…and now the subscription turned to shit and they need to find FLACs of all their favorite music, because they encoded their MP3s in shitty quality in the 2000s.
Soulseek is right there if you want to sail the high seas. Bandcamp and other online retailers have offered FLAC for decades. If you didn’t trash your CDs you can still rip them to FLAC, an external drive (if you need one) is like $30.
I get it, I have hundreds of GB of old shitty downloads from YouTube, poorly done cd rips, downloads from god knows where. All in various stages of completely absent labelling and tagging.
But I’m not going to pretend it’s anyone’s problem but my own due to my previous choices, and I’m not going to pretend like there aren’t plenty of tools to help fix it like MusicBrainz Picard.
I didn’t trash my CDs time did. A decade spent in a carry case in my car in the southern heat has caused a lot of them to have the foil start separating. So the vast majority have at least one or two tracks that won’t play or rip now.
That’s still your decision and thermodynamics being a cunt.
Where you getting external drives for $30? The 2TB Toshiba drive I’ve purchased many times over the past 5 years for under $70 is now $150. Even the 1TB drives are over $100 these days
I think they meant an external CD/DVD drive for ripping the discs
Ah, that makes sense. Thx
Try music brains picard if you want to fix that problem. Still takes time but it helps ALOT (it’s free)
I love this!
Just be sure to use something like Spek to to inspect the files if you use Soulseek. I’ve used it to find some obscure music I couldn’t purchase, and sometimes people literally just re-encode MP3 files to FLAC, the data is still lost, reconverting won’t recover it.
Yep, many times I’ve found a .flac that actually sounds worse than the 128kbit .aac from YouTube…
Soulseek is a godsend, but it’s a bit clunky. I’m looking for some other fronted and stumbled onto nicotine+ that I haven’t tried yet, any ideas or pointers?
If you still have the discs, it’s really easy to rip CDs to FLACs.
This is a roving banner about consumerism and why its bad. Stop buying sooooo much shit and fix the things you do have. The jones’s suck and they can fuck right off into the sunset.
I have a small ~$5 desk fan that I got from AliExpress. First time it broke, it was because the mount points for the micro USB charge port were glued on instead of soldered in place. Then the tiny crappy button which presses a smaller surface mount button inside got bent and no longer clicked the actual internal component. Then the button snapped off completely so I replaced it with a 3D printed one. Then my initial soldering broke loose because I admittedly half-assed it the first time. When it was sitting on my desk, disassembled for the 5th time, I mentioned how many times I’d cracked it open to someone and they bought me a different fan as a gift, essentially freeing me from the curse of repairing the cheap fan again, and giving me permission to just trash it…
I still fixed it and now I have 2 fans. I must’ve fixed it pretty well this last time because I’ve dropped it twice pretty hard and it’s still holding up. Repairing shit is awesome. It usually doesn’t take that many tries though…
My current headphones are a Frankenstein mix of drivers from a pair that sounded nice but were uncomfortable, a headband and housing from a different pair that fits my weirdly shaped head, cushions from a third pair because they were the perfect size for my ears and soo comfortable and a cable from a fourth pair because it was the perfect length, thickness and has a good plug. They’re my favorite headphones now.
How do assemble them? Have a piczure of them?
I used screwdrivers, hot glue and soldering to assemble them. They just look like mid-tier Creative Labs headphones with Turtle Beach cushions.
I bought a cheap electric heater from Lowe’s a few years ago. It surprised me greatly because it would occasionally rewire itself. It had a rotating switch with Off, Fan, Low Heat and High Heat settings, but once in a while these switch settings would change. Like, Low Heat would actually by the Fan setting, Off would actually be the High Heat setting etc. It turns out the rotating switch just travelled over some printed solder lines and occasionally these would melt and re-form into new positions.
How there was not an epidemic of homes burning down because of these things is a mystery. But there’s just no way engineers could have ever guessed something like this would happen.
