What's your preferred format for listening to music

[Xann]

5 hours ago, useless said:

...the ticking noises that CD players make which sometimes spoils quiet music....

That's the sound of something amiss.

I believe we ascertained your player was shagged a good few years ago

 

The Audioquest Dragonfly DACs are good if you're abandoning physical media.

Marantz and Arcam do nice SACD/CD players that can also be fed from other devices via USB.

 

[useless]

All CD players I've had seem to do it, but then again they're usually fairly cheap as in below £100s. Having googled the subject I've come across discussions on specialist forums where it's been said that even expensive CD players make the ticking noise to an extent. For someone who listens to quite a lot of music, I know so little about equipment used to play it with.

[chrisp65]

The CD player I've got in the house at the moment is a bit pants. It's a Cambridge that someone bought in Richer Sounds and then decided they didn't want after a little while. So I was very lucky and literally picked it up for the price of a coffee.

But it has a strange thing in that it has to split the tracks on a CD, as in, if you have a CD where track 1 just seamlessly rolls in to track 2, it can't do it, it has to have a tiny gap, a pause, where 1 turns in to 2. Surprisingly annoying, but like I say, it was free so as much as I keep looking at other players, they're all kind of more expensive.

However, luckily, my ears are not the best (I'm naturally tuned for bass, don't catch too many really high notes), so at least I'm not hearing a ticking!

Edited August 11, 2016 by chrisp65

[Xann]

Is the ticking in the audio coming through the speakers, or the sound of the player's operation useless?

14 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

... it can't do it, it has to have a tiny gap, a pause, where 1 turns in to 2...

CDs burned with iTunes do this.

So annoying. I bought Toast.

 

 

[useless]

Sound of the player's operation, but only towards the end of the playback. If a CD only has about 30-40 minutes then it isn't as bad, anything approaching an hour or more and it starts ticking like a time-bomb. I guess it might have something to do with the lasers in cheaper models.

It's not going to stop me eventually getting another CD player in the future though, hopefully if I get a better make, it won't be so bad. At moment having to rip CDs and play files via laptop.

Edited August 12, 2016 by useless

[saturdaygig]

I like mp3s, and as hard drive size has become irrelevant, I always use VB0 now - biggest file size, best sound quality. I have an mp3 player in the car for this and play through PC to hi fi at home. I still have a turntable and play some vinyl too. I never really took to CDs, don't have any now.

[Daweii]

I use Spotify almost all day every day as it is just convenient with almost unlimited music at this point, it is always there to provide something in the background.

When I download music I download it in FLAC format normally via Bandcamp as the artists on there get the vast majority of the sale profits unlike iTunes and other digital stores.

[cyrusr]

Depends on where/when listening to music. 

The vast, vast majority of music is on CDs and still buy the majority of new music on CDs. CD player in my car so can play them there. Download them onto my computer and put onto my phone so can listen whilst at work or travelling around on trains. The most adaptable format of music and gives me the most enjoyment overall. 

Vinyls are fun and cool in that it forces you to sit and listen to the music; however because of the need to actually work I find a severe lack of time. That's why I tend to only buy special albums on Vinyls, so ones that I absolutely love (e.g. Mastodon's "Leviathan"; Metallica's "Master of Puppets") or coming in a sexy package or printing (e.g. Boris's re-release of "Pink" with new versions of songs and an additional vinyl of extra tracks; Iron Maiden's "Empire of the Clouds") will get bought. Not fussed for it though as the main staple, far too expensive. However for special occasions  

[hogso]

flac and highest quality mp3, purely for convenience of listening. I still buy CDs and vinyl,and it wasn't even that long ago that I bought a cassette and even a floppy - not that I can actually listen to the floppy.

Which may make you question, why buy something that you can't listen to? I'm not exactly sure what the answer is, other than it's pretty cool, man.

Example - my most sought after musical piece is a 7" record by Japanese noise band The Gerogerigegege called Ai Jin. Juntaro Yamanouchi advertised a live performance on a beach near Tokyo, and a bunch of people showed up. The band had produced around 1000 pressings of the record, it is thought (which is a single sided flexi disc containing the song Ai Jin by Teresa Teng, with some noise and Juntaro singing over the top of it (fortunately the song was also included on a singles complication CD in 1994, so wasn't lost forever)), and there was indeed a performance, of sorts. It wasn't musical, though. Juntaro burnt almost all of the records, while everyone stood around. No one really knows how many survived, but some did. I would pay serious, serious $ for one of those, even if it was a damaged one.

[Xann]

One of my tech loving friends moved to a flat in London from a large house out of town. He ditched a massive CD and vinyl collection for a J-River suite. Specs wise it's pretty impressive.

[mjmooney]

11 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

 

But it has a strange thing in that it has to split the tracks on a CD, as in, if you have a CD where track 1 just seamlessly rolls in to track 2, it can't do it, it has to have a tiny gap, a pause, where 1 turns in to 2. 

The CD player in my car does that, most annoying. The previous car had an apparently identical player, but didn't do it, so I was hoping it was a user-adjustable feature. No joy so far, though. 

Edited August 12, 2016 by mjmooney

[useless]

I dropped a ' Hi-MD MZ-RH1 HI-MD' Mini Disc player down the toilet the once and it kind of stopped working, recently I found it out again and it's suddenly start working again, but I need to find out all the bits and pieces to it to use it properly. Might see if I can find a good album on that format for fun. I just used to use the discs which can store 1GB to store and listen to music.