Download from Deezloader, listen with Lollypop on desktop and Auxio on mobile.
I also transfer all my music to my Hauwei watch GT2.
Edit: not sure if I count as an audiophile.
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Clean your ear wax.
How do you do it?
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Audiophiles don’t listen to music, they listen to their headphones
I have converted all my CDs to FLAC and I mostly listen to my music collection in stereo speakers instead of headphones because I find the sound more natural. I have built my sound system around the moOde audio software.
FLACs from CDs, deemix-gui, qobuz-dl, and Soulseek. 102,000 songs. Play at home with Logitech Media Server. On the road I’ve transcoded it all to 128kbps Opus so i can fit it on a microsd card and I play it with PowerAmp. I mostly use Blessing2 Dusk earbuds with a Shanling MW200 bluetooth neckband, but sometimes also I use Focal Clear OG open-back over-ear cans with a qdelix 5k for bluetooth.
FLACs through PlexAmp, either to nice headphones ($500 range) or two channel stereo into some decent speakers with a decent subwoofer. I’d like to upgrade to “full range” speakers one day and save the subwoofer for movies.
PlexAmp does FLAC when connected to Wi-Fi but I have it set to transcode if I’m using mobile data.
At home it gets played through Chromecast Audios (R.I.P) which keeps it all digital until it hits my receiver.
Spotify through Sonos at home and work. Spotify on Google earbuds when out and about.
I used to really love music discovery on Spotify. I now find it’s the same ald songs over and over. It finds what you like and reinforces that rather than gradually expand it.
I agree on the discovery being crap on Spotify. I started to listen to the podcast NPR new music Fridays, and get my discovery that way nowadays.
I used to really love music discovery on Spotify. I now find it’s the same ald songs over and over. It finds what you like and reinforces that rather than gradually expand it.
I’m in the same boat. For years now it’s felt like every daily mix and discovery playlist is 10 songs I recently just listened to on repeat and then 2 songs that aren’t even tangentially related and I’m left questioning why they were being shown to me.
My ears.
No just joking, YouTube music mostly. It’s convenient, available everywhere, has a large catalogue, and good enough quality for me.
With all respect you’re not the definition of an audiophile at all. If anything you’re kind of the opposite
Not everyone can discern the difference between a 96KHz FLAC and 256kbps AAC. I can’t. But I still can (barely) tell the difference between 256kbps AAC, and 96kbps AAC.
But I can tell if a song was well-engineered or a mess.
I believe those who can’t discern the difference between bitrates (especially on high bitrates), but have the appreciation for good music, good mixing, and good mastering, can still be considered audiophile.
As I get older and the abuse I put my ears through starts showing up, I completely agree. After upgrading my music library to FLAC from VBR mp3s, I stopped having the, “Oh! There’s a subtle instrument going on in this part of the song!” moments.
It doesn’t stop me from trying to listen to the highest quality music formats that I can get my hands on, but I 100% know if I think there’s a difference to my mid-40s ears, it’s probably a placebo.
That’s not the comparison at hand, we’re talking YouTube audio compression vs any actual music track.
Especially when your browser or application requests a high quality bitrate, youtube compression is opus 128.
A person could make the argument that it’s not lossless so it’s not worth listening to, but opus is extremely high quality especially at that bitrate.
If you wanna try it for yourself, take a flac or whatever, upload it to yt, then use something like yt-dlp -x that defaults to the highest quality to redownload just the audio stream.
YouTube Music Premium offers AAC 256kbps as the highest quality.
Format ID 141: https://gist.github.com/AgentOak/34d47c65b1d28829bb17c24c04a0096f
Opus 128 is only for the audio of YouTube videos. Not YouTube Music.
and according to that same link it’s 160, not 128 (format id 251!). someone else pointed that out itt.
one of my downloads had an average bitrate of ~140 when queried with mediainfo, so i believe em.
I don’t have the premium account, what’s aac256 comparable to?
AAC 256 should be at least on par with MP3 320 CBR, might also be on par with ogg vorbis at the same bitrate
Yes. As a lifelong musician (live & recording), you’d think I’d be more fussy about audio quality…
But I’m just not. Just like the 4k vs 2k “debate”… It’s all about CONTENT.
Also a musician here. I cared a lot when I was younger, but I have so many other more important things to care about now. You only have so my capacity to care about stuff in your life, and the quality of my music doesn’t even come close to mattering these days.
Mostly? I have uncompressed FLAC encoded music on my Plex server, and I listen to that streaming through over ear (Bose NC-700) headphones on a computer, or on our home theater system (Monitor UK, 2 stand speakers, 2 rear wall speakers, 1 subwoofer) with an Onkyo receiver.
I also listen to Tidal hifi a bunch and electronica on youtube because some of the Boiler Room and other club mixes are pretty dope :)
Plex, though I do occasionally listen to online radios using my podcast player
I use deemix to get songs and jellyfin/finamp to listen on my phone. I do miss the discovery of new music from things like Spotify or YouTube music. If anyone has suggestions for music discovery I’d love to hear about them.
Open the Nicotine program that connects to the Soulseek network, then chat with the heads on there. Name a few artists you like and they can hook you up. The most knowledgeable music listeners around. Pretty sure you can search for ppl who have files of an artist you like, and then view their entire library. (NB. Been 10 years since I’ve used it, so YMMV)
Seriously though, the real answer is to resurrect whatever Audiogalaxy was doing in their recommendations-algo, shit was dope.
MusicBee on PC
Vinyl Music Player on my phone
Local mp3s and flacs work the best
I dabble with YouTube Music and music-map.com for music discovery
Haven’t found a nice self hosted music streaming setup that I’m happy with (unsatisfied with the apps and features). I want a nice looking app (super subject of course) that supports offline play and ReplayGain. I’m super happy with Navidrome but not with the Windows/Android apps
Qobuz for me.
Best streaming sound available but I had some skipping issues even on very good connections and options for auto Playlist generation and new music discovery was way behind other services. Great if you always knew exaewhat you wanted to hear, but I went to Tidal and their focus on quality is better than most other services but the music discovery algorithms really are quite good, I find myself more eager than ever to tune in to a streaming service.
Sennheiser 6XX
A technics changer or linear tracker. I think the changer has a shure cartridge still but the linear tracker has an at. Sometimes through a pair of numark ttxs with m447s and a rane.