If a first fix doesn’t succeed, fix it and fix it and fix it and fix it… You get the idea.
My small 4in fan I take hammocking with me had the charging port break on me and while I have the soldering station to fix it, I hate soldering tiny pcbs and have just been removing the lipo cell and charging it with my 18650 charger I had made an adapter for awhile back. I basically just stick two ribbon cable pins into the adapter and the other ends go to the appropriate +/- wires on the jst connector to the lipo. Takes about 4x longer than my largest capacity 18650 but it saves me a little annoying soldering.
Also I lost the on button when I was disassembling it so now I just shove my longest nail down into the housing. I COULD print a new one but I’d have to set my printer back up and tune it just for one small piece… I have a piece of paper taped to my printer that I keep writing the things I wasn’t to print and once it gets long enough I’ll set it up, it’s just a lot of work and I don’t have much space.
Cassettes degrade over time so they needed to be replaced by CDs or mp3s eventually. But it’s about the device you’re listening to it on and buying a new device.
As it turns out after a few decades, CDs also degrade over time.
I miss Winamp.
It really whipped the llamas ass
Caaaaaarl, that kills people.
You can just keep using it if you want
https://forums.winamp.com/forum/winamp/winamp-discussion/316353-winamp-5-9-1-released?t=459660
It crashes randomly on some files in Windows 10 and they don’t seem to have issued any patches since the re-release 4 years ago. :/
I’m using foobar2000 which does the job but has zero charisma
You didn’t have to do that. :/
Sorry to be the bearer of difficult news.
“had to replace” lol no one is making you get rid of your records and tapes bro. They still work fine.
I dunno, my 25 year old tapes are worbly as hell now. Vinyl records still play great though!
Have you tried playing them on different devices? There’s an old Tech Moan video where he replaced the springs and rubber bands on an old warbly tape deck, and the warble-ing stopped. Your tape deck may just need a springy-bits refresh.
Ooh, I should try that! Thank you!
All those records were really heavy to haul from one renoviction to another hovel, so we recorded to tape and sold the records cheap in the 90s.
The tapes stuck around until we could afford a car that was new enough to have a cd player, sometime around the economy crashing.
Now we have a home that we will own some day and for a while, it was great cruising thrift stores for $3 old vinyl for the turntable inherited from boomer parents, but hipsters caught on and all that is left now are nana mouskouri and henry mancini and bill cosby.
Hey hey hey…
The pink panther is a great release!
That’s an evil earworm if you grew up with it
Why did you copy 62.5% of my username?
I thought I was your inspiration!
I don’t need a subscription; I just need a gigantic hard drive.
Sorry to break it to you, but 3 TB is nowhere near gigantic by today’s standards.
The benefits of having very specific and narrow music taste. My entire lifetime music library is under 5.5 GB. A one off song I rarely come across that I like is not difficult to buy DRM free to add to the library.
I think I do have a narrow taste in music, it’s just that the taste is “sad anger about love and lonliness” and that’s the vibe of so, so many songs. 🤣
I take it you’re a fan of Spanish Love Songs?
What loser actually believes they need to replace stuff that still works?
It’s really fucking hard to listen to a record on a road trip
I wonder if there’s a modded Rolls-Royce out there with a gyroscope stabilised record player in it.
There were car record players, just not very common
I download all my music and play it off my phone
That’s what all of us smart kids did in the 90s when the car radio cassette players got replaced with cd players. /s
Do cars even come with CD players any more? I know my last three computers didn’t.
External drives are a thing. Old cars are a thing.
old cars are a thing
ok now you just trolling.
Well the problem is they stop making the previous thing. Who wants a music collection that is 1/4 records, 1/4 casette, 1/4 CD, 1/4 MP3s? And still you need Spotify to listen to some stuff that is simply not available anywhere else.
Sounds like an absolutely normal collection to me. Especially if you consider that not every recording is released on every medium.
