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Poll

How and in what format do you buy music mostly?

CDs from retail stores or online
[ 79 ] (59%)
used CDs
[ 20 ] (14.9%)
MP3, WMA, or AAC files off the net
[ 16 ] (11.9%)
FLAC or other lossless files from the net
[ 15 ] (11.2%)
DVD-A or SACD
[ 2 ] (1.5%)
Vinyl / Other
[ 2 ] (1.5%)

Total Members Voted: 146

Topic: How do you buy and listen to music? (Read 11804 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

How do you buy and listen to music?

Reply #25 –
Quote from: brownianm on
I can't understand why/how so many people listen via a computer.  The fan noise would rule that out for me.

Yeah, if you have a middelaged PC. Most equipment today are very silent - Manufacturers has much attention to this subject atm.

Personally I use a large 120mm fan for my CPU, PSU as well has a large fan and very silent (Chill-innovation). Intake and outtake fans are modded from 12V to 5V (cheaper than buying Papst fans) and the most noisy part right now is my GPU nVidia 7900GTX that I plan on putting a heatpiped zalman on. I strapped my HDD's up with rubbers to avoid resonance to the case, but I'd really like to put them away in a NAS and get some SSD's or i-RAM.

Still I normally don't hear if my PC is on or not.
Can't wait for a HD-AAC encoder :P

How do you buy and listen to music?

Reply #26 –
Additionally, real audiophiles use headphones even on their PC, so what?
audiophile // flac & wavpack, mostly // using too many audio players

How do you buy and listen to music?

Reply #27 –
If you have good speakers you can easily overpower any cpu fan noise.  Even open headphones do this quite easily.  You're more likely to hear a car go up the road.
foobar 0.9.6.8
FLAC -5
LAME 3.98 -V3

How do you buy and listen to music?

Reply #28 –
Quote from: indybrett on
Quote from: brownianm on

I can't understand why/how so many people listen via a computer.  The fan noise would rule that out for me.

Not at the volume levels I listen at.

Besides, with the right soundcard and speakers/headphones, a computer can be a very high end audio playback device, especially when the source is a lossless format.


I often have it quite loud also but some material is such I would still hear a fan.  That would definitely annoy me too much.

My iPod is indistiguishable from a good CD player, even with lossy material of moderately high sampling rate , so I am sure a Computer + soundcard would be of the same calbre.

Quote from: tuxman on
Additionally, real audiophiles use headphones even on their PC, so what?


I do not agree with you.

How do you buy and listen to music?

Reply #29 –
Quote from: brownianm on
Quote from: tuxman on

Additionally, real audiophiles use headphones even on their PC, so what?


I do not agree with you.


I think they were being sarcastic and poking fun at the self-proclaimed audiophile crowd.

I myself have used my computers to listen to music for the longest time.  Even back in 1997 with my Pentium II 266MHz computer with 64MB of RAM and 4MB of VRAM, I always preferred listening to ripped mp3's just for convenience.  The fan noise would interrupt a little bit when listening to music at low volumes but I moved the PC to underneath the desk and the fan noise disappeared.  Ever since 2002 when I purchased a newer desktop (yes, it took me 5 years to get a new computer), fan noise has been slim to none.  In fact, the loudest device like that in my house is my PS3 and that is why I don't like using it to listen to music.  My Xbox 360 is silent when listening to music though and so are my 2002 desktop and 2005 notebook.

How do you buy and listen to music?

Reply #30 –
There are computers with 3 fans: Chassi fan, CPU fan, and the Power Source fan. Keeping the three brand new will generate some subtle noise. Keeping the three unmaintained will generate a Boeing-like sound... I had these, but I removed the Chassi fan since it was useless for me. Being that way, two fans that are not "in their last days" will keep the computer relatively quiet.

How do you buy and listen to music?

Reply #32 –
Silent PC Review is the place to go if you want to make a music friendly PC.

I don't ever want to hear my computer during quiet sections of an album, and I don't want to have to blast music so that it overpowers fan noise. Thankfully it's really easy to put together a computer that's nearly silent, at least if you aren't bothered about top of the line performance. At the moment the hard drive in my portable MP3 player is a lot louder than my desktop PC.

Stick in a low power consumption CPU, with a nice big cooler, and you don't even need a CPU fan. It doesn't take a huge amount of processing power to play music, even the slowest modern processors will do it with ease.

There are extremely quiet PSUs around, or for a low power consumption system you could get a fanless model. That way you can build a system that's cooled by a single low speed case fan.

Some of the latest 3.5" drives are very quiet compared with older models. If they're still too loud then there are various ways of reducing the noise. Or alternatively you could use a 2.5" laptop drive, they're nearly silent once enclosed in a PC case. If you need loads of storage then you could always stick a file server in another room.

Even a noisy pre-built PC can usually be brought under control with a few tweaks, sometimes just replacing the fans with less noisy models can make all the difference. In the end it depends on how picky you are about it.

A PC can definitely be a great audio source, and the convenience of having thousands of albums available with a click of the mouse is unbeatable. I haven't turned on my pretty decent Rotel CD player for at least 6 months.

How do you buy and listen to music?

Reply #33 –
Quote from: Neasden on
There are computers with 3 fans

Actually it's possible to get a completely fanless PC. Zalman has large cases with heatpipes to everything that turns the entire PC into a radiator  Not sure if it comes with a fanless PSU. but such is available too. Both are pricey

Another alternative is the smaller micro-itx from VIA where slower boards are fanless with an AC-adapter. Maybe a bit too slow for a primary PC, but really useful as a dedicated device such as a mediacenter og just audio player.
Can't wait for a HD-AAC encoder :P

How do you buy and listen to music?

Reply #34 –
Quote
I almost only listen to my own Vorbis/FLAC ripped music, I don't buy any music, I just use an archived collection of Relax/New Age Audio CDs that came bundled monthly with some magazine since the day that I decided to play with those just by curiosity I think.


This is pretty much what I do. 
budding I.T professional
 

How do you buy and listen to music?

Reply #35 –
Quote from: indybrett on
Yes, it might be time to add "car unit with built in compressed audio support" to the list.

Oh, well...  Just assume usb device = portable player.
I might look into that myself if money permits. I already have a usb hd with most of my music backed up onto it, however it will all probably just be stolen.

Quote from: Slipstreem on
I always convert everything to VBR MP3 with LAME and drop multiple albums onto a CD-R for playback in an Alpine head-unit with MP3 from CD support.

"CD mixed from multiple sources"

Quote from: indybrett on
Not at the volume levels I listen at.

Besides, with the right soundcard and speakers/headphones, a computer can be a very high end audio playback device, especially when the source is a lossless format.

Word


Quote from: Kitsuned on
If you have good speakers you can easily overpower any cpu fan noise.  Even open headphones do this quite easily.  You're more likely to hear a car go up the road.

Your best bets are to replace noisy case fans with quieter ones, if it's that important to you. It also helps to clean the dust out every once in a while.
It's due for a good DEGAUSSIN'