Hello audiophiles! All I’m looking for in this post is to say Hello to other music fans who engage with collecting like I do, because sometimes I feel lonely in the age of streaming.
I started collecting music in college (mid 2000’s) when I got a pair of turntables and learned how to mix house and techno. I found it enjoyable to visit record stores and dig around crates looking for gems. After college I kept one turntable and got into audiophile collecting, like original pressings and Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs pressings of classic albums.
Fast forward a few years and I discover that some vinyl collectors rip their super-rare records with super-expense gear and share with people like me. I got into that and started collecting FLAC files of rare records and audiophile gold CDs. This is around when Spotify got big but I was so engaged with collecting vinyl & digital downloads I didn’t really get into it.
Finally, a few years after that I discover Bandcamp and fell in love with the service. It gave me the feel of a record store but online. Plus the majority of my money goes to the artist which is great to know. I spend much more each month buying and downloading FLAC files from Bandcamp compared to streaming but I couldn’t be happier. Around this time I bought an ADC and ripped my own vinyl collection then sold my turntable and records. I’m now all FLAC.
At one point I tired Tidal and Qobuz but wasn’t impressed. The sound quality of classic albums ranged from either “really good but not quite as good as my flac files” to completely awful. I always dropped the service after a month and went back to my FLAC files.
I now have about 11,000 songs, all lossless, all sourced from vinyl, gold CDs from MFSL and DCC, plus loads of Bandcamp downloads. It’s really enjoyable to curate a collection, I feel like it’s a great way to engage with this hobby but I don’t see many audiophile take this path.
Just wondering who else loves collecting instead of streaming?
Yeah I’ve got about 300 Gig of FLACs. Recently I went from “play from folder” to a proper music organiser app… man that kicked off a lot of work fixing all my tags, getting album art where possible and filling out gaps in my collection.
My wallet is hurting a little but I can finally say my collection is ‘complete.’ Of course you always find new stuff but no long standing wants.
I have tidal, but where do you all get your music from? I am new to hifi and would love to start a collection offline.
First thing I do when I get a new album is see if there’s a recording already online. I have a couple thousand CDs and albums and they’re all on my PC. I like to see if I can find definitive mixes, I try my best to blind compare in Foobar. Mainly listen through HEOS, I have dozens of play lists from 37 genres, limited to 310 songs which is hard for some while others I mix with similar stuff.
Yeah I have 55 TB of flac stored. Need to do alot of sorting
I’m a concert collector and must have 2.5 TB of live shows (and studio outtakes too) from quite a few artists. Sure at times the quality isn’t audiophile quality (and can even be far from it) but I don’t care. I think it’s cool to have every Pink Floyd show from 1967 to 1981.
Glad to hear there is actually an end to ripping your collection. I’ve been at it for 6 months. All my CD’s are finally flac. Just started ripping my vinyl. After 2 more months, I have got through 50 LP’s. Only 500 more to go.
Do you have any suggestions on what to use to turn one side of an LP wav file into separate song flacs?
It took me about 3 months rip my vinyl. I used Audacity. I’d use Amplify to normalize my LP side to -1db then tell the software where to split the tracks. I’d do some light, manual click removal if needed. Once the tracks were split I’d type in the metadata and attach album art
It’s a major pain in the butt but I don’t miss vinyl collecting.
Question. I have been data hoarding flac files for a while, I love it but it is some work to maintain over the years. Do you use plex and a NAS or just run albums straight off an external?
I agree with you that one one downside to this is the time it takes to download or rip CDs/vinyl then edit metadata.
I don’t use a media server. I use my PC for downloading, ripping, organizing metadata, converting file formats, and shopping on Bandcamp then drag-and-drop the files to my Android. I’m into car stereo as well as home stereo and headphones/IEMs & to accomodate all of my use cases it’s best to use my phone as my music player.
I don’t use DSD & convert hi res downloads to 16 bit, 44.1 or 48 KHz, so my whole collection fits on a micro SD card.
1 TB own 96k24 Vinyl Rips, 4TB FLAC from other sources including SACD to FLAC conversions.
Three 3 way “bookshelf” speakers (2x10" + Coaxial Horn) + 2 2x18" Subwoofers. One is only used on mono records.
This setup is technically streaming all the time as it uses Dante to connect A/D and D/A converters and the DSP-PC. This PC serves as room eq and crossover.
Ryzen 7 5700G 32GB RAM 128GB storage. Music goes in and out via Dante DVS
I lost count of my music collection. Now I just go by how much storage it takes right now I’m sitting at 1.3 TBs of music. I used to have a massive CD collection but it became too much so all of them were converted to FLAC. Much easier if I have to move.
A 14TB external hard drive is $200. Everything I have is FLAC if I don’t have my album handy.
20k songs, with backup, all useless. viva la spotify