I must be less of a collector and more focused on practicalities. I am not really listening to music in front of a stereo, I’m using headphones while out and about walking/public transport, etc. I might find some CDs, cassette tapes, or even records in my house somewhere, but I’m not actively listening to those. I can’t listen to records, cassettes, or CDs while out and about. My only option is digital files. I have ripped some of these from CDs but I’d guess I’ve re-bought more than I’ve ripped.
Who wants a music collection that is 1/4 records, 1/4 casette, 1/4 CD, 1/4 MP3s?
Me! The ratios are off but that’s basically my music collection.
Also have VHS tapes, DVDs, GBC/A carts, Xbox OG disks, NES carts, and a hacked PS Vita (no carts yet).
Records and tapes wear out tho. CDs somewhat too if you don’t treat them well.
At least mp3s last forever if you manage your backups.
That’s no fun though.
And all the physicals can be backed up to digital by just downloading them from slsk, you’ll be fine.
I think that variety would be cool to have.
It would be cool to collect but if you bought on vinyl then want to listen on the go then you’re gonna need to get the album again in another medium.
Or you could just rip the vinyl
Do people actually do that, as opposed to the alternatives? It seems like a lot of work when the digital files are easily available online.
Some do, I personally just DL my “backups” from slsk. Most new prod records do also come with a code for the digital version for this exact reason, though. Older ones of course do not.
Everything could be on MP3 or CDs if you want it
The original comment was that people replacing their collections are dumb. But if your original collection was vinyl then everything can’t be MP3s unless you replace it. So there are valid reasons for replacing (carrying a record player around with you isn’t very practical).
You didn’t have to…
I hate that mp3 became the standard and not .ogg, it can store better quality in similar filesizes and yet everyone decides to use mp3.
Sure, flac/wav files are the best when it comes to audio quality but they take too much space, especially if you’re storing your whole audio library on your phone.
And I hate that Opus, being even better than ogg, is even less spread out.
Artists could just release files from their own website in all of the forms available. If they get so god damned little of the money Spotify and other steal from them, they should just release for better terms themselves equivalent to listening to music 24hours a day. Then you can just connect with whatever is on the network run by those artists.
A fediverse streaming audio paid with a subscription where 100 percent of your membership goes to the music you listened to. The artist’s should then have to pay the fediverse audio to be a member of the network so they the network can pay the tech overhead. Which If it’s kept super simple and intentionally NOT a SOCIAL media app, just a straight up media app.
Then artists could also have more control over what and where they get played. Could be an administration nightmare but a worthy challenge to offer such an amazing thing.
I would try to revive winamp through the fediverse somehow
Make it, then.
It’s a good as way as any to discover just how intractable a business problem it really is, especially when you have deeply entrenched interests manipulating the industry.
I don’t have that skillset, nor do I have the luxury or comfort to gain that skillset. I have too many problems of my own Im ready failing at managing
FLAC or bust. Stupid to have a lossy standard when storage is cheap.
MP3 is ca. 5x as old. There was no Ogg back then.
Btw, why does the CPU need support for a audio/video format and not the DAC/GPU?
It’s got to be because people liked the name/extension better, right? MP3 was so much easier to pronounce and cooler sounding than ogg. Same thing with DivX.
Nah we stopped at mp3.
Me, a GenX looking at the drive I filled when Napster was first introduced.
I bought some vinyl today. I have every CD I’ve ever purchased. I ripped them to lossless and have them in the cloud.
This feels like angry wanking because these things are choices.
Millennials didn’t have it any better. And now my kids are all into nostalgia and I regret all the DVDs I got rid of only 7 or 8 years ago.
I get the desire to not hoard, but a dvd binder doesn’t take up much space.
Do most people just normally get rid of shit they spent good money on that still works just because it isn’t the new hotness? That seems so damn alien to me.
I threw out all my old CDs, but I’ve since converted all the stuff I wanted to keep to FLAC and everything is digital now. I really, really hate clutter.
