they changed it to only wanting to stream Singles and I wasn't interested in that. I just wanted to listen to my own music. So I took it all off there.

Streaming just sounds like internet radio and I am not sure I care about it.

 

[Brian Boru]

I've never done it, but you could setup one of your old PCs there as a media streamer. People usually do it in a family to make movies, music, shows, images etc available to multiple people and in multiple rooms, but you could do it for yourself on LAN.

Accessing from beyond LAN would require some extra setup with sth like RDP or similar—here's the list from my notes:

App	Best for	Price	Notes	*
Ammyy Admin	Enterprise	Free/Paid	Malware!
AnyDesk
AnyViewer			AOMEI
Distant Desktop		$50 f one
Iperius Remote	No limits	Free/$100
MS RDP			Host Win Pro+
RemotePC	Small Biz	$5/year	G f Win	**
RustDesk	Novice	Free	11 of 17	*
Splashtop	Biz	Complex	Complex
TeamViewer	Enterprise	Free/Paid	AI if free
UltraVNC	No limits	Free	Router config

I haven't tried any of these except RDP briefly a long time ago.

PS sorry about the colors, just drag across to read

 

[Colif]

If I just stick to MP3, my entire MP3 collection is 46gb. I have 256gb of storage space on my phone, I could in theory copy it all to my phone and not need to stream from PC at all. Its a matter of if I want to do that... I have 23gb on there already, so half is on there already. Helps I have lots of just a few bands, so easier to copy in bulk.

16bit FLAC are normally 22mb to 40mb 24bit FLAC 45mb to 80mb

That changes things but if you streaming it isn't saved on phone anyway, so It only matters if I copied flac files to Phone.

 

[Colif]

I feel old. It seems really hard to find albums now, everything is streaming... I see that as radio, you don't own the tracks, you can't listen to them offline... you have no control over if they are available the next day. I want to own my music, not rent it. I have a large resistance to change.

there are choices at least, not all streamers expect you to be a member to buy off them:

Streaming and music Downloads in 24-Bit Hi-Res - Qobuz

Qobuz is the world leader in 24-bit Hi-Res downloads, offering more than 100 million tracks for streaming in unequalled sound quality (FLAC 16 Bits / 44.1kHz)

www.qobuz.com

from what I can tell, Amazon make it hard to buy off them.

 

[anort3]

I've been streaming for years. I still buy CD's. I buy more CD's because I stream. Introduced me to a whole bunch of music I never would have heard otherwise.

 

[Colif]

Probably get a sub to Qobuz. It has an app for android but if it can't use my DAC, USB Audio Player Pro has a logon for Qobuz so I assume I can play through it, and its the one program on Android that doesn't whine about my DAC

We about to have 3 days of storms and fun (just in time for Xmas) so I might not do it until after. I get 1 month free... Need to work out how to integrate it into Foobar though I do see they have a PC app so might not need to.

 

[anort3]

I've never seen a streaming service integrate into Foobar. They all have their own apps.

Qobuz is a fine choice except they have the smallest library of the streaming services. Not sure how true that still is or what they lack since I've never used them though.

 

[Colif]

It doesn't look like they wanted to be biggest - https://www.headphonesty.com/2023/03/review-qobuz/ - they not after the mass market

 

[anort3]

Absolutely worth trying. If I was you I'd do the free trial run. Try Qobuz for a month or whatever they give you then move to Tidal and then Amazon music. Then you can go back and pick the one you like the most. Interface, catalog and compatibility with your new cans can all be considered.

 

[Colif]

The main problem I see with renting songs is they can disappear. Its a digital file on a server... easy to delete
Digital is great as its easy to store but its also easy to change or replace. Physical media is mostly read only, no way to delete. No way to change... (there are formats that allow change, I know). Books are going digital, who is to say what is in them now will be the same in the future?

So yes, I will try to buy some of the albums I want... might rent for a while. Just don't save them online as they can be disappeared. Even if you own them.

 

[Colif]

Forgot I had a membership to Youtube Music as part of Youtube Premium, it replaced Google Music which is what I used to use. Its not as good as some of the other services but they have access to most of the music I am likely to want to listen to. I can't buy anything off them but I will try some of the other services and see what they offer as well.
Can play at a higher quality than you get over Youtube normally. Up to 256kbps bitrate. Sounds good on headphones. made a playlist of every Queen album excluding greatest hits etc. I had them all at one stage.

 

[anort3]

Although you can, I've never bought music from a streaming service. If I can't find the CD most of the time I can find what I'm looking for on Bandcamp. You can just download the files in FLAC and or MP3 from there as many times as you want.

As far as I remember Apple Music / iTunes is the only service that's actually deleted customer's paid for music ( including files downloaded to their computers ) but I still wouldn't trust anything I couldn't download to a place of my choosing.

I much prefer having the CD. Not only because you physically own it but my 'good' stereo is just the amp and a CD player so I can't stream to it.

 

[Brian Boru]

Books are going digital, who is to say what is in them now will be the same in the future?

Very true. Some of the classics have changed so many times in print, it will definitely continue in digital.

Then you have international versions. I'm not aware of it happening with music, but every new translation of a book is different from the previous one. In gaming, Germany often needs a separate version due to strict anti-**** laws, and of course authoritarian regimes like to clamp down on critical content.

There was a notorious case of Amazon deleting a book from customer's Kindles back in 2009. Not the only book it zapped, but this one was funny as well as an ominous precedent. The book? 1984.

 

[Colif]

Being able to create a play list of all the albums I am missing of some artists is a start. Then I can decide which ones I want to buy.
Made one up of random metal albums, another of all Devin Townsend, one of Overkill and another of Howard Jones.

