Sound files and software

[Hydrolastic]

Hello, As you probably have figured out by now i am a total amateur at this. BUT this doesn't mean i don't want to get better at this Hi Fi stuff. In the garage i have the second 2st 208 its a amp175 equipped unit thats been recapped. Quite by accident it has a set of concert grand woofers in it with the original standard oval mid range and 2 4" tweeters with stock passive crossovers. Slowly over time its beginning to sound really good. A while back I was messing with the (Bluetooth) line levels and experimenting with sound quality. By setting the input at maximum and trimming the output (inline preamp) i realized it sounded different than if you did it the other way around it turned out also that if i turned the line level down and instead of the loudness knob at a 25% it was just over 50%. Listening volume stayed the same. The stereo sounds better idk why It just does. This was confirmed a half hour later when pandora played 'For what its worth' by Buffalo Springfield and i realized i could hear a lot more detail. It really sounded great. I now see that there is a huge difference in recording quality. There are a ton of formats and file sizes and its really overwhelming if you don't understand the audio language. So i want to ask you guys that are streaming music what format do you use and why? Please elaborate on file storage what bluetooth adapter do you use? what streaming service? Hydro

[19&41]

When you were reducing the signal level to your input, it probably brought it below the point where your receiver distorts. That point is easy to see on an oscilliscope, when you start to see the peaks of the signal flatten or invert, kind of like a line drawing of a volcano. When I stream, usually there is no choice of format, just a link to start the stream feed.

[Hydrolastic]

Hello again, I was talking about the files and software. My buddy has a 90 lbs transistor amp and a set of Klipsch speakers that will knock you down with a wall of sound. He uses a iMac with songs he bought off of Itunes. Idk what bluetooth adapter he uses. The audioengine adapter i used on one of the units has the capability to use APTX, Which is a high quality bluetooth streaming method but its only capable of running with IBM PC software. i only have a ipad. Also i have noticed with a lot of music that it was horribly recorded. i thought that it was just a bad recordings but i read somewhere the a lot of music was recorded like this to amplify over the typical car radio. I also have read that a lot of times the MP3 files themselves are overly compressed and have issues. I was wondering what methods some of you use to play music. There is the obvious... put a record on the record player but i was wanting to concentrate on software and streaming. Hydro

[William]

I wish I could help, Hydro, but I just play records or listen to the radio. I'm a tech dummy so I have no clue on what is the best to use for streaming or bluetooth.

Bill

[electra225]

Same here, Hydro. I still use CD's. I get along better with the older analog stuff. Sorry I can't be more help.

[back-2-mono]

What's a blue tooth?

[electra225]

Here is a definition of Bluetooth. It's a wireless doodad used for transferring music. I have no idea what it's advantage is or why I would want to mess with it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth

[Hydrolastic]

OK! Its good to know i am not alone here in not knowing how to do this stuff. This could actually be a good thing as i can start working on a good way to do this. I am not a fan of radio because i just can't stand Ads. So i usually stream Ad free pandora but it gets a bit boring sometimes i also will stream you tube TV unto it. If i want to hear the TV.
A side project is i want to be able to hook up several or all of the consoles in a room to one bluetooth adapter so i don't have to spend a couple of hundred dollars on each console to hook it up. But i don't even know if that is possible. Hydro

[electra225]

I have a couple Radio Shack speaker control boxes. I use them to control input to my consoles. I have four CD jukeboxes, 200 disc and 300 disc. I stack them, couple them all together, then control which console I listen to by how the signal is routed. The problem nowadays is buying patch cables. Very few places handle them and they are spendy. I pick up 12' and 16' foot patch cables when I can find them. I've never messed with Bluetooth because I don't consider it "old" enough. Using CD's is bad enough as far as all that goes. My wife doens't like messing with records or tape.

[19&41]

I have nearly all of my music library on digital files and all of that on Mp3. I play it using devices that will play those files, with no further specification on the means used to reproduce it. That has worked well for me for years now. The main thing for me has been to put the files into a good format for continuous shuffle play for my vehicles audio and for accessing files on my laptop for the home stereo. The source sound quality on the music in my library varies to a great degree, from 78s recorded in the 1920's to the current recording systems. Each sounds as good as they can.

[Firedome]

I too also prefer old school tech, analog above all: mag tape and LP vinyl, but also do have CD still as I have a lots of them and they're convenient. No streaming, bluetooth, Mp3 or other high-tech here. Tube amplification, efficient speakers,all old tech as much as possible.

[chazglenn3]

If you can find it, FLAC formatted digital is very good quality. MP3 files are highly compressed and much of the fidelity is lost. The trade off is the small file size. Tidal is one streaming company that has FLAC. It’s very rare that I stream to my CG, but I do have it set up to do so.

[TC Chris]

I'm fond of owning the hard copy--LP, CD, and a bunch of off-the-air cassettes. At my Mom's house I found the box of 78 rpm children's records I played with considerable joy at age 5 on the old GE phono my parents bought used for that purpose. Since then, lots of LPs. Lots of CDs. And I can still lay those little yellow 78s.

Chris Campbell

[electra225]

I hope my kiddie records have survived the auction and the move. I have a Little Lulu record I haven't played in probably 40 years. And I have a record with a song that went "Bling, blang hammer with my hammer, zingo zango cutting with my saw". And the "Teddy Bear Polka", although I found it on YouTube. There were two versions, the 7 inch version and the 10 inch version.