I’ve also had to move house a lot over the years, so cutting down anything you have to haul around is a good bet. Learned the hard way some 15 years back when I had to leave my books behind on a cross country move and I could only take what fit in the back of my hatchback. I moped around sad about it for a while after the move and my wife insisted I get a Kindle. It was life changing. Now all my books, games, and music are digital, stored on my NAS in RAID5, as well as with offline backups for most of it.
No I had a box full of DVDs and cases and when we cleaned out the garage I kept a few but almost all I had already replaced with digital copies anyway. And sure I still have those now but my kids are big on watching DVDs and videos the “old fashioned” way.
Ehhh I get appreciating vinyl, crazy good quality and ritual. I definitely get appreciating VHS, there something really aesthetic/vibey about tape tracking artifacts and all that. I feel nothing about DVDs. Now they’re just mediocre, not vibey like VHS or beautiful like files on a HDD or Blu-Ray. I only have a couple DVDs I’ve kept over the years, DVDs of rare stuff that I can’t find on public or private trackers. The rest of everything is files on hard drives that look infinitely nicer than a DVD would, or VHSes with commercials from the 90s and 00s.
Hence why I got rid of them lol, but the same kid who helped me go through them and pick out which ones to keep now says we should have kept all of them.
Just burn the CDs to your phone? You can get digital audio off a CD and put it on whatever device you want, no idea why someone would give up their CD collection without at least backing it up to a hard drive first. Even if you don’t have any PCs with a disc drive, you can get a USB DVD-ROM drive (or even BD/BDXL if you wanna play blu-rays or save backups to BDXL discs because AI has murdered the price of SSDs/HDDs) pretty cheap.
You’re taking the post too seriously. If any Gen Xers have a big ass tape, CD and record collection, they’re not mad. They’re fucking having a good time.
All of my CDs ripped and stored as ogg files takes like 25 GB, which is fine on a modern phone.
OGG is great for space, but still lossy. I keep my collection as FLAC. Modern phones have a ton of storage and not much to do with it anyway, so I’ve got like 20+ GB of music on mine.
No, you didn’t. Your old records still work. I have some that were bought by my deceased grandparents that still work fine. Maybe not all your old tapes work, but the ones that do will still play if you have a player. Old CDs may just now be starting to rot, but you’ve been able to rip them to files for 30 fucking years now so your own choice not to do that was a choice.
You can still use all of those older formats as long as you have the hardware still. That’s always been the case. External disc drives for computers are like $30. I have a cheap “modern victrola” record player that also plays tapes, CDs, AM/FM radio, and can be used as a Bluetooth speaker. Was like $60. It’s not great at any of it, but it’s more than passable. “I chose to throw away my record collection and now I’m making it everyone’s problem!”
iTunes still supports adding external music files to your library. On Android you can just toss them in a folder on it and use one of hundreds of music players to listen to them.
It might not be as convenient as picking whatever you want from the internet and getting it on demand, but none of the old ways were ever forcibly removed from you. Getting rid of what you needed to use them them was a personal choice.
There are no streaming exclusive music releases to miss out on.
The issue is that you want the benefits and convenience of the modern options without the drawbacks. Well, everyone wants the good without the bad, so deal with it.
It is easier than ever to get whatever music you want in whatever format you want it in, and easier than ever to get it for free, and easier than ever to discover new music you might like based off what you already know you like.
It is easier than ever to keep using old formats. It is easier than ever to convert off old formats if you desire.
So you’re just complaining that things change over time? Welcome to life.
TL;DR- Skill issue
I bought a 5 disc cd changer off someone for $40. Same model we had in the 90s. And also a record player. GOOOOD I missed having real music players.
As a millennial, I had the same path through media just without starting at vinyl. You apparently chose to throw your shit out, I’ve still got all of it and converted most to digital formats. Fuck a subscription though.