My music tastes are all over the place. Listen to Slayer and Fleetwood Mac in the same night. I have yet to find anyone new but it is only my first day.
YouTube music lets you download something associated with the files in a play list but not the actual songs as I did one and the download size was too small.

 

[Colif]

wow, how did I miss these... need to take mine back:

Who doesn't want to look like Bain every time they use their headphones?

 

[Colif]

Think next step after buying these is a pair of True wireless earbuds but I find myself shying away from all the standard ones

1. Sony ones have battery problems - tend to explode
2. Sennheiser ones don't really have good sound
3. Bose have good ANC but not good sound
4. Apple - I have an Android phone...
5. Astal & Kern - silly expensive
6. Hifiman - See number 5. Also their iem are too shiny, not exactly subtle on a bus.

I know there seems to be an entire market of people who want good noise cancellation over good sound, but not me. Really, its only the last 10 years ANC even showed up on a lot of headphones - Bose invented it 20 years ago... so I lived without it before, I am sure I can cope again. As such, I don't give it a high score when it comes to looking for something to listen to on a bus... Not taking my Bathys anywhere.

I could also just get a wired iem but then I need to figure out what sort of connection I use to attach it to phone... I might get something like FiiO BTR7 Bluetooth DAC & Headphone Amplifier and then what i wear could be anything. I would be bugging Anort for suggestions.

tbh going wired means its harder to lose the headphones. I see the wireless ones as dangers. I will have to look around... I don't know if I could use that Fiio thing with the Bathys anyway... it has its own dac & I don't think you can pair BT devices to it, its just a receiver. But any other wired headphone would work. To a point... I don't know what its limit is

might pair it with Final Audio A5000

 

[Colif]

if you ask me tomorrow, or in 5 minutes, it might be another dac or IEM. Its changed all day.
Can't decide between Fiio BTR7 & BTR15
Fiio have too many portable dac that do the same thing... BTR15 needs more reviews, it was only released a few months ago. The technical differences between BTR7 & 15 are small... the BTR7 is bigger in actual size though. BTR7 has THX amps, the other one doesn't. There is also a price difference.

Not going to get a USB DAC as I would prefer to run it off Bluetooth - I have had problems in the past with the USB slots on my phones, prefer to just avoid using it too much. Something hanging off it just looks like trouble. These two can be connected by USB if necessary.

Anort doesn't know anything about IEM so he wasn't a lot of help. He tried. I did look at this but all the good ones cost silly amounts of money here - https://crinacle.com/rankings/iems/

Either get a Moondrop Blessing 3 or a Final Audio A5000. Best choices I have here. Without spending stupid amounts anyway. they both about $450 already.

I have found two reviewers who have tried both and they both think the A5000 is a better choice. Moondrop Blessing 3 has problems with trebble.

Availability on websites that I believe is also a problem... I am not crazy enough to buy off Ali Express. Headphones.com doesn't ship internationally so I can only really buy what I can find in Australia.
Essentially three websites and they don't all have everything - 2 have IEM, 2 have DAC. They all in the same area in my Country... weird really.

Both the ones with DAC have sales on now but its hard to tell when one ends (its same site I got the Bathys from, it might end on Tuesday) whereas other ends on Thursday. Only one site has the BTR7 anyway.

Probably buy DAC first as its a chicken/Egg thing. I can't use the iem without it, and its pretty pointless until I get them. Might try my old Bowers & Wilkins earphones on them, not sure they even work now. DAC is the cheaper part of the purchase. Its too close to weekend to bother doing it now. It wouldn't move any closer to me over long weekend anyway.

Need to figure out which of the DAC is better suited to me.

 

[anort3]

It took like 7 years of me bugging you to get some good headphones before you finally did and now 2 weeks later you're considering buying IEMs and a DAP.

 

[Colif]

I am hard to influence. You might have been trying for 7 years but for much of that time I didn't need any. My PXC550 were doing the job I needed them for. It is only now they are starting to not work as well.

I would have bought a portable Bluetooth DAC/Headphone amp thing years ago if I knew they existed. I only went wireless after the phone jack on my S7 died and I had to get a new one under warranty. Wanting to avoid that again is why I first got a set of Jabra wireless earbuds that stopped working within a week, and then replaced them with the PXC 550.

Wired is easier as they don't need charging.

The Bathys were bought to fill a role I didn't have anything in before... gaming headset... I haven't used them for that yet as I been playing music instead, and I don't have a game I really want to play right now.

and a DAP.

close... DAP = Digital Audio Player... I am just getting a DAC/AMP which still relies on another source for the music... DAP' generally have some onboard storage. DAC just plays music off the phone/PC/Other BT source.

DAP is a pretty name for an MP3 player. My Iriver MP3 player from 2002 had 40gb of storage, was it a DAP? Bet they say it needs to be able to play Hi Res audio. They made up a special name for it after all... distance selfves from consumers. Make seem special.

I wouldn't mind one if only so I wouldn't have to carry my phone everywhere... but I wasn't looking at them. Happy to use phone as source. Or PC.

Edit: I think I get IEM & DAC first .. as the cost of a dac is $200 to 300 and the cheapest good DAP is 700 to 1000... so its a question of cost. DAP look great but something to save towards, not something to buy to fill a role.
So maybe next Xmas I could get something like:

but not in the short term. I have had portable music players before, lots of them.

Edit 2: I bought the BTR7, since I don't know when discounts run out. It can wait for an iem... not rushing to get it. Neither of the two I am looking at are on special so no rush.

can see if my old wired headphones still work

I have my doubts but no way to test them until I get DAC next year.