Where's Music At?

Love this

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i hate to be that guy, but are you gonna press this one on vinyl eventually?

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I’m afraid not, but glad you’re that interested in the LP - I’ll take that as a good sign :slightly_smiling_face:.

To be honest it’s largely an environmental decision, not to mention I’ve fallen out of love with vinyl myself, but I have to say the hi-res digital files going through a nice DAC sound dope!
The vinyl pressing pains at the moment make the decision even easier - 9 month waits for your record, not to mention the ever increasing shipping costs & post-Brexit customs charges and I don’t miss my old physical retail and distribution days - sitting on boxes, trying to flog them them all.

The small bit of extra income IF they all got sold, would definitely be a bonus for both the artist and label - the label is a pittance providing labour of love presently (I’m not even putting a price on my time),
Hopefully it will all pay off one day but running a small, niche music, indie label in this day and age (and probably always was) is a mission and a half.

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completely understand. i’m building a nice little ā€œhigh lonesomeā€ ambient vinyl collection and thought this would make a welcome addition to the pile, but i’m also very much aware of how utterly buttfucked the vinyl industry/market is right now and don’t fault anyone who’s staying out of that mess.

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New Hidden Spheres out on Rhythm Section!

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I’m getting close to going the digital files path. What do you like to use, to get bandcamp playing through speakers?

One of my turntables is quieter in one channel, which I find very annoying and the service or repair is expensive. I wouldn’t have that problem with digital files. Or if I did I could try changing the cable. The cable on the Technics is soldered inside…

I’ve recently invested in a Sonos port which supports bandcamp, Mixcloud, SoundCloud, and a whole host of other services. Main reason I went Sonos is they seem the only ones who do full Apple Music subscription support.

I’m generally pretty happy but the app isn’t the best, it can feel a bit hit and miss searching for things, but I guess it’s not easy supporting so many different services.

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not sure what’s your set up but if you have a laptop, you could just get a decent DAC which you’ll then connect to your amp and speakers. lots of good DAC’s around from Ā£100.

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Ooh, like the look of that - if I’ve read the specs correctly, it plugs in to an existing amplifier (and doesn’t need more Sonos kit to work)?

We have a Sonos system connected to a HD server. Was perfect and stable for ages then they started to ā€˜bloat’ the software with all kinds of crap. Since then it’s become unstable and frustrating for us. Often, and I mean twice a week it ā€˜can’t find your sonos system’ and you have to reboot your router and or App/phone/computer/HD.

This usually happens when you get home from work and want to listen to something whilst cooking the dinner and someone is watching Netflix and you have to reboot the whole house.

Speakers are great though, not audiophile but nice for kitchen or bedside. Still have two other standalone systems for ā€˜proper’ listening.

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Yes, works plugged straight in as a source. The audiophile sites say there are better sounding things around at a cheaper price but I couldn’t match the functionality. I think in theory I could plug in a turntable and stream it to other Sonos kit but haven’t investigated that yet.

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Ah, yes. The inevitable ā€œprogressā€ of pretty much any bit of software ever made.

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I have all my hi-res files sat on an external disk on a raspberry pi with Plex installed. Works fine for everything else but Sonos starts to play the first five seconds or so and then says the file is incorrectly encoded. I think it’s to do with the format of the external disk or the old pi not having enough juice to serve the files quickly enough.

Other than that I have found it stable.

I work in IT and over the last few years we’ve had to put in a fair bit of work troubleshooting peoples home networks as the struggle to use our vpn. Worst offenders are sky-q multiroom boxes and Sonos devices. They all struggle when one of the other devices in the house goes to sleep and they start broadcasting across the Wi-Fi looking for it. We have gone through a process of turning off everything in the house and slowly sometimes over a period of days Turning things back in to see if you can find an offending device.

Microwaves, boilers and the neighbours Wi-Fi can also get in the way.

Best thing I did before laying the wooden floor downstairs was install some network cabling. You can’t beat a good cable. Have even managed to find converters for phono to RJ45 so my turntable in one room physically connects through from the tape out to my amp in the next room.

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Can’t beat a slab of vinyl, amp and speakers… some things are just better.

Mine is super simple. I just use apple tv and have that plugged into the stereo. Seems to work very simply but well and I can run any of my mac devices through it. Not sure its the highest quality saying that but sometimes I wonder if I’d notice.

Hadn’t considered that - will give it a go.

Is this using the optical audio out of the Apple TV box? I need to check if my amplifier has a digital input, but does sound like a good option.

What I do is Apple tv into the television then audio out of tv into the stereo. Pretty simple.

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That is so true. I also find that when I put a record on I listen to it properly. Having the whole world of music at your fingertips tends to lead to me not getting to the end of one track or album before starting the next.

One thing the Sonos has led me to doing though is listening to more worldwide fm and things like howlers Balearic breakfast on Mixcloud as they are no longer reliant on my phone staying connected to a speaker.

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As I’m a bit nomadic and workaholic I tend to travel light (apart from thos f!*?ing records that keep haunting me :slightly_smiling_face:) and spend most of life at the desk staring at a screen, so I just run an Audioquest USB DAC into my iMac and then feed my studio monitors from that. Just using the DAC and getting some Isoacoustic stands for my monitors made a real difference on a budget.

I do hope to find a longterm residence in the next couple of years and then I’ll go to town on a proper hi-fi set up again.

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