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Has iTunes, etc. impacted your listening habits?

Long before there was MP3, or at least long before I knew about it, my only real choice for music was to pick a disc out of the collection, throw it into my player of choice at that moment, and press play. Want to hear something else? Take the old disc out, put in the new one, etc.

But since I've burned my entire collection (minus non-hybrid SACDs) into my computer, I find it's just so damned EASY to press play and hear it through the mediocre desktop system. No changing discs, file through every range of song, artist, genre, etc.

Now, I don't have those lovely audiophile listening sessions on the big rig quite as often. And when I do, I'm listening to those non-hybrid SACDs that aren't on the computer.

Solution? Upgrades, baby! Get that main system back to where it's just so thoroughly compelling that the little ol' Dell just won't cut it any more.

I suppose I could have invested in wireless solutions to beam those wireless tracks to the big rig, but somehow I'm not covinced that it's a fully matured tachnology/too expensive right now/limited capability/I can't totally give up the 5 1/4" discs/whatever the hell else I'm worried about.

Has anyone else had their listening habits impacted by the MP3/iTunes revolution?

--Brian
thedautch
prpixel
876 posts
 
1800+ CD's ripped in lossless and counting. I have an external DAC hooked up to my PC (near silent} which drives a pair of mono's and some ERA Design4 speakers with a small subwoofer. I do 90% of my listening at the computer these days. When I get the urge to listen on the big rig it's through a Bolder modified Squeezebox2 with the ultimate power supply. The SB2 is sooo good that I dumped my reference SACD/CD player. I use a WiFi PDA to control the SB2 and select tracks/CD's. Also, I can carry the PDA with me when I'm listening through the whole house system.

It's so convenient to have you entire collection at your finger tips. You find yourself listening to things that you normally wouldn't. And, it's great to put it in shuffle mode when working around the house. I'll never go back to a single CD player.

Yes, I do keep the CD's as a backup.
mikeadan
20 posts
 
yes thats why you need to invest in a music server such as the cambridge audio. has an audiophile cd playre uses wolfson dacs and is a great choice when you cant get you ass off the couch
the_kid's avatar
the_kid
465 posts
 
iTunes in combination with an AirPort Express definitely made things easy to enjoy my computer music collection. It made things so easy that I upgraded to a Squeezebox 3 and purchased a DAC for my Squeezebox and CD-Transport. I actually listen to my computer music collection on my 500GB HD about 75% of the time.

Serious listening of course is through my CEC transport but the computer certainly makes things easy to assemble a playlist and enjoy..

Cheers,

KiD
kurt_tank
1,189 posts
 
Not one bit.
photon46
1,076 posts
 
Yep, the iTunes thing has affected me. We have one iMac at work that has over 12,000 songs on it in every genre except classical. We have it connected to a network shared with everyone in the Fine Arts visual arts dept. at the university where I work. We all trade & share music and turn each other on to new stuff. Everyone has had their musical horizons expanded. We all agree that we tend to purchase more, not less, music as a result of this new exposure. At home, no, I still listen the same way I always did. I'm very resistant to the trend of turning music into a short attention span activity. I do find myself getting up and changing discs a bit more frequently though. With discs running 60-80 minutes long, it's a bigger dose of an artist than it was during the time lp's were dominating the market. I find that the 20 minutes a lp side is limited to is the right amount of a given artist often.
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